On my usual Monday night delivery route, I passed a lit sign in front of a church somewhere out towards the north fork of Long Island. It said, “GOOD WITHOUT GOD IS JUST O,” and for a little bit, I didn’t catch what it was trying to convey. Good is just O? I thought. O? As in *oh no*? As is the *big O*? Good is an orgasm without God? What? I didn’t get it.
\nBut that’s because I’m a typesetter at heart. *O* is not *0*. I never say “oh” in phone numbers when I mean *zero*. *O* is a letter, and *0* is a digit. Any typeface that is not trying to mimic a typewriter is going to have two different [glyphs][1] two represent two different characters. Anyone who finds it acceptable to replace a zero with the letter *O* should also have no problem replacing the number *1* with a lower-case *l*.
\n“GOLD WITHOUT GOD IS JUST L” doesn’t make any sense. Let’s put that in proper case (all caps is a crime against typography and clarity anyway). “Gold without God is just l,” is still obviously idiotic. But on a typewriter that could mean “… just one.” It sounds more poetic, but has no meaning, which, all cleverness aside, is what I think of the original as well.
\nGood without God isn’t *nothing*. Good without God is still good. Why do you need an absolute reference point to do good? Why does one need a specific brand of bearded cloud-father (Methodist, I think) to determine good or evil? Ethics exists without the assistance of religion to classify right from wrong.
\nAnd, anyway, it was a poor pun, and it depended on the invention of typewriters and cheap signage to make it work.
\n[1]: http:\/\/www.answers.com\/topic\/glyph#Technology<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On my usual Monday night delivery route, I passed a lit sign in front of a church somewhere out towards the north fork of Long Island. It said, “GOOD WITHOUT GOD IS JUST O,” and for a little bit, I didn’t catch what it was trying to convey. Good is just O? I thought. O? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rant"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nj3d-2S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}