I was watching an episode of “Black-ish” last night. In the episode, dad gets all bent out of shape at the prospect his daughter might be an Atheist (gasp!). Anyway, towards the end of the episode, the daughter exasperates: “Thank god” after the doctor was able to find the baby’s heart beat in her mother’s womb. Then of course you see a glimmer of hope in the father’s eye as he took that utterance as evidence that his daughter is indeed a believer.
To which I say “Nonsense!”
Saying “Swear to God”, “Thank God” and “God damn” are all just byproducts of growing up in a society saturated with Christianity. It is not evidence that one actually believes.
Yes, but I am aware of the irony. I also celebrate the secular elements of Easter and Christmas and occasionally sing religious music with a choir. I have even been known to attend church on occasion, mostly for social reasons.
What I won’t do is recite the Nicene Creed or take Communion - that’s where the heavy line between “polite social convention” and “blatant misrepresentation of beliefs” is drawn for me.
I am not an atheist, but I was raised Catholic and don’t believe in “God” any more. (I’m a New Ager.) I use God in cursing all the time, especially “goddammit” and “goddamnit.”
It’s stupid. And it’s spiritually negative. But I still do it.
Yes, occasionally. It’s precisely figures of speech that imply that something is figurative. That’s why Christians are forbidden from “saying the Lord’s name in vain”, not me.
Far as I know I’m better described as agnostic as in not completely ruling out the possibility of a higher power but also refusing to commit to believing in one without any evidence. Either way I find “God” a bit too specific!
But yeah I’ll say “oh gawd” or “ugh, god!” out of habit but with no meaning attached to it. I never “Thank God” though or say “God Bless” as those do feel like direct praise to me. I usually thank fuck, whoever the fuck fuck is, and just say “bless that person” at the air without actually expecting them to be blessed in any way.
“Swear to God” isn’t really a phrase I use even in any adapted form.
I use Swear to Christ occasionally. I goddamn and Jesus Christ quite often. Although my mom mentioned to me she didn’t like it, but not in a don’t say that around me kind of way. So I’ve tried to watch myself when talking with her.
All the time because they are figures of speech that go beyond their original meeting. I even say “God bless you” after someone sneezes as a cultural idiom, but would never say that when the implication was that I was actually invoking the blessings of a god.
Never; I made a point of training myself not to. Mainly because it felt silly to me to swear by something I considered fictional, as if I were to start swearing by Rao or Azathoth.
Yer goddamned right I do! Jesus, Christ, and God are all sprinkled liberally among the fucks, shits, cock suckers, and other words of ill repute that leap from my tongue when I am exasperated.
It is entirely cultural and nothing to do with any belief. If I was raised in another culture I would use the words of that culture to express such feelings.
I’ll invoke God, Jeebus, Thor’s hammer, Og, and any other deity that suits the occasion. I don’t see such invocations as proof that I believe in them. They’re just words. I’ll say “Thank goodness” in front of polite company, but sometimes it comes out as “Thank Gahh-oodness.”
It’s interesting to me how different cultures will invoke the deity. I remember how my Southern Appalachian grandma and her sister would say “They lawd,” a shortened form of “The lord have mercy,” whenever they heard bad news. The phrase was usually delivered in kind of a singing style. The first part of “They” was a semi-high pitch, the last part a dip down, and “lawd” was a higher pitch that slid up at the word’s end.
I do, and it’s a lifelong habit. It conveys what I’m feeling to everyone–they don’t have to infer from my tone what “Og” means. I tried using Bill Cosby’s routine of using “Rudy”. (In his album from the early 70s, “8:15/12:15” Cosby said, “God is busy. Don’t call on him. I have a friend named Rudy, who don’t do a damned thing all day. Call on him…‘Oh, Rudy, if I could just have hit that number in the casino last night, I’d be all right…Rudydammit!’” That sort of thing.) It didn’t have the same impact.