I’ve seen on FaceBook people “liking” “God’s last name is not ‘Dammit’“. Uh…Duh! Of course if you want to be taken seriously, then at least learn the name of your god in the first place. “God” is a category. It’s like calling me “man.” Yes I am a man, but that’s not my name. Yahweh is the name of your god. By just saying “goddamn,” how do you know that I’m not referring to Thor or Zeus. Maybe I should say Mithra-damn.
Moving past that, goddamn is short hand for “May God condemn x to the fires of hell,” with “x” being the person, place, thing, or phenomena that is being refereed to. I don’t believe in any gods or any concept of hell (except perhaps for Christian rock).
The context for my most common usage of “goddamn” would be stepping outside and saying to myself, “goddamn it’s cold.” That one also works when I walk into one of the freezers at work, running around -35 degrees (yeah, that’s pretty goddamn cold). I am in no way meaning to imply that I would like for Zeus to damn the freezer to the fires of Hades. I would be saying much worse things if the freezer wasn’t goddamn cold.
To be honest, I am much more likely to just say “damn it’s cold.” But if it’s really cold I tend to get a little more colorful. Besides, how is “damn” any better? Unless you happen to believe that St. Peter, Mohamed, or Joseph Smith have the power to condemn someone to the fires of hell, then god would still be implied. “Goshdangit” or even just “dang” isn’t any better either. If I write “sh*t” you still know what I’m saying.
If you go with the “Lord’s name in vein,” excuse, then I refer you back a few paragraphs and sure hope that you don’t drive a Mazda, named for the Zoroastrian god Ashuramazda. Especially since the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim concept of a good God and evil Satan has it’s origins in Zoroastrianism.
So yeah, everybody just needs to Zeus-damn calm down.
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What a Thor-damn great post!
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Hi Dustin
I too am an atheist. I was born and raised SDA. Loma Linda Medical School graduate. I however still go to an SDA church with my wife. I have not told her my thoughts which were evolving in the atheist direction around the time we got married. My second marriage. We have a son together and I know it would break her heart to have that kind of difference between us. My parents are old and in poor health and My father will not last much longer and there is no way I can bring this up now. I simply do not have the heart to do it.
I read the entire Great Controversy through, 2 times at age 10 and remember reading EGW's admonition against reading Thomas Paine. Naturally I was curious and decided to pull one of his books from the library when I was about 12 and realized he made very good points about the terrible nature of God portrayed in the old testament. I put that at the back of my mind and thought that during my school classes and sabbath school classes someone could answer this problem. No one ever gave me a good answer. Fast forward to me now 44 years old reading the story of the flood to my little girl one night and there is a picture in Uncle Arthurs bible story of a crowd standing around listening to Noah preach the impending danger. The picture showed small children in the crowd. My daughter asks me what happened to all those children during the flood. I was shocked into silence. Now that I had a little girl who was the light of my life I knew what a heinous act the drowning of an innocent child would be. All children are innocent in my opinion and the idea that an all powerfull loving God would do this made me reject this story and logically most of the old testament along with it. Then it just snowballed from there. I learned just how ridiculous the idea of 6000 year old earth was and a whole host of other evolutionary scientific facts previously unknown to me. My undergrad was in physics.
At church I never comment on anything controversial and I know eventually after my parents pass that I will tell my wife, I just worry about our marriage after that. Internally I no longer am conflicted and it was a great relief to me to form a view that is consistent with reason.
To those of you not raised in the SDA church the above may sound crazy, I apologize.
Anon
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Anon,
Wow, you have quite the story and I can relate to a fair amount of it. I would love to talk to you more, fell free to email me.
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Anon,
Wow, you have quite the story and I can relate to a fair amount of it. I would love to talk to you more, fell free to email me.
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Anon,
Wow, you have quite the story and I can relate to a fair amount of it. I would love to talk to you more, fell free to email me.