David Myers used to do that. I can't bring anyone else to mind. I
think David was an Orthodox Jew. I used to know the purpose behind that
tradition but I can't bring that to mind either. It may have been
harking back to the idea that knowing a person's name and saying it
meant that you had power over him; so to presume to have power over God
would be a blasphemy.
Lawrence
On 7/22/2016 10:04 PM, Mike Geary wrote:
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 <mailto: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
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