@Lady @coriander Ahh, I missed that context.

Still, I think "as-salamu alaykum" is enough of a canonical general-use greeting (and like, has a canonical structured response, "alaykum salam"), as well as "salam" on its own, that it would be weird to post it on the bottom of a receipt. If my sense of it is accurate -- which it might not be, I've only ever had one person who used it with me on a regular basis -- it would be like printing "hi" on the receipt.

@gaditb @coriander i think it’s less that your sense of salam is wrong and more that i ascribe very little actual religious intent into christians saying “god bless”

@gaditb @coriander i mean i’m not saying that you would stick it on the bottom of a receipt i think sticking anything on the bottom of a receipt which isn’t “Have a nice day ☺︎ !!” is fucked up but

@Lady @coriander HUH.

I ascribe religious... framing possibly, more than intent, to "god bless" (at least, as found on the bottom of a receipt), but I don't to "god bless you", "oh my god", "oh, bless you, sweet child" (in their normal contexts).

... maybe some intent in the context of the bottom of the receipt.

(Maybe I'm misparsing it, though!)

@gaditb @coriander no i think i’m just more jaded and, having spent most of my life surrounded by christians, think very few of them have any sense of what god is to the point where envoking his name would have any meaning to me

this is probably my own theological upbringing as a catholic biasing me against protestants or something, but

@gaditb @coriander like if you can’t even bother to stick a real bible quote there though that is like the lowest possible effort christian

@gaditb @coriander in any case in American Protestant Christianity as i generally understand it blessings are something you Earn or Have Earned by being Good and Destined for Salvation, so the phrase “god bless” kind of falls apart if you look at it too closely

this is of course making a whole lot of assumptions about the actual strain of christianity that this phrase originally appeared in which i don’t know, but

@Lady @coriander Wait, how does the expression "bless his heart" work, then?

(also is @coriander likely to still be interested getting all this dumped at them, or should we drop them from this thread so we're not bugging them?)

@gaditb (quoting Wikipedia here <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imputed_righteousness> because idk what the fuck protestants believe) « in the case of serious sins, Protestants believe that they continue to be treated as God's children, but as disobedient ones that require discipline, while Roman Catholics believe that the bond with God is largely severed, and restoring it requires "a new initiative of God's mercy and a conversion of heart normally accomplished within the setting of the sacrament of reconciliation." »

right so like theologically the deal with catholics is that god literally does need to come down and bless your heart and you need to accept him and work with him to become a good person, especially if you are a person who has seriously sinned

with protestants you can do whatever the fuck you want and you still have “salvation by faith alone” so idk what the fuck blessing the heart means or does in that worldview. maybe it means something but I Don’t Get It Because That’s Not How I Learned It, and the thing i learned Doesn’t Exist in protestantism generally lol

(i think @coriander is generally interested in me going off on opinions?? but idk lol feel free to correct me if i am wrong)

@Lady @gaditb For the record I was asleep for this entire exchange but I found it very interesting to wake up to and read =P

@Lady @coriander I mean I'm a religious Jewish atheist, so I'm going to have my own differing sense of how central or necessary a sense of what god is is to the practice/incorporation-into-daily-living of a religion, lol.

(That is, I don't read it as a necessarily an invocation of a god they sense or value, but an invocation of a religion they value.)
(And sure the performance of recognition of god is a part of that religion (I mean hey, mine too), but that doesn't necessitate any meaning to them of that god itself.)

@Lady @coriander If I were looking for a Jewish equivalent, I think I'd go with 'B"H' (b'ezras hashem/with the help of g-d) or something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Besiyata_Dishmaya

So if I were looking for an Islamic equivalent, I'd probably (deriving from my own cultural biases, probably more than real experience) start looking near that conceptual space.