Comment by eropple
14 years ago
Why? Are you so sure of your intellectual position (a position which, I disclaim, I happen to think is considerably more likely than the alternative) that you experience dissonance at the idea of space-going intelligences believing in God?
Religion is not going to disappear because humans go to the stars, either.
I think it's not so much religion as the usual connotations of the phrase, particularly as seen online (OMG).
'Ohmigod' != 'Oh my god'. The meaning of the phrase is beside the point.
Ohmigod makes pretty clear that it’s about expressing surprise and astonishment, not any actual call to a deity. Even Oh my god is usually not understood as an actual call to a god. There are certainly people who do not believe in god but nevertheless use Oh my god from time to time – like myself.
Writing it differently severs any connection to god. Maybe that’s the purpose of writing it like that. It’s an exclamation that’s supposed to show surprise and astonishment, the content doesn’t matter.
Did you just say what I was implying and use it to defend the opposite point?
My/his point was that writing "oh my god" as "ohmigod" made the alien sound like a teenage girl, not that the possible appeal to a deity had any relevance to the story.