There's no problem with using blasphemy without believing.
In fact, I've heard American Christians argue against the use of Christian "blasphemy" (following a strict interpretation of "Thy shalt not take thy God's name in vain") and for using non-Christian motifs (because if you don't believe in their god, there's no harm in using their names, offensive as it may be to their believers) as stand-ins.
I was raised in Christian traditions, so it's only normal that I would use the same curses and phrases as I was exposed to in my childhood. It's a simple matter of ethno-cultural environments.
As I never WAS a believer to start with (my mother tried her best, but ultimately failed -- my father could never be arsed to care either way), it's almost only my exclamations and swearing which shows a (moderate!) Christian background ("Holy shit!", "Oh my God!", "For Christ's sake!", that kind of stuff) anyway.
But the etymological background of those exclamations is not important for my everyday use. The semantics lie in how I use them, not in what they mean in a word-by-word analysis.
Instead of "Oh my God!" I might as well exclaim "Excitement!", "What a surprise!" or "How unexpected!", but that would be unnatural to me. The literal semantics are not the reason I use the phrase, so why should they become the reason NOT to use the phrase? That's about as asinine as political correctness -- I will use "he" as a generic form including potential females if my aesthetics demand it, no matter whose artificially inflated sensitivities it may hurt.
In fact, I've heard American Christians argue against the use of Christian "blasphemy" (following a strict interpretation of "Thy shalt not take thy God's name in vain") and for using non-Christian motifs (because if you don't believe in their god, there's no harm in using their names, offensive as it may be to their believers) as stand-ins.
I was raised in Christian traditions, so it's only normal that I would use the same curses and phrases as I was exposed to in my childhood. It's a simple matter of ethno-cultural environments.
As I never WAS a believer to start with (my mother tried her best, but ultimately failed -- my father could never be arsed to care either way), it's almost only my exclamations and swearing which shows a (moderate!) Christian background ("Holy shit!", "Oh my God!", "For Christ's sake!", that kind of stuff) anyway.
But the etymological background of those exclamations is not important for my everyday use. The semantics lie in how I use them, not in what they mean in a word-by-word analysis.
Instead of "Oh my God!" I might as well exclaim "Excitement!", "What a surprise!" or "How unexpected!", but that would be unnatural to me. The literal semantics are not the reason I use the phrase, so why should they become the reason NOT to use the phrase? That's about as asinine as political correctness -- I will use "he" as a generic form including potential females if my aesthetics demand it, no matter whose artificially inflated sensitivities it may hurt.
