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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   30514 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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Not sure what's up with the bizarre censorship of God to make it look like a swear word.

Lol, you're going to like the reason. Hint: Early Life

I feel like I've seen plenty of Christians do this too: see gosh or geez for long-standing examples of the practice.

Yeah, but there's a difference between being sanctimonious (or perhaps more charitably, intentionally interpreting 'in vain' so broadly that it covers even the 'positive' expressions, to the point that I'd consider "may gosh bless the United States" to be swearing in reverse, as it were) and noticing that there's a very specific thing/feeling/emotion using "Jesus Christ" (and to a point, "God/oh my God") as an invective or an incredulity uniquely communicates. "Hell" and "goddamn" have the same thing going on to varying lesser degrees but this one's pretty unambiguous.

So if you want to invoke the same expression without doing that directly, you want to use something that sounds like, but isn't, the word everyone else would use to do that. Hence the substitutions in that case.

This is because using the name of God for shock value is a sin. A Christian would not say 'may gosh bless the United States'.

Yes. My parents weren't hardasses. But it was strictly forbidden to use the Lord's name in vain. Discussing God is one thing. Using God's name in a profane manner to call down damnation is something quite different. My parents also forbid "gosh darn" type talk because that's a direct reference to using the Lord's name in vain but pronouncing the words wrong.

I've never seen this when actually talking about God, it's usually for figures of speech that nonseriously invoke God, so as to avoid using the name of God "in vain", which violates one of the Ten Commandments

Can't believe I didn't know that!

I didn't know he was Jewish either, although I suppose I should never be surprised.

-off name implies Slavic country ancestry, as -ov is probably the equivalent of-son but Benioff doesn't sound Slavic.

Also he is a major businessman and Jews are overrepresentated there by more than 10x.

Also…. just look at the guy.

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