I think atheists should avoid certain words which still retain a religious meaning. Yes there are words that have a religious origin, but now have a secular meaning. The days of the week are named after gods, but we do not recognize a god by using the name of any particular day. Holiday was originally from holy day, but is far removed from the original meaning. Words of phrases that I avoid are "god bless you", "spiritual", and the person has "passed on". We say nothing when someone coughs, but we still have the tradition of saying "god bless you" when someone sneezes. I now say nothing, but if you feel that you must say something, why not say what many other cultures say, "good health". "Spiritual" is one that has been debated for awhile. Even if you do not mean to indicate anything supernatural, many people take it as being able to love or appreciate a sunset because you have a "soul". Besides that, it is often used by saying, "i'm an atheist, but I'm spiritual". That indicates that there is something wrong with being an atheist and that you have that special quality that makes you as good as a believer. The third, "passed on" or "passed away" is another one of those phrases that avoids reality. Where did the dead person go? To where did they pass? We all die, but we are not going to an afterlife, which is what "passing" actually means. We need to change our society by word and deed.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.This is one of those concepts that makes absolutely no sense to me. As a writer, words are VERY important, and the last thing I would dare to do is limit them, or create some list of unaccepted words. Particularly when used in isolation like this.
Words are the smallest element of structured language, but are built from generations of ideals and concepts and mental constructs that go back further than language itself. Words are built from other words, based on other languages, with other constructs mostly unknown to us. To that end, we should be careful how we approach language—particularly in our decisions to censure ourselves and each other.
It’s true, there are certain words I would never use, but that’s because these words bring harm to others—they indicate hatred or disgust or even apathy. But that’s not just “the bad words.” When someone asks me to look at a poem they wrote or wants to tell me about a project they’re interested in, even if that poem is horrible, or they have no chance finishing that project, I seek words that encourage them, and help them to do their best. When someone is hurting, I look for words that comfort and bring hope. When in conversation, I look for words that best convey the thoughts and ideas I’m trying to get across. I will, sometimes in the middle of a paragraph, spend vast amounts of time finding a word that somehow “fits better” than the one I’m using.
Context is also a big deal. I used to call my mom Toots. For us it was a term of endearment. But you’d better believe that if anybody else called her that they’d be dodging frying pans. Many of my friends and her friends were “offended” by this, but it wasn’t any of their business. In rap music we hear the dreaded N-word by people who believe that they are allowed to use it. Gay people like using the “F” word when teasing each other. I have girlfriends that use the “B” word.
We also have connotation and denotation. The literal definition of a word, and the emotional image that the word summons. When I use the word hand, I think about my grandmother’s arthritic hand in my hand as I held it while she took her last breath. To this day, that’s the image that “hand” cultivates when I hear, and even use it.
And that’s only the bare minimum. There’s also intonation, subtext, inside-jokes…
Creating a list of words we’re no longer allowed to use not going to solve our problems. In fact, it just makes us angry and gives us the impression that we’re being controlled by someone else.
I noted that you don’t like the term “passed on.” On 10 July, my brother-in-law was one of the 16 Marines killed when their C-130 split apart over Mississippi. I was hanging out with him a couple days before. We were pushing through the crowd in Times Square trying to find some friends who were visiting from out of town. And now he’s “gone.” He’s passed. He was here, he isn’t here anymore. He’s dead. But passed works better for me because of how close we were. He didn’t just die… he “went away.” He’s gone from me. This has nothing to do with an afterlife. This has everything to do with how close we were in this life.
I personally don’t like the term “unsweetened.” To me it’s an idiotic concept. How do you “unsweeten” tea? Isn’t that its natural state? So the real term would be “sweetened,” wouldn’t it? As a writer, I also hate that amateurs call sketches “skits.” A skit is something that your local church group puts on—cheesy and not well written. A sketch is something you would see in a more professional capacity.
Steven Pinker has a whole series on words and language: The Language Instinct; The Stuff of Thought; Language as a Window Into Human Nature; Words and Rules (1999/2011); Language, Cognition, and Human Nature: Selected Articles; The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.
The point I’m making is that “words” are merely the bud in the flower. They spring from something much deeper—something that existed even before language. Therefore, creating censorship lists merely plucks the bud before it’s had a change to grow, but it doesn’t change the root system underneath. Knowing words, understand words, and knowing how to use their power… that’s where change happens. Just ask any really good actor, or writer, or speaker.
Benthoven
Level 8
Oct 24, 2017
1
Did he get up and go as he passed? I'm not being insensitive because I have suffered loss also. Words are very powerful. If we (at lest some of us) are trying to show others that many of us live free form the supernatural and magical thinking, there is no reason to use the terms of the believer without an explanation. God bless you, but I don't mean god. My loved one passed, but I don't mean passed to an afterlife. None of speak that way. The natural inclination of any believer who hears "passed away" is to a better place, an afterlife, not that he has passed from you. It is not even a verb which is appropriate for death, because dead people do not walk away. I'm not the censorship police, nor do I have that power. Try to be a little more objective since you know words and how they are used. I have and still feel terrible loss of loved ones, but for the purposes of communication in a heavily religious society, my loved one died, they didn't pass anywhere.
I have never said god bless you when someone sneezes but I do say ""Gesundheit" ( Which means health)
I do say Passed away, because it means you have passed from this life into no life. I never thought of it as religious.
The one thing I wish OI would never say, but I do is OMG! or Oh my god .. since I do not have a god I have no clue why I say it, but to me its the polite form of " Fucking Motherfucker"
Teresa
Level 6
Oct 24, 2017
3
OMG is great because Christians hate it. You are using god's name in vain. I do hate passed away, because while many of us mean nothing supernatural by it, that is how it is taken by most people. They have passed on to a "better life".
I agree that the use of words is important in life and something that most people are not aware of. One of the phrases I loathe is they have 'passed', no, they died, they didn't pass gas, pass me on the freeway, pass onto the other side, when they DIED they ceased to exist. It's death not passing! A lot of other religious words I don't care about too much. Words only have the meaning of the context given to them, so most people knowing me as an atheist would not think that I cared about being 'blessed', etc.
Hugene2002
Level 7
Oct 23, 2017
1
My pious mother always said "Gesundheit" because her maternal grandfather was German, but my Christian wife and I had a big fight early in our marriage because she wanted me to say "Bless you" because she felt like my not doing so was gypping her out of blessings! I yielded because it wasn't worth the grief, but now that we're separated, you can bet I'm back to "Gesundheit!"
I appreciate your calling attention to "passed on" and "passed away" because I never liked the phrases even when I was a Christian. I think even then I felt it was too evasive - it trivializes death. Even for a Christian, death is real and painful; why did we have to duck it? (and yeah, i know that Christians try to evade death's sting of grief, but they still feel it) Actually that annoyance with ducking hard realities is part of what ultimately led me to becoming an atheist.
I know we disagree about the term "spiritual," but only partly because a year ago we would have agreed completely. I have no use whatsoever for apologizing to Christians for my atheism - the whole "spiritual but not religious" thing makes me cringe. And my comment here is that I would never say, "I'm an atheist, but I'm spiritual." because that "but" sounds like some kind of an apology, no matter to whom it is said. What I've found, however, is that pagans and Wiccans can misconstrue what the word "atheist" means. And, yeah, I get how you think it's semantically lazy to say something like "spiritually-open atheist" but it gets its point across for introductions and then I subsequently ditch the spirit language in favor of more accurate terms. By that time, folks know me and understand what I'm about.
vertrauen
Level 7
Oct 23, 2017
1
But if you are spiritual, then what am I? (I sound like Pee Wee Herman) Of course you agree that you don't love or appreciate a sunset more than I do necessarily, but I call it being human. It still indicates that somehow, someone is special or different because they are spiritual. Unless someone has a mental/emotional disorder, we all love and appreciate things in our universe, feeling awe and inspired by multiple things. If I love a painting, it is because I love it. I appreciate certain things about it and it inspires feelings in me. That is what human beings do, as well as other creatures actually. So what then does spiritual mean? If someone says they can sing, great, I can't. I know what it is to not have that talents. So then, I am just human and why is spiritual better or different?
I'm definitely not making any actual assertions about anyone besides myself; I suppose that I am acknowledging by implication, though, that a noisy minority of atheists perhaps come across as so mechanistic or deterministic or reductionist in their outlook that, rightly or wrongly, it would seem as if their neuron bundles are incapable of the experience of awe. Of course, this characterization would definitely be ridiculously inaccurate for the vast majority of us atheists. (By the way, while my son is a quiet guy, I know him well enough to say that for most of his teen years he was very determinist / reductionist and essentially disinclined to experience awe, joy, or the like)
What I'm hearing you say, d4p, is that modifying the word "atheist" at all connotes (1) that there are better and worse sorts of atheists and (2) that I am supposedly asserting that I am of the better sort because I am purportedly more in tune with my sense of awe merely because I don't balk at using the word "spiritual" under limited circumstances. I assure you that I don't intend to say either of those things. Re (1): among the population of atheists, there are individuals, no doubt, who are, for example, kinder and those who are less so - but any such (relatively random) differentiation doesn't correlate logically with a greater or lesser sense of awe, or with a greater or lesser commitment to reductionism. Re (2), there's no necessary logical correlation between comfort/discomfort with the word "spiritual" and a greater or less developed sense of awe. Just talking about myself here: I wasn't comfortable with the word "spiritual" last year, and my capacity for awe hasn't increased or declined since then. The only thing changing is that I've become somewhat more comfortable with the word "spiritual" when communicating with pagans.
To be clear, also, I can't remember any time that I've actually vocalized the word "spiritual" or "spiritually open." Where I have used it is in a dating profile to help pagans or Wiccans understand what the hell an atheist is doing on a pagan or Wiccan site. My own real-life experience is that I connect well with them, but also that the word "atheist" makes some of them initially skittish, even one of my now best friends reacted this way at first. I don't want to back down from the word "atheist" to "agnostic" or "humanist" (even though all three are true) for much the same reason that you and I are having this conversation at all. Of those three words, I identify primarily as an atheist, and I'm tired of the stigma the word bears with it. The only way that stigma is going to change is if we wear the badge. You're saying wear it straight, unmodified, all the time; I do wear it straight, nearly all the time, once someone knows me just a little - I just don't want to be discarded before I've had a chance to make myself known.
I liked silvereyes' comment, but I found one thing amusing - the phrase "spiritual beings." The moment we go there from the adjective "spiritual" to the noun "spiritual beings", I feel like we've slipped into the realm of the supernatural, which I don't subscribe to at all. For me, the word "spiritual" is strictly metaphorical, a shorthand, to refer to a set of various unusual states of mind. I don't believe in "spiritual beings."
We are not spiritual beings. We are just human beings. The other point is that we are animals. While we are different from other species, just as they differ from each other, non human animals are not mindless machines. They know love, loss, awe, boredom, joy, despair, and the range of emotions that we feel. Sure a dog doesn't marvel at a poem, but he shows absolute joy at the things that matter to him. Many of those things are the same that bring us joy.
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