Without Religion, How Does a Person Swear?

By Jinks: 11 Jan 2026

Without religion, does the city architecture change?

Do the blessings and colloquialisms change?

Are there different holidays and festivals?

How about the justice and magic systems?

Life in general?

The questions may seem odd, and I can say that I never considered any of them before. That is, until I started crafting a new religion for my fictional world.

To give a little background, I have created an entire world that all of my stories take place in, and I’ve been trying to ensure that my world feels realistic. That means I’ve been creating different countries, kingdoms, and cultures.

It was during this worldbuilding that I realized something important was missing.

Religion.

I needed something that my characters could believe in. Something that would give them a sense of identity. Something that they would go to war for. Something that made my world more realistic.

That was the start of the creation of my religion. Though I will say that my initial plan was to just create an initial belief and names for the religion, followers, and religious figures. My plan drastically backfired on me, and I ended up following down a rabbit hole so deep that I found myself crafting rituals, holidays, festivals, magic systems, and even a legal system. I simply kept going until my religion was fully fleshed out.

During this time, I discovered something mind altering that made me adjust the rest of my world. Religion affects so many parts of a society’s culture.

Without religion, how does a person swear?

I will admit that this was the last thing I ended up crafting for my religion, but I think it is a topic that is easier to see.

I don’t know how much you have thought about our common swears, because I can say that I never really did. I took them for granted, until I actually started writing in my world. Going back to the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I created everything else first, and religion came last, meaning that my world did not have a religion for a long time.

There was nothing wrong with that until I started making my characters swear, and at that time, I realized just how many of our swears came from a religion.

 Damn. Damnit. Hell.

There are more, but this gets the point across. These three simple words are based on the concept becoming a religious sinner and going to hell. But in a world without religion, these terms don’t make sense.

Why would one of my characters say, “Damnit all to Hell,” when that concept doesn’t exist? That realization was what made me understand that I had to change the language structure in my world. Yes, some swears can say because they are not based on religion but other things, but I had to create something that tied my religion to my culture, along with a way for my characters to actively live their religion without having to go to church.

Without religion, does the city architecture change?

I think this is the question that startled me most, but it is also the question that provided me with the most insight.

A lot of the time, architecture and infrastructure originate to serve a purpose. Walls on a town may be constructed to protect the town. A building may be constructed with a winding staircase to allow defenders the opportunity to fight more ably than attackers. Buildings may be built on stilts because the foundation is soft. All of this is for a reason, but creating my religion showed that the reason for the buildings can be based on the religion.

In some cities, the church is the central building indicating that the church was established first and the rest of the city was built around it. If you think of in that way, it could potentially indicate that the religion was such an important part of the culture that followers didn’t want to have to travel far for their worship and decided to construct their homes next to the church for ease of access.

Another example is that some religions decorate their towns with icons of their gods, so that a religious reminder can be scene wherever a follower is at in the town. In a world with no religion, what statues decorate the world?

While these are both simple examples, they go to show that religion really has a big influence on architecture. If you are going to create a world, you may want to consider just how big of an influence the religions holds. Does your world have a religion? If so, is it such a central thing that it is celebrated all over the city, or is it a vile thing where the towns don’t want to associate with it?

All in all, a religion can help answer those random questions you may never have considered about what your town looks like.

Do the blessings and colloquialisms change?

Just as discussed earlier with swears, religion also holds sway over blessings and colloquialisms.

It is very common to say, “Bless your heart,” or “Dear God,” but both of these blessings wouldn’t make sense in a world without religion. But at the same time, they don’t always make sense in a world that does have a religion. For example, saying, “Dear God,” in a polytheistic religion would warrant the question, “Which one?”

In my religion, I ended up creating a whole new vocabulary that bases the swears, blessings, and greetings off the religion. This was probably one of the hardest parts to create, because none of my terms sound natural to me, having come from a world that uses them, but they would sound natural in my world where it is the only option.

If you end up creating a religion, it is worth considering how it affects the language.

Are there different holidays and festivals?

Honestly, this was the question that made the most sense to me, because I was already aware of the answer.

With a few exceptions, most of our holidays are based on a religion. Yes, some of them are based on discovery or specific individual, but most of the others revolve around a religion. While Christmas is a holiday based on gifts, it is also a catholic holiday that has some tidbits from paganism. Easter is the same. Hanukah is religion based.

So many of the holidays are religion based that it wouldn’t make sense to celebrate them in a world devoid of religion. Throwing in the holiday would most likely pull individuals from the story because it didn’t make sense. And while it would be possible to have the holidays and have a different explanation for them, it would take effort.

When I created my religion, I specifically made sure to figure out what my followers would celebrate, along with how they would celebrate them. In that sense, I determined that followers of my religion focused on enjoying life and celebrating nature, would celebrate the holidays by hosting festivals.

This answered my question for this topic, but it also led to other questions, such as architecture and whether or not the religion is a central focus that everyone worships or only a few. If everyone followed it, then the festivals could be held in every street in the town. But if only a few followed it, then the festivals would have to be contained in the religious buildings, meaning that the architecture would have to be altered for the religion.

This was a fun section to work on, because I was able to be super creative.

How about the justice and magic systems?

This was another weird question that came up, and it was definitely not one I expected to have to answer. I initially thought that I was just creating a religion, not a theocracy, so why do I need to consider the legal system. I also questioned why I had to consider the magic system.

The answer to this is simple really. Justice doesn’t necessarily mean legal system and magic system doesn’t necessarily mean fireball.

The concept of hell or damnation exists in several religions, meaning that there is a concept of sin and redemption. People go to confession to absolve their sins or they go on a pilgrimage for the same effect. In some religions, this is enough, but in other religions, the religious figure offers a means to be absolved, whether that is praying for so long or helping the community. This is a justice system, albeit a justice system I never thought about in said words.

In my religion, I wanted to devise a way that individuals could be condemned in the religion, but I also wanted to create a way that my followers could be redeemed. While it follows some similarities to other existing religions, it has its own method of corruption and absolution.

Now as for the magic system, a magic system doesn’t have to be super in depth, but it should exist somehow. Who has ever thought about miracles and exorcism as a magic system? Probably not many people, but if you think about it, it is a form of magic, coming from the religion. Another example of it really does involve fireball. If you were to think of warlocks and clerics from role playing games, those characters can only use their magic because they follow a god or made a pact with another being.

When I thought of it that way, I decided that I really did need to create some kind of magic system in my world. The followers of the religion are not just worshipping the religion to worship something, they are doing it because they believe their worship will be reciprocated.

Life in general?

Overall, religion plays a huge role in everyday life, whether a person follows a religion or not. It affects the architecture, the everyday phrases, the holidays, the festivals, and even more. If a world doesn’t have a religion, it would have to find a way to fill the gaps left by eliminating the religion. If a world has a single religion, its culture will have to reflect it, because followers want to celebrate their religion. If a world has multiple religions, its culture would be further expanded and would probably contain things related to the religions fighting one another.

In a sense, religion can make a fictional world more realistic.