Actually, that is "taking the lord's name in vain" and is quite frowned upon by a lot of Christians. I am not Christian, but I grew up in the Bible Belt and I am aware that is deemed to be a serious form of disrespect. I swear like a sailor, but I try to not take the lord's name in vain in public because I am aware it is deeply offensive to devout Christians, more so than my general tendency to use four letter words.

I'm not sure how strong evidence those phrases are for that conclusion.

Plenty of non-christians raised in a Christianity influenced social background, but not raised by Christians, use phrases like that.

I was thinking about this the other day, and in the U.K. there are a lot of people who would say they are Christian if asked their religion, but really they are non-practicing or more likely atheists, but don’t want to admit it.

I saw a statistic once where they asked people whether it was true or false that one can only be moral if one believes in a higher power, sorted by country. The highest numbers reached more than 90%.

With this in mind, things like your point make a lot of sense.

http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/03/13/worldwide-many-see-belie...

I'm agnostic, with a heavy lean towards atheism (I figure not enough data to bother thinking about it for the most part), but "Jesus Fucking Christ" is my go-to when exasperated. For what it's worth, like the sibling comment I grew up in the bible belt, so I'm sure that has a major impact on swear preference.