Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Yesterday’s Scenes From a Multiverse:

(viewable on-line here).

Not the usual understanding of the aphorism.

The customary interpretation, from Wikipedia:

The statement “There are no atheists in foxholes” is an aphorism used to argue that in times of extreme stress or fear, such as during war (“in foxholes”), all people will believe in, or hope for, a higher power (and there are therefore no atheists [there]).

(The origin is uncertain, but it seems to be in a military context, from the 20th century.)

Here, the presumed lack of atheists follows from the nature of warfare and of human belief. In the Multiverse version, foxholes themselves are causative agents, via an atheism-suppressing force field. Different sources, same consequence.

(Of course, in the real world there are atheists in foxholes.)

This entry was posted on October 14, 2014 at 9:09 am and is filed under Formulaic language, Linguistics in the comics, Semantics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.