Carlin was a Catholic by childhood family preference. He struggled with the notion of God and heaven into adulthood before accepting logic and reason which seemed to trump the belief in a supreme being of goodness and love. (Yes, pun intended.)
I believe his cynicism opened his eyes but at a cost. That cost wasn’t the loss of the fantasy love-god. Carlin tried to believe in that creature for a while, tried to accept that god as good and loving but powerless, subject, he once said to “natural laws.” No, the cost to Carlin was his own vision of humanity and his realization that human nature was, at its core, possessed of such a potential for hatred and cruelty that it emitted it in steady waves and, occasionally, tsunamis. That, I believe, was what enlightened him. Not a happy vision.
But, regardless, Carlin didn’t grow to hate humanity. Far from it. He loved people, loved his audiences -- I truly believe this. But he was pained by the fact that the good is usually overpowered by the evil. He once said, notably, “They own you.” And he meant that in its most desperate, sad, cynical and defeated way.
"Il fait cultiver notre jardin” said Voltaire’s Candide, because you cannot change the world. I don’t doubt George Carlin would have subscribed; but nevertheless, in a curmudgeonly and angry way he “raged against the dying of the light.”
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