Ask Richard: When Religious Friends Ask Us to Not Say “Oh My God”

I automatically associate this as a parallel to phrases such as using “gay” or “retarded” as pejoratives. I do my best to eliminate those phrases from my vocabulary, because I know they’re denigrating minorities. However, I have no desire to reduce my use of “oh my god” or “Jesus Christ”, which I, in fact, say as much as possible. What is the substantial difference? Is there?

My thinking is of two sides:

One, Christians are not a minority group. They are in power (sorry, there is no homosexual agenda running the country). There are always a different set of rules, no matter how much Pat Robertson wishes otherwise, for minorities than for majorities. This is the reason there is an NAACP and not an NAAWP. Majorities don’t need protection.

Two, the target of my religious phrasing does not have a real victim. God and Jesus are ideas, they’re not around to be victimized. Religious ideas should not be given special privileges they have not earned.

For a little humorous perspective, check out the stoning scene from Monty Python’s “Life of Brian”.

I take it as a kind of swearing, and I don’t swear around other people who don’t swear. I really don’t see it as a big deal to avoid words that I know other people don’t like. It honestly doesn’t seem like much of a problem; I’ve never seen swearing as some kind of freedom of speech issue that I have to engage in no matter what the company. I don’t say “shit” in front of my mother, and I don’t say “Oh my God” in front of a pastor.
(I also don’t care for “Oh my God” in general, because it makes me think of 80s valley girls. But that’s just me.)

I also don’t care for “Oh my God” in general, because it makes me think of 80s valley girls.

Take it from a resident of the San Fernando Valley: They haven’t stopped saying it.

I made the same leap as Dennis N — the suggested response would apply verbatim if you replaced “Oh my God” with “That’s so gay.” Falling back on “intention” is part of the issue, since that’s such a common derailing strategy — if I didn’t mean to be bigoted, then I wasn’t.

I’m not saying that “Oh my God” really is bigoted or anything, just that I’m skeptical of that particular explanation for why it’s okay. But on the other hand, I’m not sure that any explanation would really satisfy the friend (which is presumably at least part of the intention)… I know people in my family who don’t object to the phrase in public but will then go and talk later behind people’s back about how terrible and disrespectful they are for using it. I don’t think I could say anything to make them see other people’s perspective on it…

I try not to use the phrase simply because I have no god or God.

Take it from a resident of the San Fernando Valley: They haven’t stopped saying it.

For sure!

I’m with SeekingDuck and Dennis N. My mind immediately jumped to all the idiots who don’t intend to give offense when they call things gay or retarded, and then continue to use those words to mean bad or stupid after they’ve been told they’re offensive. Those people are assholes.

Just because you don’t intend to be offensive doesn’t mean it’s not to someone. If you respect that person you try to stop. If you don’t you don’t. If she respects the letter writer she’ll appreciate the effort and not jump down his/her throat for little slip-ups.

To be clear, if the letter writer’s friend were asking him/her to refrain from any criticism of religion or putting forward a “Shut up, that’s why” argument or if she were unwilling to show the same respect back I’d say argue it out with her, but this doesn’t sound like that. It’s a trivial change in language. Most functioning adults already moderate their language in a similar manner around family or at work. Just go along with it.

Oh come on, you’re going to hear “Oh my God” a hundred times a day. You know I’m not saying it to be disrespectful, it’s just a common expression. If it really bothers you, I’ll try to avoid it, but please don’t get on my case if I slip. That habit is not out of disrespect. I care about your feelings, but you don’t want me to start tip-toeing around you, do you? We have to respect each other, but we also have to accept each other as we are.”

Wow!! That’s a much better answer than I had.

Mine was more like… fuck off!

Yours is definitely more eloquent. Mine has more punch though.

Just wondering how old these people are?

You could also politely tell her that “taking the Lords’ name in vain” was not referring to cuss words.

It was referring to USING “the concept of God, etc.” for your own personal gain. In order to gain power, prestige, notoriety, status, respect, etc.

Far too many Christians seem to be too okay with that, and too upset over words.

Jesus gangbanging Christ, Jon posted something constructive?

hmm… I never knew “Oh my God” was that offensive. I always thought it was a phrase used when one is surprised or awe-struck by something unusual or unexpected. What’s wrong with that? I did learn my lesson about “Oh mother…” and realized it’s much different from “Oh brother.”

Man, this English language is so confusing… wait… is “man” okay?

Asking someone to not say “oh my god” because it is against YOUR religion is unreasonable. I have to admit I audibly said “pffffft” when I read the subject title. I would probably laugh in someone’s face if they asked that of me. It’s not like she/he threw a curse in there.

I’d say,

“I’m sorry if I offended you, but I’m an atheist and I tend to be offended by people who condemn me for not believing in their magical imaginary friends. Shoot, I guess we are both offended now.”

I am surprised to discover that anyone (other then the conservative Christian) thinks the phrase “oh my god” is offensive. I agree that the phrases “that’s retarded” or “that’s gay” are offensive because their meaning implies that a certain segment of the population is aberrant or worth less. But “oh my god” is ambiguous and is a reaction to something, as opposed to refering to things deemed stupid or unwanted as “so god”.

I wouldn’t say “Jesus Christ” but I grew up considering it offensive, and it is to many. When I lived in Italy I assumed that “oh my god” was like the Italian “mamma mia” (in terms of common usage) because whenever Italian friends tried to imitate us they would always start by saying, in thick Italian accents, “Oh my god.”

I would have thought that god, assuming his omnipotent existence, would be big enough to look after himself.

That’s what I don’t get about religious people getting all offended about other people “mocking” their faith. They believe in an all-seeing all-powerful master-being, and yet they feel the need to stick up for him (it’s always a male funnily enough) all the time. Surely if he can hear my blasphemy yet does nothing to prevent it, it’s because he doesn’t want to do anything about it!

In fact it’s possibly the greater blasphemy to second guess the creator and start sticking up for him!

There is a fine line between respect and control. Religious dogma is all about asserting control psycho-linguistically and through language usage. The Judeo-Christian view of the world is what I refer to as logocentric idealism: roughly translated into humanese, that is ‘reality through words.’ You don’t have to look very far in Christian Doctrine to see this at work. Most of us would be aware that the Genesis story describes the character God as speaking the world into existance with words (“Let there be…”.) The whole Christian life is saturated with this word idealism. Prayer is said to have power sustained by the God character. Prayer is of course words. This is how deliverance meetings and prayer meetings do double duty as programming and control sessions. When believers ‘pray over someone’ (note the ‘over’) or ‘speak into their life’ using prayer, there is a linguistically implemented control and suggestion happening. Such people fully understand that they are in a position of great influence when they do this, because there is the peer pressure of the group (the witnesses) to re-inforce the apparent validity of what is being spoken. I have heard some serious psychological abuse take place in such settings.

Contemporary cognitive scientists and philosophers have largely abandoned the concept of thought being language, and see language as only a part of cognition/thinking (albeit an imporant part.) Stephen Stich, Michael Devitt and Stephen Pinker are some examples. However, for religionist like Christians, words are everything. They refer to their bible as the word of God, and that bible says that the word was in the world before things began.

The point is that Christians are encouraged and taught to think linguistically in this fashion. This is also why blasphemy is such a big issue for them. The codification of their dogma is linguistic, the pattern of their thinking is linguistic, and the way they communicate mystical or ‘spiritual’ messages to each other is linguistic. Jesus is himself described as the word in the word (the bible.)

Although we need to be polite, we cannot do so at the expense of submitting to religious control, which in such cases is the real aim. The religious devotee/believer may not realise it, because the whole psycho-linguistic framework of religious belief is co-optive. This means that such a person is an agent of control on behalf of their Church even if they don’t understand the mechanism as I have described it.

I for one understand the much maligned Pat Condells assertion that “I don’t respect your beliefs and I don’t care if you are offended.” The reason for this is because the co-optive linguistic control mechanism is in fact a form of psychological bullying. Condell is evidently tired of acquiescing to such control on the basis of avoiding offense. The problem is that words are signs which are ‘slippery’ to some extent – they can signify different things to different people. I noticed that someone queried why ahteists would even bother saying ‘Oh my God’ when for an atheist the term ‘God’ is what linguists and philosophers sometimes call an ’empty referent’ – a word with no correlate in the real world – a word that denotes real nothing at all. It is simply that all of us use language extensively, and language is very infectious and habitual.

Richard is correct, people say this kind of thing, and “Jesus Christ” and “Damn it” all of the time, but their meaning is largely or completely empty. We just say some things because people in our culture say them. However, in the case of these ‘holy words’ what this language provides is an opportunity for religionists to assert their identity, and attempt to exercise linguistic control. The appropriate response is indeed to remind the believer that these words are not theirs to own and dictate the terms of reference for, and to plainly say to them that it is a form of “getting on your case” about something meaningless. Put another way – they must respect that you are allowed to use any language you like and respect that you are allowed to mean nothing by it, or whatever you mean by it, even if that is nothing in particular. Christians do not own the word ‘God/god’, nor its semantics, nor its meaning, and have no right to dictate any meaning to the rest of us. The claim of offense is simply a sneaky way to wrest control over the language, and simultaneously to rest control over the other interlocutor/person by constructing offence upon dictated meaning. Once one acquiesces to such devices, the religionist/believer has secured a pattern of response to offense such that anything they don’t like simply needs to be called offensive to be controlled. This is clearly psychological bullying of a subtle but powerful kind, and should be resisted kindly but firmly, and shown for what it is.

~ Bruce has recently completed a masters thesis in English “Informationist Science Fiction Theory and Informationist Science Fiction”, and is currently a PhD candidate. His topic is “A nomological naturalistic metaphysical theory of information for cognitive science and epistemology” and is about what information is and what it has to do with how we can know something.

To Tony…….. You can’t blaspheme something that does not exist!

Ask her in return not to use the words “evidence”, “sanity” and “equality” as your belief system is based on these…..

If I was in a flippant mood, my answer would be “I was referring to my god, not yours”.

But in most cases I would simply pass over this as not worth bothering about. I have been asked to do – or not do – many strange things over the years, most of them nothing to do with religion. (I may even have been guilty of making strange requests myself.) Don’t feel you have to tackle every issue head on – often it’s more pragmatic to go with the flow. If it’s important to him/her, I’d go along with it. There are plenty of other expressions one can use.

But of course there is a limit. For example a colleague of mine was asked by a neighbour not to hang his washing out on a Sunday. If I was asked something like that then I would refuse to comply, politely but firmly, followed if necessary by: “I’m afraid I find it impolite of you to keep insisting; please stop.”

Michael,

I’m sorry, but I must disagree with Mr. Wade on this one. Complacentcy is not the right way to go. We need to tell them that their religious beliefs hold no sway over us, and that if they don’t like your usage of the English language to go lock themselves away from society

Actually, in general you and I agree. I’m not advocating complacency, I’m advocating assertiveness. Passively giving in to every theist’s demand of our behavior is an unacceptable extreme, while aggressively telling every theist to go have carnal knowledge with themselves is an unnecessary, and sometimes self-defeating extreme as well. Our responses all depend in large part on our relationship with the person who’s asking us to amend our behavior, and whether or not we want to keep that relationship.

Strong but Silent clearly said that s/he wanted to keep the friendship, so my advice was toward an outcome that will include that. As S. but S. grows more assertive and self confident, s/he will probably re-assess friendships that include absurd demands. In any event, s/he will have a wider range of responses at hand to apply to the various new challenges that come along.

I’ve used just about every response that the commenters have listed here, each one depending on my relationship to the person making the demand/request. This has included everything from silent compliance, to telling them in graphic detail how to stuff one half of their demand into each end of their food tube and set them both on fire.

While that last approach may have been emotionally invigorating, as I’ve grown older I tend to go for something where I briefly and politely tell them that I consider their asking me to not say “x” a transparent attempt to introduce their religion into the scene and to have that fact dominate my and others’ behavior, and no thank you, I will be who I am, take it or leave it. Sometimes all this can be clearly communicated with just a look.

Interestingly, the more that basic assertive stance has become an integral part of me, the less other people even try to govern my behavior.

“I’m sorry, I don’t practice your religion, you shouldn’t ask me something like that.”