Imho, I remember a backlash ~1990 when athletes would answer “because I’m awesome” when reporters asked them why they won. Iirc, Rickey Henderson was the one who started it by constantly referring to himself in the third person:
Rickey: Why did Rickey Henderson win? Rickey Henderson will tell you why. Rickey Henderson won because Rickey Henderson worked hard and sacrificed.
So, many athletes (even though they were being 100% honest) would be labeled “arrogant” when they claimed any credit for a win. So, athletes had to deflect any credit to God to avoid getting media hate.
At the time, I thought that sports writers were secretly jealous, bitter old men who knew they weren’t good enough to play the game they cover, but were forced to be around those that could.
Doesn’t have anything to do with god, but on the subject of sports journalism, David Foster Wallace wrote a beautiful piece for the Philadelphia Inquirer about athletes and cliches. It’s in one of his books as “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart.” It’s about how frustrating and disappointing athletes’ biographies are because they seem to be devoid of any actual human emotions. He suggested that the reason that athletes give such facially bankrupt and mundane descriptions of their feelings, like for instance in response to questions posed by reporters, isn’t that they’re especially inarticulate or stupid but that those are the real answers:
So maybe when Kurt Warner talks about winning in terms of being blessed, he’s just answering the question to the extent that he understands the question to have an answer. In the same way that it would be a waste of time to ask most athletes, No, but how do you really feel after winning the championship? maybe it’s a waste of time to press an athlete over his thanking god for a victory, because that’s all there is to it.
Hmm, maybe you’re on to something there. In interview after interview after book after book, the greatest athletes are unable to describe how they do what they do. One that comes to mind is Ladanian Tomlinson being asked how he cuts off his back foot, and he is always unable to come up with an answer…he does it because that’s what he does. Maybe crediting God is just a better way of saying “I don’t know.”
Gibbler, if you make me agree with Diogenes then you have to know that you are profoundly wrong and/or cats and dogs living together, etc.
I can’t even figure out quite what your argument is. Are you asking him to support the idea that an athlete thanking God for helping him to win is effectively proclaiming the use of magical, external forces? If so, why is this something he needs to defend? If God intervenes in the world, it’s inherently supernatural, hence “magic”. If the athlete is crediting God’s intervention for the win, then he’s saying something supernatural happened to influence the outcome of the game.
From that point on, you hammer Dio for having a double standard for not being able to provide a “cite” for that, something that’s obvious. You seem to be trying to pound some point home that’s either obviously wrong or so obscure I can’t figure it out.
Andre Agassi deals with this in his autobiography. He writes about a match he lost to Michael Chang and how irritated he was that Chang credited the victory to God. He said it was absurd that God would get involved in a tennis match and was annoyed at the idea that God wanted him to lose.
For the rest of the book, whenever he plays Chang and wins, he throws in a dig at Chang’s piety. As background, Agassi’s no atheist, but Chang is very Christan and very public about it. It makes you wonder how many other athletes are annoyed by this behavior.
Jesus Christ, are people (impersonally, of course) retarded?
Here’s Dio’s argument, in a nutshell: I think God is horseshit. When athletes say that God, a incorporeal thing that I don’t believe in anyway, intervened in the physical world to affect the outcome of a sporting match, I want an explanation as to how this amazing thing happened.
I am turning that blade on Dio. I think Dio’s account of “fairness” is horseshit. Or at least not very compelling as a fiat statement (which, when you think about it, is one of the atheist’s main problems with statements about God—what incredible irony!). So I asked Dio to do what Dio demands of all theistic believers–talk is cheap, I want a clear account of how this fairness or propriety (both of which, let’s not kid ourselves, have been grist for the philosophic mill since Socrates, so let’s not be fatuous and say things like “You could look it up in the dictionary”) works and requires the outcome you say it requires when athletes talk about God.
Dio can’t provide this, and that’s not his fault. Fairness and propriety are tough philosophical nuts to crack. But according to Dio’s rules (and a lot of the other militant atheists in these parts), you shouldn’t be able to say anything unless you can provide such an account. Now, this would shut Dio up if he played by his own rules…so…
No, you’re not. You’re being extremely pedantic and petty by insisting on a strained definition of fair, and demanding a cite for what is essentially an opinion.
As a journalist would be if he asked the OP’s “how do you know God helped?” question.
I totally agree that it is stupid that athletes thank God for their victories, especially considering that they don’t blame him for losses. However, it is even stupider for the public to expect athletes to say anything clever or insightful or even not cliched in a postgame interview. This goes triple for boxers.
I’m not insisting on a strained definition of fair. I am asking for Dio’s explanation why it is “only fair” to expect athlete’s to explain how God affected the outcome of the game.
I could just as easily say: It is wrong to make people rationalize their experiences of the Divine. Far from being “only fair,” it would be wrong and embarrassing for a sports journalist pedantically to ask an athlete how, precisely, God affected the game and why God favored one team over the other.
Did you forget what The Cleveland Steamer and Dio have demanded in this thread? Or are you just irony-impaired?
You keep throwing around fairness as a quote word, and I’m not even sure what you’re referring to. He never used the term. He’s also not applying some standard to the athlete in question that he doesn’t apply to himself. The athlete made a positive claim - that God intervened in the game to help him win - and so he’s asking him to clarify that belief - how did that happen, why did god favor you, etc.
You seem to be saying that unless Dio can ask himself the same question, he’s being unfair to the guy. But Dio is not making positive declarations of things that require proof or at least explanation - he is posing the question to someone else who made such claims.
In order for Dio to ask someone to explain their belief that God intervened to win them a football game, he must be able to provide an answer to that question himself? Is that what you’re saying? I don’t think I’m retarded - I think you’re off in your own little world arguing points with obscure assumptions that you haven’t shared with us.
Maybe I can help everyone out here, just so nobody gets banned over the eleventh most ridiculous argument to ever grace these boards full of ridiculous arguments.
Diogenes:
Kimmy then asked for a cite for the above. The point being that he wanted Diogenes to show his work regarding how he knows it’s “only fair.” Which, you see, parallels the OP’s call for a reporter to ask an athlete to show his work regarding how he knows god was “on his side.” Kimmy is saying that fairness is as ethereal and subjective as religion, when you get right down to it, so a call for objective data with respect to the former is justified by the same reasoning that justifies it in the latter case.
You see? Athlete says “god is real,” reporter says “what’s your evidence?” Diogenes approves, and says “that is fair.” Kimmy says “what’s your evidence?”
That’s where he fails. Fairness is not some elevated concept that baffles philosophers all over the world. A five year old kid knows what’s fair. People can generally agree what’s fair. Additionally, **Dio **was simply stating an opinion.
If an athlete said he won because he employed the Gibbler Method, is it unfair to ask him what that is and how it works?
If he won because of the Chitwood Diet, is asking about that unfair?
If he says it’s the Contra shoes, is asking what they do unfair?
This is still retarded because I wasn’t saying the athlete should be asked to provide evidence that God is real, but only that he should be asked how he thinks God affected the game. It’s also false to say that the word “fair” is ethereal or undefinable. No it isn’t.