I listened to a podcast of Sea Change Radio for the first time. It looks like an interesting show.
In this episode someone is talking about an engineer in a village in Columbia who literally dreamed about a better water pump design. He woke up and thought “Oh My God, we’re doing this wrong”. Sea Change felt the need to blank out the word God.
I find it amazing that anyone would find that offensive and that the podcast authors would waste time editing that out.
He’s telling a pretty neat story. They end up with kids’ seesaws connected to a pump so while the kids are having fun they’re actually pumping water for their village. The G word is at 14:44
Last week I was listening to an OTR file of Edward G. Robinson’s show Big Town, which dates to the late '30s. Someone turned up dead and Robinson exclaimed, “OMG!” I thought, “Hey now! Could you say that on the air in the late '30s?”
Then came a commercial break. Huge orchestral flourish - followed by maybe eight people applauding. I’d been listening to a rehearsal.
On a similar note I heard that “Life In The Fast Lane” by the Eagles is being censored in one of the bible-belt states; they’ve removed God from the song, so it now says “We’ve been up and down this highway haven’t seen a ___ damed thing.”
Taking God’s name in vain is one thing, like if you ask Him to damn sombody or if you say we’re going to attack a middle East country because He told you to.
Who’s to say that the engineer isn’t grateful that perhaps God was invlolved in the process of the dream?
Yes, one of the Ten Commandments[sup]TM[/sup] is “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain,” which some people have interpreted to mean “Don’t use the word ‘God’ casually, as an interjection, but only to refer to the Supreme Being himself, in a reverent and respectful way.”
I don’t find it offensive and often say it quite flippantly, but I do have lots of friends who are Christians who find it very offensive. So when around them I say ‘o my gosh’.
It has always seemed to me that the more likely intent of this commandment was to dissuade people from using such constructions as “God will be angry with you if you [RANDOM THING THAT MAKES THE SPEAKER ANGRY].”
Making this sort of pronouncement is often a favourite pastime of the sort of person who considers an exclamatory “Jesus!” to run afoul of the decalogue, though.
I used to work with a bunch of the Vociferously Religious. Every single thing they did required them to call upon SWEET JESUS. SWEET JESUS, help me - my stapler’s stuck! SWEET JESUS, save me - my coffee’s too hot! My DEAR SWEET JESUS, don’t let me forget to stop for gas on the way home! Seriously - it’s like they couldn’t move without having to invoke their saviour’s name. I viewed that as blasphemy – and I really don’t give a good goddam about blasphemy. Finally enough people complained, and all but one works here now, and she’s dialed it back a LOT. Thank you, SWEET JESUS!
I don’t find it offensive, and I’d say that most people I know don’t either. But I’ve been acquainted with a few of the Fundamentalist Christian variety who have seen it as very offensive. So much so that if they hear it, they cite the one of the Ten Commandments that speaks of taking the Lord’s name in vain, right down to chapter and verse.
