Sunday, October 16, 2022

On Hearing Profanity: The Idiotic Evangelical Hatred Of Profanity

There is a very strong loathing of profanity that a certain kind of evangelical might not so subtly share with others while watching (or attacking) entertainment featuring such words.  This is a hatred very much shaped by beliefs and one that can be inherited from parents or church members who either themselves uncritically inherited them from others or were irrational and legalistic enough to come to this by themselves, not a hatred that almost anyone is likely to have left to themselves as they dwell on moral epistemology, subjective preferences, and what the Bible actually teaches about morality.  Almost every Christian in America familiar with evangelical cultures and subcultures has probably known at least a few families with parents who, driven by this extra-Biblical nonsense, try to stop their children from watching or playing anything with whichever arbitrary words subjectively offend them.  The blatantly false notion that the Bible condemns profanity aside, why would hearing something be evil just because saying it is?

Seeing murder or worse, like prolonged rape, onscreen is so clearly not the same as committing the deed of murder.  Seeing or hearing a murder, even in real life as opposed to in a work of entertainment, is not depraved if murder itself is.  Even if using profanity was some evil thing, which is absolutely not the case according to the Bible that so many Christians think they stand on when attacking profanity, how would listening to it be evil, especially if one was not expecting it?  Is hearing someone tell a lie itself a sin, in entertainment or in daily life with others?  Would hearing someone express belief in irrationalism make the listener irrational?  Of course not, just as seeing an adultery or murder or kidnapping or an act of sorcery in entertainment is not the same as doing the thing in question.  Profanity is so idiotically hated by plenty of evangelicals that they might do their best to stop their children from having any exposure to profanity in media or by overhearing the conversations of peers.

If the Bible evangelicals so deeply misinterpret truly did condemn profanity, going to any lengths to desperately prevent one's children from hearing profanity in movies, shows, or video games would be misapplying the nonexistent command to not use profanity--there is not even a problem with allowing children to see violence or sexual acts in films/games if they can handle it philosophically and personally.  However, with violence at least, even evangelical parents are more likely to be lenient in what they watch with their children.  The solution to this inconsistency is not just prohibiting kids from watching or hearing anything that is either genuinely evil or that the parents do not like.  When what is evil and what some parents or others personally dislike are not guaranteed to be the same, it is logically impossible for it to be morally legitimate for parents to force their children to never be around profanity anyway.

Since these bizarre allowances for children to watch onscreen killings or assaults but not hear profanity in media are not particularly uncommon in certain circles, the stupidity of opposing all uses of profanity is increased in these cases when people actually think that there is something problematic about hearing words the Bible does not condemn but nothing problematic about seeing acts like murder that are capital offenses.  Again, the right kind of consistency here on the Christian worldview is not opposing hearing or seeing such things, not reversing the inconsistency or never watching/hearing entertainment even when it portrays actual sins, which profanity is not.  Merely believing there is something Biblically evil about profanity still contradicts Biblical ethics already before the additional assumptions, hypocrisy, and emotionalism can be added.

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