Godbotherer
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A religious person is sometimes referred to in a derogatory fashion as a godbotherer because of their habit of appealing to (bothering) God whenever they are faced with a dilemma e.g.
- "How did the universe begin?"
- "God did it"
- "What shall we do about AIDS?"
- "God will take care of it"
- etc. etc. ...
Ironically, some godbotherers are not bothered when it comes to enforcing the Bible (i.e. stoning somebody to death for cutting their hair wrong, drowning deformed babies, etc.)
A godbotherer will often be able to quote philosophers and other godbotherers both ancient and modern in support of his/her viewpoint, having carefully researched the subject. Those without corresponding belief or faith are less likely to have the interest in the subject, being convinced that it is a false trail. Why should anyone bother to counter a manifestly stupid idea system?
A slightly different sort of person have also been referred to (by less antagonistic believers) as "God pests". They are those who pester everyone else with what they believe in.
Brief list of famous godbotherers
- Johann Sebastian Bach, and many other pre-20th-century composers, due to their dependence on godbothering patrons
- George Berkeley
- G. K. Chesterton
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Freeman Dyson
- Michael Faraday
- Carl Friedrich Gauss
- Graham Greene
- Heinrich Heine
- Edmund Husserl
- Søren Kierkegaard
- Martin Luther King
- C. S. Lewis
- Georges Lemaître
- Carolus Linnaeus
- Gregor Mendel
- Isaac Newton
- J. R. R. Tolkien
- Leo Tolstoy
- Sigrid Undset
- Gene Wolfe
- John Wesley[1]