Thank Fuck It’s Friday

A query was posted to me (and others) recently…

what word can I use to replace the dreaded ‘G’ word in the phrase:

Thank God It’s Friday?!

The substitution suggestions ranged from the surreal “Mother”, to the Atheist’s spoof ”Flying Spaghetti Monster”.

I thought the answer was obvious: Thank Fuck It’s Friday!

And so, this was deemed the best answer. (With thanks to Michael Marsh, and Grover, for the photo opposite!) 

But… this brings me to a deeper message.

By eliminating the lexicon of god, are we eliminating religious belief? If we avail ourselves of religious language, are we promoting religion? I once treated this in the Australasian Science Naked Skeptic column, Thank God I’m an Atheist!

It’s a topic that I want to treat extensively at some stage.

For now, here are a few Friday morning thoughts about the matter…

 Does language do our thinking for us?

The desire to omit religious-based words from our lexicon suggests that we think we can influence thinking by influencing language.  This is a somewhat unrefined, ill-thought out version of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Alternatively, others argue that thinking affects language. I’m not here today to present a cogent cognitive linguistics argument one way or the other, but to treat a few superficial notions that arise from this way of thinking…

Let me put it this way. Are you praising/endorsing/thinking about ‘God’ when you interject Oh my God! Or, are you expressing shock or surprise, and using a fixed phrase with no literal intention? Are you demonstrating your religious fervor, or merely accessing a common phrase that’s at your disposal? 

God only knows, uttering a phrase with the word god in it does not imply belief. Why, only a few hundred years before this speech act was deemed blasphemous, and sometimes dangerously so! (For some, it still is offensive, and for some communities, it still is dangerous…) This is why we have euphemistic God-phrases such as Gosh! and Gee!

As you might be starting to think…these are idiomatic expressions or fixed phrases; they are cultural and linguistic relics; the meaning is not literal; younger people don’t even use these phrases anyway…

My point is, using God-phrases does not make you a theist, it makes you a speaker of modern English. You are a product of your own time. You use words with shared meanings. You speak to be understood.  

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins suggests that the non religious should refrain from using God-phrases. I’ve heard other such arguments from academics with no background in linguistics at all. If we’re talking about the reference to “god” in a legal oath, then I advocate its replacement with something more binding. If we’re talking about “An Act of God” in regards to insurance, then I advocate the use of something more quantifiable.

However, I do understand that these terms are used near-synonymously, to mean something else, and I’ll never be the language Nazi that militantly advocates we replace “God” in any fixed phrase because I’m laboring under the misapprehension that anyone can be some sort of guardian and arbiter of language. But this isn’t linguistic engineering, language manipulation, or some sort of Nineteen Eighty-Four-style language and thought enforcement.

Telling people how they should talk is called Linguistic Prescription. Such opinions are based in bias, not science…

By all means, omit the father, the son and the holy ghost from your own linguistic reportoire. But language has its own mind… I believe and have faith that these terms are gradually on the way out anyway. Some of these phrases will linger as cultural relics, while others will die out as archaic forms. Does anyone except your grandpa say God speed! or As God is my witness!? If your doctor says that the patient is In God’s hands now then it’s time to get another fucking doctor!

Language evolves over time. Changes are diffused very slowly throughout society. There are no linguistic intelligent designers!

If you’re blaming these words for these thoughts, and blaming language for god, then you’ve hanged the wrong man, and the real culprit is still on the loose…

And so, I will continue to take the Lord’s name into vain.

I will continue to exclaim God! to express my surprise, or frustration.

But most of all, I will continue to cry, moan and breathily whisper God!  because it’s better than calling out the wrong name…