Thanks King, for being so quick to post. And thank you too for the full quote at the end re: football vs. baseball. Apparently, in the end Carlin was a baseball man after all: he went home.

God bless.

By "going home", I hope you mean "buried in the ground in a box" or "incinerated into ashes". George Carlin was an atheist.

Soft-peddling that disrespects his legacy.

I'm glad it was you, King, who did the honors for Mr Carlin. The only other Salon writer who could have done him justice is Gary Kamiya, and he's probably asleep at the moment.

When I heard the news a little earlier, I hollered NO! and cried for a little bit. I learned about George Carlin's genius from my mom, and so hearing that we'd lost him just reopened the wound that was losing mom 3 years ago. I know, it sounds weird, but there ya go. It even made me feel better to see that George was still around when he was on Countdown with Keith Olbermann recently, like a reminder of my mom and what made her laugh.

I had this entire hour memorized by the time I was in Junior High. I loved the wordplay, and I still owe much of my cadence and my humor to those early HBO specials, which they ran ad nauseam in those days, and I watched 'em each and every time they came on.

He was also one of the rare comedians who became deeper the older he got, not just relying on old schtick.

Personally, I still think his suggestion to put a gasoline fire in the center of the basketball court to liven up the game is a great idea. It'd get me to watch the NBA for more than 5 minutes at a time.

'Returning to the primordial stew' would serve just fine; as would 'gone to meet his maker', 'fallen into a black hole', 'kicked the bucket', or 'bought the farm'.

I was simply following through on a particular metaphoric interpretation of death via the Carlin quote that King was referencing.

Don't pretend that atheism isn't a religion, my friend. Fundamentalism springs up in all of them, regardless of how evolved they are (yes, a modern, fact-based atheism is more evolved than fundamentalist Islam or Judaism or Christianity, et al.; but it can still manifest in a fundamentalist form, leading to very similar ends, if not always means).

The downfall of any belief system is believing that it is The Ultimate Belief System That Has All Of The Answers. There is a branch of TUBSTHAOTA that consists of atheists, and members of this branch are far too often promoted here on Salon--not that I don't learn something from whatever I read, just that relative to all the other shades of atheism they are the most prevalent here.

I just have one question for them: What started the chemical and electrical process?

...and where did that come from?

Oh, but where did that come from?

etc...

Oh, and I believe that George Carlin was by far a member of the lofty group that includeds the most effective fundamentalist atheists in the history of our culture! In these fundamentalist times is it any surprise at all the he's receiving the Mark Twain award? I weep at the magnitude of that honor, and to think that though he knew he got the honor he'll get it posthumously is a brutal thought indeed

As a teenager growing up in a conservative town (Spokane) with a family that was an active member in our Foursquare church, hearing Carlin in the 80's ranks only behind seeing Kingsley's Ghandi and reading Slaughterhouse Five as the most important catalysts for me abandoning my parents' Christianity.

He's a fucking prophet, man. I will not deny that, my friend. Nor will I deny that his body is rotting in the earth. So it goes.

Baseball's played in a park

The less we heard from him the less there was America, now he is dead.

Thank You George.

Don't pretend that atheism isn't a religion

It isn't.

Thanks for showing that just because you're a fan of some intelligent comedy it doesn't necessarily mean you yourself are intelligent.

His abscence will be conspicuous indeed....

And if you didn't get him that's really a shame.

Will never forget the first time I ran into George Carlin outside a concert hall. It was a seedy parking garage just off Broadaway and Times Square in NYC back in the early 80's. He was evediently a regular monthly patron like so many of us waitng for our vehicles to come down off the three-abreast antiquiated lift. It hardly qualified as an elevator which was fairly typical for the City in those days.

Anyway, finally down comes the lift, up goes the gate revealing one impossibly polished cream colerd Rolls Royce with the orange NY License Plate: STOLEN.

A few of us chuckled wondering who belonged to the ride when a smallish guy scurried over to the car, handed the attendant a five, looked over at the line and just kinda smiled that wry thin smile. And he was gone.

He had another sports rule. Derivatives of ping pong could not be sports.

Tennis: Ping pong played while standing on the table

Volleyball: Raquetless team ping pong played with an inflated ball and a raised net while standing on the table

Lynx wrote:

Thanks for showing that just because you're a fan of some intelligent comedy it doesn't necessarily mean you yourself are intelligent.

Framing atheism as a "religion" is one of the oldest tricks employed by religionists, but it shows they understand neither religion or atheism.

First, the most common and generic form of atheism withholds belief, it dooes not invest it, even as a negative belief. This alone separates atheists from religionists or people of faith.

Second, atheists make no positive claims for any transcendent existent that requires their worship or obeisance. They simply

acknowledge no god or entity with which to build a religion in other words.

Third, atheists maintain no sacred works, scriptures, or ancient artifacts, from which their “truths” are extracted.

They have no analog to a Bible, Qu’ran, Talmud or anything remotely similar. Instead, atheists pursue objective truth via open inquiry predicated on current science, which may provide fewer certainties or answers than if they merely placed their faith in a book.

Fourth, atheists convene no regular rituals, services or ceremonies to honor, or propitiate any entity. By contrast, the centerpiece of 99 percent of religions is precisely some social ritual, for the purpose of assembling together like-minded believers toward a common goal. Moreover, their churches, synagogues, temples etc. dot the landscape, taking up room that could be used to house the homeless in each respective area or locale.

Perhaps most importantly, there is no “acceptance” of atheist principles from any “congregation” since there’s no homogeneous congregation to bestow it. Atheists often disagree on as many things as they agree on, precisely because no

formal coda exists to fix beliefs within a uniform dogma. This means one is just as likely to encounter a wholly Materialist-Naturalist atheist as a non-material one.

Despite this, there remain some who insist that if an atheist simply “doesn’t believe in the supernatural or God” he is expressing a belief. If expressing a belief, then he is professing a religion. This is nonsense. It would be akin to asserting that if I decline belief in UFOs as extraterrestrial spacecraft I still have “UFO belief” and therefore am a practicing Ufologist! The error inheres in asserting that

an absence of belief is the same as a belief.

This error repeats the canard that the onus is on the atheist to disprove the believer’s claim, instead of acknowledging it

is impossible to prove a negative.

Georgie will be missed especially for his often splenetic eviscerations of God belief and religion. My favorite is when he leads in by noting "God is all seeing, all powerful, and ALL loving. He really loves each and every one of our little selves. But.....He won't hesitate to burn us in Hell if we cross Him!"

Thanks for the memories, George. I am glad I have most of your latter HBO specials (since 1996) on tape.