What I have learned from Facebook

Noticed this too, generally with low class people, but you're right mostly with black/minorities.

One of worst things you can tell them is that you're an atheist, I made that mistake and was viewed as "evil" by a person who has both drug dealers & convicted rapists in their immediate family.

Go figure.

Don't try to figure them out, their logic is a joke.

And I mean both strippers and overly religious people.

Possibly guilt and and finding way to deal thru church quotes.

I've learned through TUSCL that I have no use for facebook.

I accidentally put an atheist into a breakdown when one was around me too much in college. He didn't even believe in the supernatural but he remembered all kinds of extremely low odds things happening around me. Some of the stuff he remembered made me wonder why those things would have sent him into a crisis. I mean for instance he remembered on a clear day I said I wish it would rain and then it was an hour later. That was just luck. I probably was extremely lucky. So lucky that I ticked other people off playing games with them relying on luck to win instead of skill. Two people refused to play any games with me. One roommate was short a person playing pool with his friends so he invited me. I hadn't played in years. I got real lucky. My roommate told me his friends thought I was a pool shark.

Of course I don't know how intelligent the atheist was. After I beat him playing chess 8 times in a row and thought he was a lousy chess player, he told me he was his high school chess champion. The only thing I could think of was that they must have all been idiots in his high school. I had more than one atheist in my suite. One of them did believe there were supernatural unexplained events. If you don't see a lot of weird crap, I understand why several believe there are no supernatural forces around.

Atheism has nothing to do with supernatural, and supernatural doesn't mean anything outside of the norm and known.

I got drafted into Facebook due to a lot of female relatives. Some of my nieces look pretty good in their bikinis and I get to see other relatives pics when they travel to different countries so I occassionally look at it. My brothers use it even less than me.

THEY'RE YOUR NIECES!!!

Hypocrocy at its best. Maybe they figure that promoting the religious crap somehow exonerates them from their choices in life.

I don't do social media, don't read it and DON'T care!

Why does religion have such a prominent place in USA society? Your constitution delineates strict separation of religion and government, does it not?

Strippers talking about religion? If a dancer ever even mentioned religion during during conversation with me in a club I would reply by spouting the most blasphemous utterances I could conjure up.

mh: "What am I missing here? Do drug dealers and whores view what they do purely as a job and they have no problem separating what they do from the church. "

Kind of like in The Godfather - "don't get me wrong - I don't care what a man does for a living.

Good question, art. I suspect that when the tangibles fail them, the more "limited" of society put their faith in the intangibles, which they can contort into whatever they want it to be.

wow - easy gentlemen.

god's for everyone - especially lovers.

The real crime is - hurting another human (physical, or not physical). This includes murder, assault, robbery, con, stealing.

Laws are made by humans to take care of the real crimes described above. However, religious zealots have porked in "love between consenting adults" as a crime.

Maybe enough of us go to church and convert these stiffs that claim to represent god - and have prostitution legalized. Just like much of the happy world - where mass-killings does not make headlines every month.

Anybody who has traveled outside our country knows what I'm talking about.

I think it's more a case that the rest of the developed world became less religious at a faster rate than the US has. The US has always moved at a slower rate to change socially than the rest of the world. I think alot of is just pride, plain and simple that we got everything right, so what he hell do we have to change for? The decline of religion is accelerating even here, though, thank god!

dougster - you got it right ! (didn't think that way - but it is what it is)

"god's for everyone"

NOT.

I remember my ATF saying, "I'm not a whore". This was after a great lap dance session that included vigorous FIV and making out. She is very religious too, at least she claims to be. Her religion doesn't stop her from whoring herself out, and having a rich sugar daddy/BF.

I think, it's something like self validation that they are nice god fearing people. Kind of living in a denial, a mental shield to cover their wrong actions.

Remember, religion is not just for perfect people. Strippers, whores and drug users may need religion more than upstanding citizens like us.

10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Matthew 9:10-13

I agree with Doug also. The US is slow about social change and the US is playing catch up with rest if the world regarding religion.

I think the black churches are much more of a social event, so when I see posts from black dancers encouraging their friends "to go to church" during difficult times, I wonder if it's more about social fellowship than about anything truly spiritual.

Motor- You might want to have a lot of experience going to black churches before you start generalizing the black churches.

I also lost belief in religion long ago. But I also recognized that Christianity is a lot more diverse and less regimented than when I was a kid. Gobs and gobs of (non-stripper, non-drug-dealer) Christians would not say that casual sex or drugs destine a person for Hell. I agree that persons who think atheists are immoral are ignorant. But if you want to feel better than others, achieve something, don't call Christians hypocrits based on your 1950s version of Christianity.

Good observations from motorhead and Dougster. Even though Canada and USA are very close linguistically and culturally, historically we are very very different. Looking from outside your borders I can see what you guys mean about being 'slow to social change'. You snap up economic and technological change with alacrity......political change much less readily.

My country goes through political upheavals regularly but is much less eager to adopt technological change. Economically we are a more conservative country than you but much more liberal socially.

Interesting evolution of this topic.

It just dawned on me...of all the thousands of books that I have read the bible is NOT among them.

ranukam-true enough

But I did watch the Blues Brothers. Doesn't that count?

It's a fallacy to think that religious faith is mainly a matter of following rules of morality, or that attending church must require conformity to all of a religion's dictates about sexual behavior. For many believers, those are petty, superficial aspects of religion, anachronisms left over from more primitive societies, not a core element of faith.

Or, in other words, even Christians can be freaky.

“… Mostly, but not always, from black dancers ...”

I don’t know much about black dancers, but I’ll put in an anecdote.

Some may be familiar with the show “Real Sex” that used to play on HBO in the late 90s and early 2000s (they still replay old episodes).

There was a segment called “Ms. Black Nude” which was a black nude beauty pageant in Jamaica. The event was hosted by a black SC from D.C. and the contestants were mostly black dancers from the strip club.

I recall in the particular segment them showing the black dancers back stage holding hands and praying out loud just before they were going on stage to perform naked – I thought it was a bit odd.

“… I was raised in the Church but stopped going when I started going to strip clubs. Seemed hypocritical to me …"

Ditto on all 3 statements in the comment.

This is just me theorizing here.

Blacks in this country have gone thru a lot and it seems to me they have relied on religion to get them thru the many rough times in their history.

Often times it is the down and out that don’t have any means other than faith to make it thru situations. Blacks in this country have often been down and out IMHO.

@Art Canada, obviously, is more British than the US. Much of the early population of the US came from being a dumping ground for people not wanted by the British authorities. This contributed to the appearance of "Evangelical" Christianity, which rejected the somber and more rational Anglicanism. It's the more rational strains of Christianity that have faded the most. The advance of Science and other forms of progress have made rational people feel very alienated from the contents of the The Bible.

If America is slow to change it's only because sweeping diversity makes across the board shifts much harder than in a more homogeneous country. In the same vein I think the interaction of different religions has also stifled progression to some extent.

Brazil is a good counter example, while the Catholic church holds strong down there they still, imo, have a much more relaxed attitude about sexuality than in this country.

jeeez, I think I'll run over and covet my neighbor's wife for a while.

I notice people who are hard core religious usually have a reason for it. They are looking for something as a check to their impulses.

There's a large number of dancers I've met over the years who claimed to be religious, one of them being my current ATF. I have no idea why, but they say Jesus took Mary Magdalene as his wife, so maybe these dancers are looking for their own personal Jesus.

Jack lash said it best

There is a lot of talk that Magdalene was Jesus' wife and not just in strip clubs.

I'm an atheist and I hate anything that has to do with the Judeo-Christian-Muslim God.

JayJay- That makes you part of a very small minority. I've only met two who were openly atheist. Oddly enough, they both claimed to be philosophy students at their local college, that is, the big state college that was local to their club. Whatever their philosophy is, I can go for that.

There has been more hate, war and death in the name of organized religion than practically any other reason thru out the world. Fuck that crap. I believe in spiritually, but I despise what many followers have done to it.

In my experience, most strippers hide the fact that they are strippers to family, friends, etc. In a large metro area (like Detroit,) strip clubs are spread out over a large geographical area. Notice most strippers work at a strip club all the way on the other side of the town in which they live, therefor limiting the chances that someone they know will find out. Facebook is the same, sort of. They post things on their pages to make themselves look like something that they are not. Religious sayings being one of those. This is not limited to strippers. I have many friends that put shit on their page to "look better." Exaggerating their jobs, education, etc.

On another not, I have a question for those that disagree/rip on people that are on facebook, twitter, etc. People that don't "agree" with social media.......WTF do you think this website is? Other than the fact that TUSCL is not a real mainstream site for obvious reasons, this site is EXACTLY what social media is.

"There has been more hate, war and death in the name of organized religion than practically any other reason thru out the world."

There has been more feeding, clothing, educating, and sheltering of the poor in the name of organized religion than practically any other reason thru out the world.

I am not a big fan of going to church and all, but lets not forget to talk about all sides.

"On another not, I have a question for those that disagree/rip on people that are on facebook, twitter, etc. People that don't "agree" with social media.......WTF do you think this website is? Other than the fact that TUSCL is not a real mainstream site for obvious reasons, this site is EXACTLY what social media is."

YEP

"There has been more feeding, clothing, educating, and sheltering of the poor in the name of organized religion than practically any other reason thru out the world."

Sorry but I think the negatives far outweigh the positives. We can agree to disagree.