Tim Minchin - Thank You God

Plenty of religious believers believe in God because they've had some personal experience of a 'miracle'; that is to say, they've been confronted with something that (in their own minds at least) could not have happened by any natural means, and so they take this 'mystery' as evidence for a transcendent explanation. That's what I call water-tight logic :)

As we all know, it is impossible for anyone to win the lottery, for a football team to win the Supberbowl, or for people who may have been misdiagnosed to be cured of their non-existence disease... just as it is equally impossible that our judgments may be clouded by cognitive biases, by the power of expectation and by our uncanny ability to reinterpret data to fit in with our beliefs.

So, when some bloke by the name of Sam told Tim Minchin that God had cured his mom's cataracts, Minchin had to admit (with an awesome song) this proved not only God's existence but his benevolent awesomeness :)

Now what I want to know is why God hates amputees :)

If that was somehow too fast for you, you can follow along here:

I have an apology to make.
I’m afraid I’ve made a big mistake.
I turned my face away from you, Lord.

I was too blind to see the light.
I was too weak to feel Your might.
I closed my eyes; I couldn’t see the truth, Lord.

But then like Saul on the Damascus road,
You sent a messenger to me, and so…

I have had the truth revealed to me.
Please forgive me all those things I said.
I’ll no longer betray you, Lord.
I will pray to you instead.

And I will say “Thank you, thank you, thank you God.
Thank you, thank you, thank you God.”

Thank you God for fixing the cataracts of Sam’s mum.

I had no idea but it’s suddenly so clear now.
I feel such a cynic. How could I have been so dumb?

Thank you for displaying how praying works:
a particular prayer in a particular church.
Thank you Sam for the chance to acknowledge
this omnipotent opthamologist.

Thank you God for fixing the cataracts of Sam’s mum.
I didn’t realize that it was so simple,
but you’ve shown a great example of just how it can be done.

You only need to pray in a particular spot
to a particular version of a particular god,
and if you pull that off without a hitch,
he will fix one eye of one middle-class white bitch.

I know in the past my outlook has been limited.
I couldn’t see examples of where life had been definitive.
But I can admit it when the evidence is clear,
as clear as Sam’s mum’s new cornea.

That’s extremely clear! Extremely clear!

Thank you God for fixing the cataracts of Sam’s mum.
I have to admit that in the past I have been skeptical,
but Sam described this miracle and I am overcome!

How fitting that the sighting of a sight-based intervention
should open my eyes to this exciting new dimension.
It’s like someone put an eye chart on the wall in front of me
and the top five letters say: I C G O D.

Thank you, Sam, for showing how my point of view has been so flawed.
I assumed there was no God at all but now I see that’s cynical.
It’s simply that his interests aren’t particularly broad.

He’s largely undiverted by the starving masses,
or the inequality between the various classes.
He gives out strictly limited passes,
redeemable for surgery or two-for-one glasses.

I feel so shocking for historically mocking.
Your interests are clearly confined to the ocular.
I bet given the chance, you’d eschew the divine
and start a little business selling contacts online.

Fuck me Sam, what are the odds
that of history’s endless parade of gods
that the God you just happened to be taught to believe in
is the actual one and he digs on healing,
but not the AIDS-ridden African nations,
the victims of the plague or the flood-addled Asians,
but healthy, privately-insured Australians
with common and curable corneal degeneration?

This story of Sam’s has but a single explanation:
a surgical God who digs on magic operations.
It couldn’t be mistaken attribution of causation,
born of a coincidental temporal correlation,
exacerbated by a general lack of education,
vis-a-vis physics in Sam’s parish congregation.

And it couldn’t be that all these pious people are liars.
It couldn’t be an artifact of confirmation bias,
a product of groupthink, a mass delusion,
an Emperor’s New Clothes-style fear of exclusion.

No, it’s more likely to be an all-powerful magician
than the misdiagnosis of the initial condition,
or one of many cases of spontaneous remission,
or a record-keeping glitch by the local physician.

No, the only explanation for Sam’s mum’s seeing:
they prayed to an all-knowing superbeing,
to the omnipresent master of the universe,
and he liked the sound of their muttered verse.

So for a bit of a change from his usual stunt
of being a sexist, racist, murderous cunt,
he popped down to Dandenong and just like that,
used his powers to heal the cataracts of Sam’s mum – of Sam’s mum!

Thank you God for fixing the cataracts of Sam’s mum!
I didn’t realize that it was such a simple thing.
I feel such a dingaling, what ignorant scum!

Now I understand how prayer can work:
a particular prayer in a particular church
in a particular style with a particular stuff
for particular problems that aren’t particularly tough,
and for particular people, preferably white,
for particular senses, preferably sight,
a particular prayer in a particular spot,
to a particular version of a particular god.

And if you get that right, He just might
take a break from giving babies malaria
and pop down to your local area
to fix the cataracts of your mum!

Hallelujah!

And if you want more, check out Tim Minchin's poem Storm, or watch him tell the Pope where to shove it.
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