You know it cracks me up. Every. Goddamned. Time.

On a scooter, but sidecar makes a better visual. LOL.

Here, UK, we reduce it to "Christ on a bike!" (i.e. something incredulous)

Lolol

Nice one!

Excellent point.

I say that all the time. My atheist father used to say Holy Cow after an Indian where he worked would say, Jesus Christ in anger.

@morlll hahaha he should have been eating a big burger and after every bite say Holy Cow

Christ on a bike is a fave too. ?

My 8-year-old is allowed to use "damn", "Jesus", "what the hell" etc at home as they aren't words we consider offensive within our family. Amuses me no end that she then goes around to our Christian childminder and horrifies her by saying "omygod" to something.

@DaveMania I'd like this more than once if I could. Keep up the good parenting.

Hahaha. Thangew! ?

@DaveMania Why would that make you happy. Your child-minder is horrified with your child, that will work out well for YOUR kid.

@morlll I'm being a little mischievous saying 'horrified' — but I find it amusing that she can be offended by the word 'God'. I do tell my kid to respect her wishes in her own house, never fear.

@DaveMania Thanks Dave. I really don't go for the "I'm smarter than you rude Atheist thing". It' makes us appear as dogmatic and intolerant as they are, and by they I mean all religions. Especially the intolerant, dogmatic ones.

@morlll Yeah I'm with you there. What I try to teach my daughter is: respect people's right to believe, respect that they do have beliefs, BUT don't worry about respecting those beliefs if you find them silly or offensive... So long as she's not obnoxious about it.

@DaveMania That's so much nicer than the I'm so "unholier than thee" militant Atheist anti-religion attitude.
I'm an atheist my Mother wasn't, we got along fine. She believed in the "Golden Rule" and most of the nice Christian things like looking after your brother etc.

I still do say "bless you" when people sneeze. It is an unconscious reaction sometimes to surprise. Somecases, to me, it feels rude not to say it - when speaking one on one.

@Donna_I That's a safety thing to do for the agnostics.

@morlll that might be true. Not sure.

@Donna_I Hell yes, you can say bless you when I sneeze - there's nothing religious in it for me, more a social more. Which I like.

@Palindromeman I look at it that way as well.

Saying bless you in response to someone's sneeze is such a cultural thing. Where I grew up, I never heard anyone say it except as kind of a joking response to a pretty spectacular sneeze. Where I live now, there's so many people for whom it's a purely reflexive thing. I've been sitting in a room full of people, had one person sneeze way across the room, and had the person next to me mutter "bless you' under their breath, with no chance of the sneezer hearing it, like they couldn't stop themselves from reflexively saying it anyway.

I find it odd, but not because I disagree with it as a religious thing per se. It's just not a normal thing for me culturally, and I don't have a built in response to rely on.

I don't think blessings are limited to the religious sort, & I always say bless you. But some people say "Gezuntheit" which I'm sure I've spelled wrong. It means health in German. Really that's a bit more meaningful, isn't it--hoping the person isn't coming down with something. Incidentally, I read that they used to think your heart stopped when you sneezed & that's they blessed you--in case you died or maybe to make sure your heart started again, I don't know.

Right they don't worship Zeus, They won't care about Mohamad either. By that, I mean the Christers. I was in P.E.I. in the 70's for a wedding and did hear the groom's mother say "stop that you little black Christer" to a child that wasn't that little or black. That covers 2 bases right there. Racism and religious intolerance. Go for it.

Whenever I spew gibberish sounds like gawdamit I spell it out to the believers who claim I am supporting monotheism. ...I inform them that Atheism is a fact and faith is false. ....and I declare they are bigots to claim the fictional title "god" as their name for the alleged Jehovah YHWH JESUA Nasoret ghostHoles who never lived anywhere leaving evidence behind

The alleged gods Allah Krishna Satan et al have equal claim to existence and equal vacuum of evidence so only bigots pretend their faiths are true and competing faiths false

you missed out the word 'Fuck' - or are you one of these who just can't bring yourself to 'f' bomb?

@Flettie Got wiped out so will try again - I dislike obscenities but the use of 'fuck' here was in context. It was erased not by me but by someone else.

Hmm seems dubious that that’s what’s keeping bigotry alive to me. Unless you mean specifically hate speech that you’re teaching to your own children. If you have kids then maybe I could see a reliance on religious curse words in their presence could slightly give the terms more power than they deserve in the mind of the next generation. Otherwise I think hate speech is to hate as smoke is to fire. Evidence of it, but seldom a self sufficient cause. People don’t generally get talked into being hateful or religious unless it’s trained into them from a very young age or they’re in a seriously vulnerable mental state.

@Wurlitzer

I disagree. Just watching, for example, Kendrick Lamar's 'Humble' rap song on YouTube, it becomes clear that language is one of the tools of repression.

@Ellatynemouth true but being one of the tools and/or symptoms of repression doesn’t make you a primary driving force of it. Listening to all rap in general it becomes clear that language can be used to great effect regardless of wealth and power; I find it’s far more potent when used artfully to fight back against power and hate. Purely a subjective assessment but I’ve seen more examples of satire and political discourse, protest songs and such changing minds for the better than I have seen a hate speech artist changing minds for the worst. Even people as proficient in it as trump or hitler were mostly preaching to the choir who already thought what they do, while the artists who used language to open minds are able to convert people of all backgrounds to the side of free thinking. Maybe I’m overestimating the average persons ability to tell the difference but when it comes to hate I think people believe what they’re taught in childhood, or during traumatic experiences and whatnot and the rhetoric comes after the fact as a byproduct. There’s no amount of hate speech that could convince me to take their position for example. Are you worried that someone persuasive enough could make you hateful?

@Ellatynemouth I do agree with you that language is powerful in all sorts of ways but for it to really implant much ill will into someone they’ve gotta be a pretty blank, ignorant slate to begin with. And again I’m sure I’m underestimating how many of those there are out there so you may have a point

@Wurlitzer

All I can say is this...

When I first saw the video, which I mentioned earlier, my heart started pounding. The sexualised, misogynistic images of women grabbing cash with their breasts being pushed out to the lyrics, which constant repeat the word 'bitch' offended me.

I could feel the hate, because that's what it was. Hate. This rapper was making a statement about my gender. I am part of that gender, so it was aimed at me. I was the bitch.

For that language to be normalised is to normalise the hate.

I make an effort to not use hate speech.

@Wurlitzer ...that isn't true. Even the most intellectually gifted can be "talked" into something they wouldn't usually do. A gift of gab can be very....influencing

True there are different degrees of severity and impactfulness there. To get back to how the hate speech analogy would relate to the OP topic though, I suppose we should be asking: could secondary hate speech significantly promote the opposite sides point of view? It can be used as evidence against them or fuel the fire of stubbornness in the opposing side sure. But I don’t think it will literally spawn more people to directly oppose it. So on the original topic, cursing a god we don’t believe in might be rather hateful and pointless, but I don’t believe it does significant damage in growing the religious population, and blasphemy is just too much goddamn fun I’m mostly not blaspheming with the intention of being conspicuous to believers though, so it’s my own private form of hate (catharsis really) I’ll allow myself lol. Hypocritical maybe but I don't see it as particularly damaging for my case unless I seriously cry out to god in a crisis. This reminds me of the scene in the Nice Guys where Ryan Gosling is at a bowling party for his daughter n says goddammit! His daughters friend says “you shouldn’t take the lords name in vain” and he replies “it wasn’t in vain, ok? I found it very useful, Janet ?”

@Hutch well yeah but we’re not talking about a long con or brainwashing or even a quick targeted con man. We’re talkin about expletives or offhand remarks you hear impersonally. I just don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone with weak enough opinions to change them based on a rally chant they just heard or anyone who became suddenly religious because they heard someone blaspheme.

@Ellatynemouth oh apologies I probably misunderstood your point about the song then. I didn’t go watch the video, merely tried to glean a point from the lyrics but in general I don’t give much power to media effects theory. The song didn’t radicalize you into feminism where you weren’t a feminist before, it was just perhaps more validation that a strong feminist stance is necessary n justified. But I do see your point about how it can impact people. In the case of religious curses I doubt we’re hurting the cause much but I’m sure it does contribute to radicalizing Christians/pissing them off, if anyone cares enough to stop because of that. I’m not sure I do but it’s worth considering

@Ellatynemouth, @Wurlitzer ....please accept my apology ahead of time, because I become kinda anal when I'm discussing matters like this... so, since you haven't heard of it, you believe it doesn't exist? Matt Dillahunty expresses the same type wonder, when he says that people thank him after a lecture and they suddenly become atheist after listening to him... he says he always takes the time to find out why, or what he said to change their mind so abruptly...i guess I kind of liken that to what you said...

@Hutch yeah that sort of influence is wonderful though, it’s the opposite of the type of change we’re talking about. You heard a long well reasoned argument with an open mind and were intelligent enough to change your thought pattern based on new information and patterns coming to light. What I question is whether words can really make someone do the opposite, based on something as fleeting as a curse word. If a person who wasn’t Christian hears me say goddamn and suddenly finds militant religion because of it, then I’ll be a bobtailed raccoon cause they had a screw loose already lol.

It's insulting to someone. How is that good?

@morlll who does it insult? I see no one mentioned other than the fictional characters invoked in the swear, and it’s not presumable that you’re always going to be swearing at/about someone in particular for real.

@morlll Who am l insulting, God and Jesus?

@Sticks48 You really don't know? So you treat the religious the way that the crazy christian, moslem cult types treat "others". It's people you're nsulting, but fuck them they are stupid religious people and youe're a smart atheist. It's not that different attitude than theirs.

@morlll l know people who are believers who use the same terms. I can't figure out what the fuck you are upset about. ☺

@morlll Oh dear, another a sky pilot missing the point.