This comment will probably cost me some karma but the "for the love of god" makes me feel uncomfortable. I assume it is used as an expression and not as proselytism or whatever.
Replace god in this expression by gays, Allah, children, science, music, bits or whatever and you may experience the same feeling I had. And it doesn't provide any useful and constructive information to the main point.
I'm not the OP here, but I'm curious if you've never heard the idiom or the if the idiom just rubs you the wrong way.
> Replace god in this expression by gays, Allah, children, science, music, bits or whatever
That's just it, "for the love of X" doesn't really get a rise out of me for any value of X.
A less common variation of the idiom is "for the love of Mike", which I think points out how arbitrary the object one's affection is in this expression.
> And it doesn't provide any useful and constructive information to the main point.
Without commenting on whether the use was appropriate in this case (frankly I don't have much of an opinion either way), usually that expression is just a way of underscoring the importance of the part that comes after it. For example:
I know that. But God is not X. It is not a question of native language but culture. I'm worried that it might completely miss the message with people of different culture. Would it refer to Allah and some people, probably many in the USA, would suspect him to be a terrorist and hate him for using publicly such reference.
I'm not of any strongly polarized culture. I'm just sensitive to respect people of different cultures. Some of them may consider reference to God as offending.
I don't want to give more importance to this than it deserve. This thread is turning Reddit like and reaches the opposite result I wished. I just wanted to draw attention to it and if some people did, than it was worth the loss of the karma points.
When people say "It is raining cats and dogs," I am afraid they will get the message that harm is coming to innocent animals. We must, for the love of dogs, stop this type of communication at once.
Actually, I had trouble figuring out what to say that's non-offending when someone sneezes. I ended up picking "Gazuntite", which means health (pls. don't ask why I need to say anything at all).
Why must you say anything at all? This is a centuries-old meme that serves no purpose. It annoys me slightly anytime says it to me, and I don't say anything to anyone else when they sneeze.
It's a behavior that we as a society have decided is polite. It hurts no one, aside from maybe a few neckbeards who have entirely too much invested in Being An Atheist (or the
equivalent for your hair-splitting worldview of choice).
That you choose to get "annoyed" about such things is your problem, nobody else's.
I avoid a response after someone says it. Most of the time, I do not think they notice, but sometimes I get a "Why do you never say 'Thank you' when I say 'Bless You!'" from a person. My response is that I would be thanking someone for doing something for me, but the person has not done anything. If saying 'Thank you' was a polite response to me saying something according to the rules of society, people should be thanking me when I say hello. I do not say "God Bless You" or "Thank You" in response to this. I must agree with you that the meme is purposeless. I have no trouble with people saying "Bless You" in any way, but it should not be related to something mundane such as a sneeze.
Replace god in this expression by gays, Allah, children, science, music, bits or whatever and you may experience the same feeling I had. And it doesn't provide any useful and constructive information to the main point.