Alternate phrases for "Oh my God!", "Jesus Christ!" for atheist sci-fi society?

I think a lot of people may have missed this part though:

@laramsche, does this story even take place on an Earth where Christianity was once a thing? If so, how long ago?

 

That sounds like an alternate name for heroin.

 

"Oh my flying spaghetti monster!"

But seriously, there must be some kind of Religion in the future setting. Philip K. Dick had Mercerism as a dominant future Religion, which featured extensively in "Do androids dream of electric sheep?". (Damn you "Blade Runner" for removing it!) I think you can safely invent a brand new Religion for your heroes and have a lot of fun with it.

 

Mao's Great Leap Forward this taco is spicy!

 

Human societies since the Stone Age have had some sort of religious concept. It seems inherent to human consciousness appearing as it does across all social structures in all time frames.

I'd have to think long and hard about how to structure a human society that has no concept of something greater than itself, whatever form that may take. I'm not sure I could make that work.

 

@Rzero The interjection list is awesome. And I just learned something new. I've read interjections many times in novels, but never knew what they're called, so: Thank you.

In terms of religious references, I'm not out to eliminate them ALL. As many here already pointed out, such terms would most like stay. In that sense, there will certainly be a few people in my setting, who still say something like "Oh my God!". But someone saying "Jesus Christ!" would be something like 1 in a trillion, because most people don't even know who that is in the first place. Though, something like "Gee" or "Jeez" is still in use, but know one can draw a connection to Jesus Christ anymore.

I think I should give a rough history excerpt of my setting. Due to 'shit happens', humanity involuntarily ended up in a different galaxy and were, at least partially, forced to start over. So, not much opportunities to bring lots of stuff from earth with them, and everything known about earth (and humanities origins) is largely 'hear-say'. It terms of bibles, or rather holy scriptures in general, there probably have been a lot of people who brought those with them. But as more society shifted to atheism, less people bothered to preserve them, especially because most worried much more about the aliens (who ended up [also largely involuntarily] in the same galaxy as humanity).
So, there's just a handful of bibles left, spread over the entire galaxy, and maybe (a big MAYBE) only one is still complete. Or mostly complete. This is still WIP, kinda depends if I come up with a good story around it.

No, I'm not creating a world in which religions never existed in the first place. I find that even quite unrealistic, because religion is a powerful tool to control large masses, so it's kinda destined to be used by someone.
I'm creating a world in which religion has faded so much, that the vast majority has basically become atheist. The few religions that still exist, can be counted on one hand. One, maybe two, are large enough to be present in the media or to have a few churches here and there. On backwater planets, though, one can find sects and cults every now and then, but those basically just use made up deities, and stuff, to make a few quick bucks. Some also have delusional leaders, who actually believe the stuff they've made up.

 

There is a such a thing as Religious Atheists. For example:

Christian Atheists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism

Jewish Atheists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_atheism

I think most likely, even if entire populations turned atheist, the cultural aspects of various Religions would continue on for countless millennia.

 

I get the Jewish Atheist, because Jewish is also an ethnic group. But the christian atheism? Do they count as an ethnic group?

And yes, cultural aspects of religions will (and already have) continued for countless millennia. But how much will/have they changed? There's already lots of phrases today no one knows where they exactly came around from. Presumably from religion, I do agree on that possibility, but for how many can we tell their origins? Someone here mentioned "An eye for an eye", a religious phrase. How many people today would know that? How many people would be completely oblivious about its religious origins? I do know it vaguely, or rather I think to have heard it in bible class back in the 90s, but I could be wrong.

And that's the thing with such phrases (and culture in general), they will (and have in the past) blend in so much, that their origins became blurred, or even forgotten. It's basically the telephone game, countless little changes that push the phrases further away from their origins, and even change the phrases themselves on top of that.
That's what I try to reflect in my setting.

 

Maybe. Some stuff sticks around for centuries, especially in the form of holidays, but even they get twisted and repurposed, i.e. Easter. Other stuff disappears after a couple of generations in a new place, or at least shifts and fades as quickly as any other cultural behavior.

On the other hand, we're not talking about people who immigrated into another existing culture, so some things might stick around much longer than they do when a group migrates somewhere new and assimilates here on Earth. Population density and cultural homogenization would be enormous factors. If societies that were separated on Earth became even further disconnected, cultural traditions could evolve into even bigger differences, much as things were prior to globalization. If, conversely, people were thrown together more randomly, cultural staples and languages would change rapidly, as they have during countless migration and relocation events throughout human history.

I still feel that almost any religious tradition beyond calendars and celebratory events would fade almost as quickly as the religions themselves though. When a practice loses its purpose, it's unlikely to be performed for long.

In fairness, I suppose there are a number of ways to look at this, anthropologically speaking. I'm probably seeing it all from a very American point of view. We walk a strange line here. Society expects a certain amount of assimilation from newcomers, but we also embrace and incorporate cultures as they arrive (excluding the xenophobic, nationalist fringe, obviously.) What's American food if not world fusion, after all? We also LOVE to celebrate other people's holidays. Cinco de Mayo, Mardi Gras and St. Patrick's Day are huge here. We should make Chinese New Year a bigger thing too. That looks fun.

 

Perhaps people say things like OMG but have forgotten what the letters mean.

 

A friend of mine says "For the love of Tesla" and "Oh my Newton" not because he doesn't believe in God no no no, he started to say this about 6 years ago when a Christian told him he shouldn't use the name of God if he doesn't believe in him so he started to use this (this or these?) phrases mockingly and it kinda stuck.

 

The way I look at it is 'Oh my god' etc expresses exasperation. The only important part of the phrase is 'Oh' as this is the key part. The words that follow are just adding description that may or not be that relevant.

My alternatives would be many thousands such as 'Oh really' exasperation surprise. 'Oh my' an easy one that clearly cuts out the religous aspect whilst having the same impact.

It could be argued that 'Oh my god' is too wordy, remember that conscise language is clear and to the point and in a book of say 70K words. Saying what you mean in as few as words possible makes for easier reading.

I think it is more to do with understanding words, what they mean and using them properly rather than using cliche phrases.

Cliche phrases like 'Oh my god' are just lazy any way. If we can avoid them we are one step closer to finding and using our own voice as writers. Well thats where I am heading anyhow.

Good subject!

 

I don't think that matters. For example, the day of the week when I write this is Wednesday. Why? Because way back it was Woden's day. Even if we forget about all religions, it will still be Wednesday because that has become its name, and the root doesn't matter.

In the same way when people say "Jesus!", they're not greeting Jesus or making a religious statement, just making an exclamation that indicates surprise or annoyance or something along those lines. You don't have to have any idea of Christianity to use it that way.

 

Spoiler

 

I'm Roman Catholic but that is hilarious!

 

Jupiter's moons, I think you've got something there!

It's all-pervasive. I live in Sacramento, a city named after the Blessed Sacrament (whatever that was). I doubt if the Jews, Sikhs, atheists, or whatever have any qualms about using the name.

 

Yes, Wednesday is Odin's Day , Thursday is Thor's Day, Saturday is Saturn's Day, etc. It's the same with several of the months. That's fine, but the correlative is flawed. The more apt analogy would be that Wednesday or January or Easter (all named after ancient gods) is to Christmas (and I'll totally buy that Christmas might stick around after the namesake disappears from public consciousness) as "Thor!" is to "Jesus Christ!" Nobody say's "Thor!" when shocked or "Odin damn it!" when angry, even though we're still well aware of those figures. Why would people keep using Jesus's name as an exclamation in a future so distant they don't even know who he was? I understand that there would be remnants of the old world, but I don't see people hanging on to this one specifically. We don't use ancient mythological names as interjections; I don't think they would either. It wouldn't ring true to me as a reader. I've picked up on things like that before in fiction and absolutely wondered, "Why would that person ever, ever say that?" Even "Odin's beard!" and "Merciful Zeus!" are only ever written for a laugh.

 

my 2 cents:
Those phrases are used as exclamations. My very religious maternal grandparents have always said "never to take the Lords name in vain" so.... they would find creative ways to "swear."

My grand father came up with a lot of hilarious ones. instead of "Motherfucker" he'd say "Mother-Father." Instead of "Oh Lord" he'd say "Great Guga-Muga." Instead of "Jesus Christ!" he'd say "Cheeeez-n-Crackers!" and he'd say these with great seriousness too. Stub a toe? "MOTHER-FATHER!" surprised? "GREAT GUGA-MUGA!" disbelief? "cheeeeeeeeeez-n-crackers...!" (the greater the disbelief, the longer the "cheeez")

....i miss him

 

Brian Boitano!

 

Honestly, this just became much harder on me. It currently seems, like all the common expressions/phrases have, somehow, religious origins. That kinda begs the question, how many expressions/phrases without religious origins actually exist?

As a quick status report, I settled with "Bloody stars!", "By the stars!" and "What in space!" for people living/working in space. Though, I doubt people on planet surfaces would adopt these phrases...

These are awesome your grandfather sounds like he was a great dude, thanks for sharing.

 

I'm thinking of Cronin's Passage trilogy. In it he used slang words for the antagonists as slurs. Perhaps you could examine your antagonists' basic characteristics and use appropriate nouns/adjectives taken from there?

If it feels wrong to you it's going to feel very wrong to your readers.

Edit: The Passage trilogy goes into the topic of religion and its impact on diverse cultures. Have you read that series? If not it might help.

 

I'm sure the residents of San Fransisco don't much care what St. Francis thinks of his namesake city.

 

I like it. It's worth mentioning though that in most English-speaking countries, "bloody" as a profane intensifier is (or at least was at one point) a reference to the blood of Christ. Sorry. Doesn't mean you can't use it. That's totally the sort of background etymology that might have been lost over time. I think maybe it has for the most part already.