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

...this bugs me now for quite some time, because I just fail to come up with good alternatives.

So, here some context. I am writing a short story set in my (WIP) sci-fi setting, in which the vast majority of the population doesn't care much about religion, or is even utterly unaware that religions have existed in the past.

The main character of my short story suffers from severe illusions and one situation is quite distressing to him, normally a perfect fit to have him say "Oh my God!" or "Jesus Christ!" or even "Oh Hell!".

But with religions out of the picture, none of these fit at all. They might fit for characters who are still religious, but what can I possibly use for atheist characters?
I also keep swear/curse/vulgar words at a minimum and only use them, if they fit a character.

So, what's your opinion?

 

I would conjecture that most people who say Oh My God or Jesus Christ aren't religious.

"Fuck!" or some other vulgarity could easily be substituted, or else make up something like "Smeg"...

 

Well that depends on how much you want him to say something along those lines yet keep it irreligious.

Back on Earth, I'm sure you'll find a whole lot of atheists who will stay say "Christ." or "Oh my god.", for such language has become a cultural norm and is more tied to colloquialism than religion at this point (In the USA).

The simple solution I see here is to just have him swear, as people tend to do ("Oh fuck.", etc... many creative options)

If you do need a concept though, an 'Oh ---!' something or a 'By ----!" something, that depends on worldbuilding.

"Oh Empress!" or "By the King!" or such. "Jesus Christ" can be substituted by a historical figure in your world, instances "Ghenghis Khan!" or "Teddy Rose!" or such. Now, this depends on your world. If you have a billion humans in one city, "By the Hive!" or if there is a race of sentient trees that guide the humans, "Oh my Grove!"

Get creative I guess, or just make him swear like a sailor.


EDIT: Yeah, Smeg is a good example. Watch Red Dwarf to see how such a term becomes ingrained in the audience.

((((''In eighteenth and nineteenth century England, it was considered a great offense to say "By God". Instead, men would say "BY Jove". Jove is an alternative name for the Roman god Jupiter.'')))

 

I've always been fond of 'Bloody Hell', for a nonsensical one 'Fuck a duck in the muck'. I've heard 'Cheese and Rice' as a clean version of Jesus Christ. Though I would think the atheists would be more likely to use oh my god, Jesus Christ or god damn because they aren't religious so don't worry about blaspheming.

 

If religion is not forgotten, its impact on language certainly hasn't vanished. The thing with "oh my god" and things like that is that you would have to go over the whole vocabulary and extinguish ALL biblical language. This would go for phrases like "an eye for an eye", "apocalyptic", and a lot of other phrases that were introduced to the english language with the King James bible. If you are up to that task, I wish you good luck.

 

I do quite well that many atheist use "Oh my God!" and such, I'm one of them. Though, I try to get off that habit, not saying its a bad habit, but it just feels unjustified to use such phrases myself when I reject religion of any kind, its also somewhat of a double standard too. I'm also pretty sure, I'm not the only atheist who thinks that way.

The idea behind 'as less vulgarity as possible' is, that the society has become much more sophisticated. Certainly not as sophisticated as Star Trek, where vulgarity seems to be prohibited on starfleet vessels, and not as ridiculous as demolition man, where you would get a ticket, but sophisticated enough to consider it as pretty inappropriate in most parts of society. Sure, more 'simple' people still do exist in my world, and they might swear like sailors, but they're not the focus her, because they're not the majority.

Mhm, Bloody Hell -> Bloody Stars (for spacers), Bloody Physics (for scientists), Bloody Jump (for spacers), Bloody Core (as reference to the core of the galaxy). Bloody Pirates would also still work perfectly towards space-pirates. It certainly has potential.
Concerning blasphemy, I don't worry about it at all. The thought is just, that religion has faded so far, that it mostly still exists in history books (well, rather data-banks...) and people still practicing religion have become very rare. And even these rare instances are mostly sects and cults, who rather try to suck peoples wallets dry then to be an actual religion.

Well, its supposed to have faded so much, that at least the most obvious biblical words/phrases aren't used anymore, especially the ones from today. Between today and the date my setting is set are easily 5000 to 10.000 years. That's a lot of time for completely new religions to pop up and vanish, which not only changed old phrases, but also invented completely new ones. Only few of them have survived and their sizes (in terms of members) are little to nothing compared with the rest of the galaxy (most assume that any deity is made up anyways).

There is certainly no need to cut ALL biblical terms/phrases, as most of them are not at all that obviously tied to religion. 'An eye for an eye' as an example, is already a term most people (me included) would not know its origins of. Or the term 'guardian' is also still in use in my setting, as in 'legal guardian', but not as in 'angel guardian'.
So, most people can draw a connection to religion and/or any deity in general, when they're asked about biblical terms. But most would not think of using them to express great shock/panic/and such, because believing into a (possibly made up) deity has become meaningless within the confines of my setting.

I could see "Bloody Dawkins!" uttered by someone who just failed to disprove evolution...

As a final thought, it is also highly questionable how much religion is still taught in the educational system of my setting (i didn't made a final decision on that one). But I could very well see some frat house throwing a 'Religion Party', were everyone is wearing costumes, which are patched together from many different deities, from many different religions and greeting each other with 'Ave God' and butchering bible phrases, even before getting drunk... just because they have no clue about religions, or because knowledge of religions got blended together by accident (think of computer errors, missing pages from old bibles who are close to turning to dust.

I actually do have a small religion already in mind, where missing knowledge and misinterpretations caused them to get it all wrong...

 

The meaning of "oh my god!" is the expression of surprise. The same thing can be said in other ways, for instance: "blimey!" In Portuguese, sometimes (most times, actually...) I use "caracóis!" which is not commonly used but replaces the vulgar "caralho" (which means the male genital organ, and is the common exclamation of negative surprise, sometimes positive surprise). Another way of expressing surprise would be "damn!", "I'll be damned" (though this last one has, somewhat of a religious ('pagan' or Christian) meaning). "Caracóis!" in Portuguese is a call back to one sort of caricature of pirate Portuguese. Expressions commonly used in pirate speach in Portuguese are "macacos me mordam!" ("monkeys bite me!") and "com mil caracóis!" ("by a thousand snails!")... Which reminded me of "bite me!" in English...

 

Think you're creating work for yourself. Think of real life: is it only the religious who use phrases like "Oh my God" and "Jesus Christ"? Nope. Atheists use it happily. People who follow other religions use it happily. It's actually the Christians who do not use it. I feel like you've got it backwards.

Using the phrase is not an acknowledgement that God exists or that the person who said it follows or respects any religion. To the Christian, using the Lord's name in vain is highly disrespectful and it is one of the things in the 10 commandments that we should not do.

And yeah I'm a Christian, so yes I've literally avoided those phrases all my life. None of my friends at church use it either - both in the UK and in my current international church in the Czech Republic, which boasts probably a good 40 different nations in our congregation. None of us use it. So it's not a cultural thing in the national sense. It's part of Christian culture. It's a religious thing.

So your dilemma feels very ironic to me... Anyway, it can certainly be done, since I'm a real life example. I just use "for goodness' sake" and "how on earth" and "Gosh" instead. I'm aware "Gosh" is a tad controversial lol. You could just stop short at "Oh my..." Somehow I take OMG and WTF differently though - I don't seem to see them as words.

Anyway if you still insist on eliminating those phrases that make direct reference to religion/God, I'd look into other cultures. Christianity isn't big in every culture. It exists but it infiltrates culture at a different level to Europe. In Cantonese, we do not swear to God. I guess once in a while you'd have someone shouting "Oh God!" But God isn't the word used even there - we use the word "Sky".

We have a phrase that literally means "There's surely been a mistake!?" (it's 4 words, all monosyllabic, so it rolls off the tongue, unlike in English). This one's the most common, esp for cries of outrage. Let's say if you're walking past and someone drops rubbish from the flat above and almost hits you. You might look up and say "There's surely been a mistake!?" (it makes more sense in Cantonese - no one takes the literal meaning of the words)

In fact, an Eddie Murphy film - I don't remember the title, it's the one where he's the Prince of some African country and goes to the US to live like a "normal person" - I watched it in Cantonese dub as a child. "There's surely been a mistake" was a phrase yelled out constantly, and that's fine. It's not a vulgar phrase. Then much later I watched it in English as an adult and noticed how many "Fucks" there were and realised that's how it was translated.

Other phrases might be "How can this be?" Really, majority of the time we just say "Aiya" - a catch-all that means anything you want depending on the context and tone with which you say it. It could mean "Ouch", "oh no", "Shit", "oh dear" etc.

So, you could take inspiration from that. Anyway, having written the above, it just occurred to me: wouldn't "Shit" cover everything?

 

Here in the west of Scotland, people often say, "Help ma boab!" Either to express genuine surprise (the way people often use Oh My God! or one of the less exciting phrases like You Don't Say! or What on Earth? or Heavens to Betsy! or Holy Mud!), or to be sarcastically 'surprised' at something people are over-hyping. Do not ask me what it means or what its origins are. Nobody seems to know.

It's not new, either. I first heard it from my mother-in-law, back 33 years ago. And she was 75 years old at the time. But it still gets said.

 

I say “god” and “Jesus” all the time. I come from a VERY secular country with parents who weren’t, and aren’t, even vaguely ‘religious’. I’ve not even been christened.

Language holds on to certain weighty terms even when the original meanings are merely metaphorical in nature compared to the current useage.

 

I gotta say, I'm not sure as to how certain prominent figures in the atheist community will stand the test of time. Take Hitchens, for example. Yes, he might be one of the 4 horsemen of the atheist movement, but I find his contributions to the debate about free speech much more important than his atheist thoughts. Harris has written a lot about morality, but his ideas are controversial even in the atheist community. And people like Dillahunty strike me more as pseudo-philosophers .... like the Diogenes of the modern day era, more remembered for sharp, witty quotes than deep thoughts.

Since you write about the future, it is your call, who you make important and who not. But, a safer route IMHO would be to invent a new wave of atheist philosophers that your society would quote. 5000 years is a long time, you could potentially disconnect your world completely from the world of today.

 

Perhaps some examples from other languages can help.

In Japanese, there's no equivalent to swearing in English. There are ways of being rude but they mostly involve how you address someone else, or name calling. So what do they do? Instead of swearing if they stub their toe, they say "Ittai" (or some derivative thereof), which literally translates as "hurt" or "pain". Expressing surprise at Godzilla attacking Tokyo is mostly done by simply making noises and screaming.

Thai is much the same. Thais will also exclaim things like "You bastard" (or rather, its equivalent in Thai) at the source of their surprise or frustration.

 

Well, I have heard t about this, one or two times, but didn't gave a lot on it. Most religious people I know, don't take it overly serious and have no problem with think like "Oh my God!"
But its a damn good point you have there, it makes sense. For a future setting, I could imagine new deities being used for such expression, something along: "Holy Meatball!", "Holy Noodle!" or "Damn knot in a spaghetti..." Who knows, Pastafarianism could pick up steam. I could even see other deliberately made up religions to pop up, be it to make a point, or just for the fun of it, or to have more reasons to throw parties...

I'll agree, and I'm already coming up with new names. Like the guy who invented the 'jump-drive' will be a prominent name. Then there's someone who invented a device reminiscent to star treks 'replicator' (you know: stuff is seemingly created out of nothing), which solves major starvation issues (could imagine people thanking him in a matter "Thanks [name]" before eating, kinda similar to a dinner prayer). So, yeah, names of well known people today (regardless if atheist or or not), would probably buried deep in the history books of the future.

Or something like: "Year, there was this Dawker... or Dawki guy... or whatever his name was, I heard he had a thing for evolution..." "...wait, didn't Feinstein said something about light speed?" "...wait, wasn't his name not Nullstein?" "...no-no-no, it was 'Frankenkiesel and the Monster of Relativity'... my mom used to tell all about it..."

I welcome any examples from other countries. Its super interesting (and a little surprising) that there is no equivalent for swearing in Japan. Come to think of it, I haven't seen a single Japanese movie/anime (some in original with subs) with swearing. Interesting.
And to be fair, If a real life Godzilla would stomp around, who wouldn't revert to noises and screams...?

Mh, the toe stubbing thing gets me an idea: "Oh- stub a toe!" = "Go fuck yourself!"

 

"What the...!"

 

Sweet Malthus save me.

 

When I was in high school, my classmates and I discovered a science-fiction anthology in which one of the characters exclaimed "Jupiter's moons!" Somehow that phrase stuck in our heads, and for the rest of that year, we'd use it to profess astonishment, as in "Jupiter's moons! What an asshole!" and so on. I can't remember what the story was named, or who the author was, but I wish I did.

 

The idea that a religion need be invoked in expletives and interjections is I think more prevalent in Europe than North America. Even "bloody" in England and "sacre bleu" in France are references to Christian elements. The two big ones here in America are of course "GD it" and "JC" (I use them myself when I'm pissed, but I don't always feel right about it. I don't like offending people on purpose, even if we have different beliefs.) Exclamations involving the words "fuck" and "shit" are much more popular here than those with God and Jesus in them, I think.

Most of the "non-vulgar" alternatives to blasphemy are either 1) not-so-clever substitutions (because they obviously mean the exact same thing) for "God" and "Jesus", e.g. "gosh" and "jeez," 2) silliness that still involves religion with less overt blasphemy, e.g. "holy crap," "holy cow" or 3) (again, obvious) substitutions for "fuck" and "shit," e.g. "frick" and "shoot."

So completely eliminating religious references that make no sense in a society without a religious history (including all references to heaven, hell, holiness or specific religious figures and stories) is challenging, especially without resorting to other non-religious expletives. We're so used to hearing and using "curse words," that exclamations like "whoa!" and "yowza!" either lack the emphasis you want in extreme moments or sound outright ridiculous. Here's a list I found of "clean" interjections. Since there's no cursing, some of them get pretty goofy: https://surveyanyplace.com/the-ultimate-interjection-list/ There are probably better lists out there. It was the first I saw.

Your options are probably limited to making up new words, using substitutions and pretending they don't mean exactly what they do mean or getting a little silly. Actually, there's a fourth alternative that @JLT touched on, which is a total old-school sci-fi trope and still falls into both the substitutions and laughably silly categories in my opinion, which is to make up oaths like "Gragnar's beard!" and "by the rings of Saturn!"

ETA: If you're doing satire, and you want atheist alternatives that mirror religious references, there's no better source than Futurama: "Great zombie Jesus!" or "Great god Atheismo, save us!"

 

Jupiter is the Roman equivalent to Zeus, so I'm guessing that's be out due to deities, too. "By Jove," as well for the same reason.

ETA:

I was going to suggest "Gadzooks," but it turns out it's actually a contraction of God's Hooks, a reference to the nails Christ was crucified with.

 

In the Dark Tower series, King used several words and phrases as expletives that don't require deities. IIRC he got a manuscript or something written in the seventeenth century and used it to find appropriate phrasing. Or your characters could use those terms but understand them completely differently.

Cronin did the same thing in The Passage trilogy. "Fliers" is a term for the diseased humans and is used throughout as an expletive.

If presented and consistently carried throughout the work, any word can be an expletive.

 

Language is historical. "The sun rises." That vernacular implies that the Earth stays still and the sun is moving around us. We have used this phrase for hundreds of years, and see no reason for it to ever really go away, so I feel like these other colloquialisms also won't go anywhere. We still say "capre diem" even though the language itself has been extinct for centuries. I've known plenty of jews who've exclaimed "Jesus Christ" when something goes wrong and plenty of atheists that go too. When I say "god dammit," it's not a prayer, it's just an expression, I don't believe in magic.

Or are you constructing a world where world religions never existing in the first place? In which case, human psychology would likely be very different. Early religion was one-in-the-same with science: a way to explain what we saw in the world consistent with everything we knew.

 

Goat of the day?

 

The society no longer being religious doesn't matter, as others have said. When people exclaim "Jesus!" or "Oh my God!", they're not saying those in their literal sense. But the impact of those words changes with societal mores.

The page below gives a good summary of how swear words have changed in English. It might be worth considering what the truly offensive words were a while back in your society's history and using those as your swear words, although bear in mind whether those words are currently offensive in the real world:

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/feck-a-history-of-swearing-from-the-very-first-f-to-the-21st-c-1.2676617