Add Homonym Attacks! #38
Ad Hominem: Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason.
Ad Hominem Attack: An argument that focuses on a personal attack as opposed to the subject in question.
Add Homonym Attacks!: The process by which one inserts a homophone and it bites you.
(It also serves as the title to Inside Pulse Beyond the Threshold’s representative column in the world of Critical Thinking, Science and Skepticism.)
Thank God!
I often wonder why people thank God so much on my television set. Granted, I am a hardened atheist, but why thank God? The NFL player thanks God for allowing him to get that sack. The actress thanks God for allowing her to be a really good pretender. The 16 year old “crack baby” on American Idol thanks God that she isn’t retarded. (She used nicer words mind you, but not by much.)
What is the point?
Assume for a minute that there is a God. There isn’t mind you, but let’s assume.
So, assume that there is a God (even though, there isn’t). If he’s omniscient, he would know whether or not a person was thankful. One wouldn’t even need to say it aloud, as he would simply read your thoughts a la Professor Charles Xavier.
But, it seems that a lot of His followers don’t believe this thing. In fact, it seems like in their view, God wants to hear his name on TV, a lot. He’s on a cloud watching some where waiting for his shout out, or whatever the kids are calling it these days.
That cannot be it, right? Maybe it is just that people that thank God on television want everybody to know what a great person they are. “I may do lines of coke off of a hooker’s ass, but at least I’m not an atheist. I’m a man of faith!” It goes counter to the whole “go to the closet to pray” part of the New Testament, but then again it’s hard to do anything without violating at least one thing written in the Bible.
I guess that the most frustrating god-thankers to me are the people who have had something awful happen to them. They’ve had cancer, or were shot, or fell off a building, or had an arm eaten by a tiger, and afterwards they thank God that they’re still here. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to be alive. I’m just saying, if God were so benevolent, why did He give you cancer in the first place? Why did He allow you to get shot? Why did He invent things like tigers and polio in the first place.
See, I just don’t understand the logic of that thing. Imagine walking down the street. A stranger approaches and punches you square in the gut and walks away. Do you thank the stranger for not kicking you in the gonads?
Maybe that isn’t an apt analogy. Wait, no it is. If God were so involved in one’s life as to help them recover from a heart attack, He could have done something to prevent the heart attack.
A stitch in time saves nine? An ounce of prevention and all that jive?
This God fellow has yet to display any sort of competence, and yet you bastards keep on thanking Him for not finishing the job when he tries to kill you.
Fuckers.
