Blasphemy can be many things
Blasphemy can be many things
Posted Apr 4, 2006 7:02 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091)In reply to: No ambiguity, therefore claiming ignorance is disingenuous. by xoddam
Parent article: My sysadmin toolbox (Linux.com)
I'm not religious either, and I cannot speak for TwoTimeGrime, but for us with a Catholic background blasphemy does not mean "taking God's name in vain", but rather "assigning evil attributes to God" or sometimes "denying the existence of God". Catholic blasphemies consist of rich metaphors involving holy people, the Messiah or even God, which I will not reproduce here since they are seriously insulting.
I was genuinely surprised to see how seriously US protestants take offence at the sole mention of God's name as an interjection: there is a wide cultural gap here. It is true that e.g. the Wikipedia cleary states that this behavior can be considered blasphemy; but, you know, information is not knowledge. For me the key was to realize that there are euphemisms for God's names, which in Spanish are reserved for human waste and those blasphemies referred above.