I don't know if anyone remembers back about 1998 or so on the old Phil-Lit
list, in some discussions about God, there were at least two (as I recall)
contributors who referred to God by typing "G_d". I guess it was the hole
left by leaving out the "o" that made the typing of it holier. I don't
know. But it would cause me to wonder if they thought that God was so
sensitive that we humans could possibly ever hurt his feelings by waging
religious wars,or, much less, just by typing out his full name? (Actually
I think his full name might be "God Almighty" or "God Damnit" or "Jesus
Fucking Christ" -- I've heard these versions and other such variations at
least as often as stand alone "God." What I mean to say is, like, you
know, come on, do they really think that God is such a sensitive soul?
Hell, he fire bombed Sodom and Gomorrah long before we ever got around to
Dresden and Tokyo. If you think that words or thoughts or even actions even
can hurt him, well, I think that's a sacrilege. It certainly that doesn't
speak well for his omnipotence and omniscience and. omnipresence. How
would he ever be able to do the Divine thing -- whatever that is -- if we
mere humans can cripple him up like a little kid crying in the corner
because he didn't get a piece of candy. I'm of the opinion that God comes
away from such adorational rituals longing to hear some humans cursing and
shaking their fists at heaven and shouting: "Damn you! I'll get you yet!"
That would surely make him feel better about himself than some Jesus Freak
singing sweet hymns to him. We are his pet dogs, always going back to him
with our tails between our legs -- humbled, yes -- but pissing on his leg
none the less. "Vengeance is mine," sayeth we continually to ourselves.
We'll get him yet, yes. We'll use his Real Name, His Full Name We'll
shout it out: "AM, AM, AM, AM, "AM, AM, AM, AM "AM, AM, AM, AM "AM, AM,
AM, AM "AM, AM, AM, AM. God is a very sensitive dude-God. You've got to
be judicious in what you say -- and type! Oh dear. Maybe those who write
G_d are wiser that I am. Now I'm afraid to even think of _________.
On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 11:02 AM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
wrote:
"In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was
God." I wonder what Chomsky and Berwick think about this. Of course John
lived a mere 2000 years ago more or less and any legends of the beginning
would have been old. But Genesis written much earlier is also concerned
about language. God's method of creation was to speak words. Later in
Exodus God speaks to Moses and tells him to go to the Egyptians and rescue
the Israelites. Moses asks God "if the people ask who sent me, what shall
he answer?" "God said to Moses, 'I am who I am. This is what you are to
say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'"
Was this emphasis upon "the word" as a means of creation and later another
name for Jesus faddish, that is, a popular word at the time and nothing
more, or did it have some deeper significance, some mythic emphasis that
theologians can only speculate about? It was believed in those days or in
earlier days that to have person's name was to have power over him.
But faddish words have existed and continue to exist. Here is something
from pages 47 and 48 of Carl Becker's *The Heavenly City of the
Eighteenth-Century Philosophers *(first given as a lecture at Yale in
1931 and then published in 1932)*: *"If we would discover the little
backstairs' door that for any age serves as the secret entrance-way to
knowledge, we will do well to look for certain unobtrusive words with
uncertain meanings that are permitted to slip off the tongue or the pen
without fear and without research; words which, having from constant
repetition lost their metaphorical significance, are unconsciously mistaken
for objective realities. In the thirteenth century the key words would no
doubt be God, sin, grace, salvation, heaven, and the like; in the
nineteenth century, matter, fact, matter-of-fact, evolution, progress; in
the twentieth century, relativity, process, adjustment, function, complex.
In the eighteenth century the words without which no enlightened person
could reach a restful conclusion were nature, natural law, first cause,
reason, sentiment, humanity, perfectibility (these last three being
necessary only for the tender-minded, perhaps).
"In each age these magic words have their entrances and their exits. And
how unobtrusively they come in and go out! We should scarcely be aware
either of their approach or their departure, except for a slight feeling of
discomfort, a shy self-consciousness in the use of them. The word
'progress' has long been in good standing, but just now we are beginning to
feel, in introducing it into the highest circles, the need of easing it in
with quotation marks, that conventional apology that will save all our
faces. Words of more ancient lineage trouble us more. Did not president
Wilson, during the war, embarrass us not a little by appearing in public on
such familiar terms with 'humanity,' by the frank avowal of his love for
'mankind'? As for God, sin, grace, salvation -- the introduction of these
ghosts form the dead past we regard as inexcusable, so completely do their
unfamiliar presences put us out of countenance, so effectively do they,
even under the most favorable circumstances, cramp our style."
Lawrence
