One of my favorite Ray Comfort/Fundie arguements regarding why atheists don't exist or are wrong is because they use God's name as a "cuss" word. Let's ignore the fact that he actually uses the word cuss. let's go back to the fact that people use the words God and Jesus as curse words (rather tame ones though, I think we can all agree on that).
A pagan message board I am on addressed this recently, how do you curse? Do you still say "God damnit" or "Jesus Christ"? Most of us still do. We do because it is learned language, it's something that we hear all the time in our society, so we automatically say it in certain situations. For example, I'm trying not to curse in front of the kid, so I had to learn a new response to things screwing up. Instead of "Son of a bitch" I taught myself to say "Son of a diddly". Thank you Flanders.
We can all relearn to not use God or Jesus as curses, but really, why bother? It's a pain, and it's kind of pointless. But to use that as an arguement against atheists is absolutely bizarre to me. That is like me saying that if people don't use the word organic they don't believe that organic things exist. That arguement makes no sense.
Though, I do wonder, following Ray's little logical field trip, if the fact that some Fundies refuse to say or write God's name means that they don't believe in him. Hee! Got to watch those double edged swords Ray.
So, Fundies, don't use shared language as an arguement like that. It's not just offensive to atheists, it's offensive to all intelligent people who use English as a primary language. Just stop, m'kay?
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Be careful with the logic that is pointy on both ends, as I say.
ReplyDeleteI never realized how much I invoke god until I started blogging. (I write pretty much like I talk.) Then it really stuck out to me. I don't believe in any gods, but that's the language I grew up with.
To put it another way, when things are really bad, I say, "Fuck me!" I don't want anyone to have sex with me, it's just the worst thing I can think of to say.
When I get really pissed off I tend to yell "Jesus Fucking Christ", and it dawned on me one day that my kid is going to always associate the name Jesus with me yelling. Oops! But it sounds stupid to take my gods names in vain. Besides, Christ has the satisfyingly crisp "st" sound at the end of it that really puncuates anger.
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