I say "gosh" quite a bit now. This is mainly due to my effort to remove all references to a Christian belief from my vocabulary. The thing is, as I'm sure my fellow non-believers can tell you, you do not realize how much "The Lord" and "God" and "Jesus" and "Holy" are all part of our regular collective vocabulary. Even non-religious quasi-theists are regular mentioners of holy things, or so I've noticed.
So the first to go was "bless you". That's a no brainer, but for years I felt some kind of obligation to say that out of kindness. Now, after not saying it for a couple of years, I still feel like a dick when someone (mainly a chick) sneezes and I say nothing. I would like to submit alternatives to "bless you" and "gesundheit" (which is just silly sounding, no offense to Deutsch land), such as "shut up" or "cover your mouth".
So now I'm saying "gosh". Not "oh my god" or "god!" or "good god", etc. I will hold on to "god dammit!". That one is just too powerful, and it is kind of fun. Think if you really had the power to command an omnipotent super-being to damn anything at your whim. "God, go DAMN that. Now". "YES MASTER".... It would be like walking around with a Hulk you could command to go smash things (yes, I'm excited to go see the movie and it's leaking out in my writing... sad).
So, there are my harmless and cute observations about not uttering references to my former invisible buddy in the sky. Maybe if I stop bothering him by uttering his name, he will find time to stop Chinese earthquakes, tornadoes in the mid-west, floods, genocide... you get the point. The Christian god is on the rampage, and we all going to hell on his watch.
