In the stand-up comedy routine “Religion is bull****” written and performed by the late comedian George Carlin, Carlin claims that religion is essentially a lie. George Carlin was an accomplished American stand-up comic, author and actor who was prominent from the early 1960s until his death in 2008 (Editors). In his routine Carlin also implied that God would be an incompetent male who could not manage money adequately and that people should pray to things they can see like the sun or Joe Pesci. Carlin used humor, satire, irony, exaggeration and common sense as anecdotal evidence.
Carlin’s use or rather misuse of logic throughout his routine is noteworthy. He appealed to the audience’s common sense multiple times, to prove his claims. For example, he implied that God was incompetent at his job based on the current and past wars, diseases, poverty, crime and corruption that has riddled the progress of the human race and that performance of that caliber can only be attributed to “an office temp with a bad attitude” but not a supreme being such as God (Carlin). Carlin used common sense to break down a complex topic and provided examples that even a layman could understand and relate to. His use of logos should be very effective on anyone who is even minutely open to his views or is a…show more content… He also used statements like “I wouldn't presume on our friendship. It's not polite” (Carlin) when explaining why he does not pray to the sun and “I've often thought people treat God rather rudely, don't you? Asking trillions and trillions of prayers every day… It's not nice. And it's no way to treat a friend” (Carlin) to show a hint of humility to boost his ethos. Although in this performance, his ethos would be relatively weak and ineffective compared to his use of pathos and logos, as there wasn’t enough character building content in his
