cultural-identityThere are nonbelievers that I know personally, and others who are celebrities, who use the OMG phrase in conversation - and sometimes even in debate. I realize it’s a sort of knee-jerk response but shouldn’t nonbelievers, especially those of us who want religion to fade away, rid their vocabulary of these types of exclamations? (Yes, even during sex.)
Even cussing, using phrases such as “god damn” and “Jesus!” I’ve heard uttered by atheists, makes me shake my head. The less of god and Jesus heard in the world, the less important those words become.
Only believers are required to refrain from using God’s name in vain. Atheists don’t have any compulsion to do so unless it is self-imposed. In the English language, interjections such as “Oh my God!” or “Holy shit!” have been secularized and the exact words don’t mean a god-damn thing!
I used to feign being offended when someone told me that God may bless me, such as when I sneezed, but now I just say thank you because I no longer see it as an imposition of religion—it’s just a vistigial expression. Natural linguistic selection just picks whatever works and useless words can stick around for a long time since clean-up forces are weaker than selective ones.
Do you have alternative terminology to denote “sunrise” and “sunset”, or do you just roll with the metaphor?
I have two words for you: “Freedom” fries.
Remember that bit of comedy courtesy of the US House of Representatives? I submit that this is just as silly. If we start getting worked up about what our vocabulary should be when we swear, then we’ve not just stopped seeing the forest for the trees, we’ve stopped seeing the trees for the leaves.
You can pry my “Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ on a giraffe” from my cold, dead fingers. Until then, I’ll use whatever terms I goddamned feel like. The explicitly religious ones are more emotionally satisfying for their shock value, and they just roll off the tongue better.
Simple: for the same reason people say “Damn” when they certainly don’t mean “Damn you to hell, you heathen devil”. It’s an idiomatic expression, which is stored in the brain as one atomic entity, with one singular meaning, separate from the origin of the phrase itself or the meaning of each of its parts.
It’s not worth the effort to change. Sayings like that are cultural, and many of us grew up with them. It’s not optimal, but halting use of it won’t provide us any gain and would cost me lots of time trying to reprogram my brain.
I’m equally inclined to say, “Oh fuq” in times of stress, but I’m not planning to do it in the road and frighten the horses.
Because it takes a lot more effort to remember to say “By Grabthar’s Hammer!”, “Suffering Sappho!”, and “By Jove!”
On the other hand, I do use “frak” a lot. And I should probably transition over to “gorram” and “bloody” so my little one doesn’t frighten the horses. :)
I’m personally more comfortable taking god’s name in vain because the bible says not to do it, than I am saying “bless you” when someone sneezes.
It’s this duality that also makes me want to get a tattoo that reads “Leviticus 19:28”
If I’d accidentally say “Oh my God” and someone asked why being an atheist I refer to God, I’d jokingly answer “Yes, we believe in our atheistical deity Atheus”, then explained that this is just and idiom and doesn’t imply anything religious.
Certain of the phrases are idiomatic, such as "Oh my god". It's just a word or phrase that people say at that moment. It is vestigial.
Consider the word "Goodbye". It has "god" in it. Yet people are not really referring to a god when they say it. Just like nobody thinks of Thor when they say Thursday (well, I do... but I'm not normal).
There's lots of hidden religion in the English language because the language grew up with religious speakers. Feel free to remove overt references to God from your daily speech. But you'll never find all the references.
I don't mean to be snarky. Actually I agree with removing certain God references from language; for example I say "gesundheit" when someone sneezes. My point is that language is like an old sponge, picking up all the crud from the ages. You can't throw it away because it's the only one you have, but sometimes no amount of rinsing makes it look new. It's futile to worry too much about it.
If we can figuratively mention “every Tom, Dick and Harry”, “John Doe” and other fictional characters, why should characters from religious fiction be singled-out as special?
My child copies everything I do and when she grows up she will have many of my little ways. If I said ‘goodness’ all the time that is what she would end up saying.
Its part of what makes us human animals.
We humans are hardwired to imitate our adults. That has darwinian value in the sense that it makes individuals fitter in their environment. We have learnt those phrases and repeat them automatically.
The same way that so many children learn religion and then carry on with it automatically.
Oh well.
I often say god bless, oh my god, hell, I even tell people I will pray for them. Sometimes it is for shock value. I know people who have got mad at me because they know I don’t believe. I do it because it dilutes the pool. If something considered sacred becomes common place it loses its power to awe. It takes a position of meaningless drivel.
In these cases I think the more we use them the more they become common expressions and the relevance of the original statements is lost. They lose their power to mean anything of value.
Because everybody else does, too.
My friends and I like to say “NOTHING HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIE” to each other when we sneeze.
In my case it’s just an instinctive thing. One day it will come out as “Oh my god”and the next day it might be “Well blow me down,” or “Say what!”
Old habits die hard. I was born in 1945 and spent the first half of my life filling in forms that asked, not for my “given” name, but for my “christian name”. Even today, if you ask me quickly and without warning “What is your Christian name?” I’ll probably tell you - although I have never been a Christian; always an atheist.
As I say, old habits die hard.
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