"Thank God!"

[HappyHumanist]

Me too. I've been trying to say "Thank goodness" instead, but it's still a weird phrase. Sometimes I'll go with "It's fortunate/lucky that..."

When someone sneezes, I say "Gesundheit" instead of "God bless you" (or the shortened "Bless you"). And when saying the Pledge of Allegiance (required at the beginning of Board Meetings where I work, since 9/11), I remain silent while others say "... under God..."

It bugs me that they sing "God Bless America" during 7th inning stretches in MLB. And that so many pro athletes look skyward and obviously are thanking god when they hit a home run or whatever.

Oops... rambling... must... stop...

I sometimes say "thank God" out of habit just because so many people say it...

[Edwardo Piet]

Words have no intrinsic power; what matters is the intent behind them and there is no religious intent to my use of such phrases.

Indeed words do not have intrinsic meaning, they have to be defined - although, dictionaries often agree a lot and, when in doubt, most people consult a dictionary. There may be no religious intent of such phrases, but because of their typical definitions it's not surprising that they can be misunderstood.

[Cyberman]

I often exclaim, "Dear god!" Something my oldest has picked up on. My husband thinks this is equivalent to swearing, however, I maintain that it is not. One can't blaspheme an entity that does not exist.

The history of swearing is a fascinating one. Originally, the idea was that of illegally swearing blasphemous oaths. Thus, "bloody" (as in "bloody kids!") derived from the oath "By our Lady", ie JC's mum. There is a whole raft of oaths sworn on various bits of God's body: "God's blood" was a pretty popular one, as was "God's bodkin", rather sweetly referring to God's body and which corrupted to the phrase that seems to define the whole era: "Odd's bodkins". It's only relatively recently that swearing has come to mean bad language, as in naughty words.

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Indeed words do not have intrinsic meaning, they have to be defined - although, dictionaries often agree a lot and, when in doubt, most people consult a dictionary. There may be no religious intent of such phrases, but because of their typical definitions it's not surprising that they can be misunderstood.

Absolutely, though it must be noted that dictionaries only record usage; they do not in themselves define words.

[Edwardo Piet]

Absolutely, though it must be noted that dictionaries only record usage; they do not in themselves define words.

Words can be re-defined and they were also defined prior to the existence of dictionaries, but dictionaries are nonetheless examples of definitions that people have made, are they not? I'm neither claiming that dictionary definitions are absolute or static definitions, I'm just saying: they're still definitions, and they're typical and useful ones, at least for the time being. From a philosophical perspective we do often have to go a lot deeper than dictionaries with our definitions though, indeed.

[Cyberman]

Well, it's not that the lexicographers sit around a table with a list of words and a pot of coffee, trying to come up with suitable definitions which then enter the language. It's more the reverse, actually.

[downbeatplumb]

I remember a mine disaster a few years ago when there were quite a few trapped miners.
There was an announcement that mistakenly informed the relatives that all the miners were ok and they went around go going "thank god" etc.
Then it was announced that the miners were all dead.

Silence.

No one said well anything to the effect that god could have saved them but chose not to.

This is the best example of confirmation bias I can think of.

God only gets credited with the good stuff.

[HappyHumanist]

Yep. Whenever there's a disaster that kills many, but one or two people are found alive, it's a miracle!!! and the focus is always on how god saved (or spared) the one or two, but not on how god allowed all the others to suffer horrible deaths.

I wonder if believers actually think the few who don't die are more worthy of god's protection than the many -- including children -- who perish.

[Darkstar]

It bugs me that they sing "God Bless America" during 7th inning stretches in MLB. And that so many pro athletes look skyward and obviously are thanking god when they hit a home run or whatever.

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[Edwardo Piet]

Well, it's not that the lexicographers sit around a table with a list of words and a pot of coffee, trying to come up with suitable definitions which then enter the language. It's more the reverse, actually.

Well, yes, of course, rather than dictionaries being definitions of words people have "made" maybe I should have said "influenced" instead. Or maybe I should have said that the words developed or evolved culturally from people. But the words were added to dictionaries by people so they were actually made, in a sense.