{"id":2286,"date":"2010-10-10T12:04:21","date_gmt":"2010-10-10T17:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=2286"},"modified":"2010-10-10T12:04:21","modified_gmt":"2010-10-10T17:04:21","slug":"god-only-knows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=2286","title":{"rendered":"God only knows&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ever notice how people use the expression, usually when claiming and attributing widespread ignorance, &quot;God only knows&#8230;&quot;?&nbsp; The upshot of it is to say: the issue is evidentially impenetrable, so only an omniscient entity could know the answer.&nbsp; But the expression doesn&#039;t say that.&nbsp; It says that God <strong>only knows<\/strong>, not that <strong>only God knows.&nbsp; <\/strong>If God only knows, that means that knowing is the only thing he&#039;s doing. Moreover, it doesn&#039;t say that we (or anyone else) don&#039;t know&#8230; which is what the expression was supposed to imply.&nbsp; Now, you can imply that by quantifying over <strong>God<\/strong> instead of over <strong>knowledge.&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/strong>So why do people say it that way, if it doesn&#039;t mean what they say?<\/p>\n<p>Maybe it&#039;s because in saying &quot;God only knows,&quot;&nbsp; one is actually compressing a dramatic pause, so: &quot;God, only, knows,&quot; which would read the quantifier ranging over &quot;God,&quot; not &quot;knows&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp; Any thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever notice how people use the expression, usually when claiming and attributing widespread ignorance, &quot;God only knows&#8230;&quot;?&nbsp; The upshot of it is to say: the issue is evidentially impenetrable, so only an omniscient entity could know the answer.&nbsp; But the expression doesn&#039;t say that.&nbsp; It says that God only knows, not that only God knows.&nbsp; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=2286\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">God only knows&#8230;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2286"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2288,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286\/revisions\/2288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}