Of gods and language.

[Albert Gans]

I find it amazing that for centuries it was fine to torture and kill blasphemers, heathens, believers of other faiths.... and that even now that is something that happens in some countries. The few atheist countries that have gone anywhere near discriminating against religions are now considered rogue and intolerant (take North Korea, just as an example).

The intolerance of some faiths has had to be tolerated for centuries, while if one dares say a wrong word about god, it is still frowned upon by many people.

Frankly, I am sick and tired of having to apologise for not believing in some superior being guiding our lives. If people want to believe so, then that's fine by me. If, however, they decide that people with other views should be discriminated against, I get very stroppy.

Very often, I make my views clear on this and I generally feel that it is mainly institutionalised religion that is what is really at heart of the problems with religions. It is not so much that believe in a higher being, buyt much more about the fact that religions are then turned into sources of (abuse of) power. A lot of those institutions or organisations linked to them have been the greatest criminal organisations around in history. I am deliberately not naming any particular one, you just take your pick. And what is worse even, to my mind, is that a lot of these institutions remain in position of both political and moral power in society, despite that history. Nazism is frowned upon (quite rightly) by most, but religious 'authorities' across the globe still are regarded in high esteem in many places, despite a long history of crimes against humanity at large.

I get very angry about that.

[Enrique]

In western culture it was an unwritten rule that you don't talk about sex, religion, or politics in mixed company because these topics were controversial. But now in modern times it seems that only religion and politics are not to be talked about, [...]

That's right! I see you got the point. Here's a joke: Sinbad is riding on the back of a flying man. The man warns Synbad not to mention the name of God. Sinbad was afraid up there in the sky, for fear of falling down. When finally they're about to land, he exclaims: "Allah is great and Muhammad is his prophet!" and they, both the man and Sinbad go calamitously down to ground!

[Harvey]

It is too bad that people get so uptight about mentioning God in public. Also, the word "god" means many things to various peoples. And some think that Allah is the god of the Muslums, but I have heard that Allah is a general term just as when a westerner says God, and that Christians in the middle east use the term Allah to mean their god. I wish people could not get so uptight about it, as everyone has the right to believe what they will, and nobody should be forced to believe contrary to their conscience.

In western culture it was an unwritten rule that you don't talk about sex, religion, or politics in mixed company because these topics were controversial. But now in modern times it seems that only religion and politics are not to be talked about, thought that is not even true. In all three (sex, religion, and politics) one is encouraged to talk about them but only in the politically correct manner, which excludes certain rational viewpoints because politically correct does not equal truth.

[Enrique]

Yes, religion is a dangerous subject. I has unleashed many wars. So why speak of it in the internet, where so many people get in touch. My excuse is the real point was grammatical.

[Enrique]

Hello Enrique - the situation you describe may well be the case in Argentina, but I can assure you the opposite is true here in the UK and I imagine this is also true of the US -just watch the lamentable Jerry Springer show (I hasten to add I do not!!) As to forums, haven't you seen the hideous 'OMG' which emits from every teenager's mouth twice in one sentence?

How are you doing? I live in the end of the world and I live on a cloud. I only see I can't see a picture on TV without it being impossible to understand some scenes where bad word are uttered. Because I tell you, they --I don't know who, erases each and everyone from the sound track and the sentences are therefor uninteligible. Which says anglo-saxons are use dirty speech too much or that censorship is very active locally in the media. So I don't know the worldly uses, except for literature and the theater which, like always, give the (bad) example.

But I confess I was rather speaking about this and other respectable forum I won't name, for it's very noticeable how sober they are in the use of the name I discussed. Maybe the swearing in the name of the divinity is demode (if I swear I do it on Neptune's beard, let he pardon me). But there is a very sober speech here on the forum, of course, and that is the determining fact, I assume. The OMG sounds familiar.

[Enrique]

Religion will be the subject. I expect this does not hurt someone's person's sensibility.

In a time that boasts that tabus have been eradicated , as free talk on sexual matters shows, a surprising note is the use of euphemisms to refer to the divinity or total abstention from mentioning it. But the social behaviour regarding that matter is biased by another note: the mutual respect we show to others opinions. In a world so vastly populated, we must regard with respect what other people think and feels, lest we engage in dangerous quarrels. I once read that the exquisite delicacy with which Chinese treat each other is due to overpopulation. Little frictions can have great effects.

So, mentioning my god in public, can offend the others religion believes. And we see people from other creeds so frequently that caution seems a good rule. Besides the fact someone in my family can be deeply pious and I could offend him by only mentioning God's name --I wonder if every religion has a general name for
God, like us. We do not really use a proper noun for Him.

We are every day more polite, specially men, so it's not odd swearing is not frequently used. But what happens with the most frequently used swear in any modern western language: "by God!". I see it so little used in the forums I frequent that I am forced to ask. But even looking into the whole Internet such a formula I can't see it mentioned, save for dictionaries. There seems to be a tabu about religious matters notwithstanding our freethinking way of life.

It is not me who is going to unveil this mystery, but one timid hypothesis is: the US is the country which more consistently and strongly has influenced the West in the last hundred years. I won't say it's a country of puritans, like I heard in a picture by Woody Allen last night though the pilgrim fathers certainly were, . But, tell me, in Italy, a country that has seen dozens of civilizations on their soil they are much more liberal minded than in the States. Its influence in everything touching common life can't be denied, from the Coca-cola to the wearing of jeans. But nations live in proximity more than at any other time in history and proximity, as I was saying, generates courtesy in order to survive. So, this is another variable in the equation, which in itself must be very complex. I felt like talking.