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Permalink Reply by Jim Hudlow on July 17, 2012 at 12:36pm

I went into Second Look Books, a used book store a while back. I asked the clerk (25ish and a bit rotund) if they had an atheist section and he literally recoiled with a gasp, eyes big as saucers. I'm surprised he did not fling his hands up and make a cross with his fingers. He never did manage a simple 'no' which would have sufficed but as you say not nearly as fun~~

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Permalink Reply by Neal on July 17, 2012 at 12:40pm

Hah! 

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Permalink Reply by Michel on July 17, 2012 at 12:20pm

Welcome Jim.

You are our first banjo-playing philosopher!
Didn't know we needed one until now =)

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Permalink Reply by Jim Hudlow on July 17, 2012 at 12:43pm

I was playing in a jam at a festival with several of my friends a month ago. I showed them a new mute for my banjo that screws on behind the bridge and you can slide it up when needed. The jam came to a halt as everyone there asked me what kind it was and how to get one as they had a friend they wanted to buy one for!! 

Many folks have desparately wished such an effective device also existed for my mouth;)           

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Permalink Reply by Michel on July 17, 2012 at 1:05pm

That would make you a muted philosopher.

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Permalink Reply by Chris on July 17, 2012 at 3:43pm

Welcome Jim,

A Pentecostal preacher try to scare the hell out of me at age 17. He kept saying I would go to hell if I died without being saved. I told him there was no such thing as hell to which he said "There is nothing I can do with this boy."

The first atheist meeting I went to was in Spokane in the mid 1990's. I don't remember the hosts name. He was active in the Democratic party and had a lot of signs in his yard. You probably know him through one of the local secular groups. After lunch he played his telephone answering machine death threats. He said he received them all the time and the police wouldn't respond until something actually happened. 

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Permalink Reply by Jim Hudlow on July 17, 2012 at 4:16pm

Wow...I will ask a couple guys I know have been involved for years...this will be interesting...I have received no death threats so far....

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Permalink Reply by Chris on July 17, 2012 at 9:55pm

I think Dave Anderson, from the Tri-Cities (Richland) area, was there. Do you know him? 

One of the messages sounded like a black (can I say that) deranged Southern Baptist preacher. He's probably in jail for beating his wife or molesting kids by now.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Hudlow on July 18, 2012 at 1:54am

No...name does not ring a bell...

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Permalink Reply by John Burford on July 18, 2012 at 2:26am

Hi all. Unusually, I'm introducing myself ;) and I hope in the right place - first try cut in on an exchange between Chris & Jim - sorry guys! I'll get used to the forum dynamics...

I came here (as some of you noticed) following a Google search for something - it was in fact the "66 years later" email some poor fool sent me, knowing I deplore bulk mailing of unchecked spam. The one which likens the A-bomb on Hiroshima to the disaster of a welfare state.

Yes, I do live in Adelaide, City of Churches. The other name is Adelaide, Murder Capital of the World, usuually given by people who haven't looked at other cities but have heard about a few high profile killings over the last forty years. The "Bodies in the Barrels", at Snowtown, for example, which is only 90 or 100 miles from Adelaide.

I have in fact been into many of our churches. I was sort of sent to Church of England as a kid, mostly out of deference to a really lovely old couple next door. As a teenager I defected to one of the protestant lot because my mate told me that girls went there. They told me I should be re-baptized because CofE was not valid to god, and during discussions, the minister suggested I needed to change some of my views first. Bye-bye, church.

I married for asecond time whilst also studying various liberal socialist hippy things at university, like psychology and sociology. She was a born-again god-botherer. I thought it diplomating to join her at church on Sundays, but I missed the point. I was watching the body cues of the minister as he tipped off the congregation that it was time for the spirit to spontaneously descend. I didn't get descended upon. Perhaps the spirit didn't go down, so to speak, because I had refused to stand for the arm-waving part.

I have to say, that church wasn't lacking in humour. One lad stood up and confessed he had gone to a rock concert, but knew it was satanic because the lyrics were repetitive. To clelebrate this testimony, the congregation sang something like "Praise the lord, hallelujah, praise the lord, hallelujah..." about twenty times. Wonder how they'd have handled it if the lad declared he was gay?

Oh, by the way, wife 2 is my second ex.

I considered myself tolerant. I kicked that habit when it was not reciprocated by the religious. For example, I have never gone from door to door telling them that they are in some way going to pay if they don't adopt my world view, but they regularly do it to me. Lately I have included bad language among the more rational statements in some of my doorstep rebuttals. I must be a grumpy old man.

Here in the city of churches a local journalist has a Sunday page of editorialising, and often it's good reading. About one week in four I absolutely disagree with him. Recently he, as a christian, lamented how atheists have become more aggressive and intrusive lately. Let me here a Hallelujah! (I prefer K.D. Lang's version). After merely several centuries of turning the other cheek (and still having a couple to spare) we are due our turn.

I note that our recent census showed that the decline in religion in this country is continuing. That seems to mean "christianity" since self-identification as Muslim has grown.

Okay, then, that's me on religion. As to the rest, I'm retired, a trio of kids and numerous descendants since I delegated the breeding program. Half my friends think I'm a lefty liberal and half think I'm a rabid fascist. Interested in aviation, history, movies, reading, and telling the religious it's time their sacred texts became mere curios in some museum.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Hudlow on July 18, 2012 at 2:39am

John...have you seen one of them Funnel Web Spiders? They actually track humans! Australia has some pretty fearsome critters! Welcome to the site by the way...I am a grumpy old man too...and proud of it!

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Permalink Reply by Davy on July 18, 2012 at 11:45am

Jim I don't know about John but I use to live in the area where those Fennel web spiders frequented. Don't know about tracking you but in certain times of the  year and weather conditions you had to check you shoes before you put them on as there may be a fennel web in them. 

When I was growing up in the bush I cannot recall ever seeing one of the buggers but saw plenty of red belly black snakes and brown snakes. Though when I was cleaning up a demolition site in '75 in preparation for the building of a new cottage and bent to pick up a rusty old water pipe and my thumb ended up thousandths of and inch from a funnel web. The blokes I was working with said I went as white as a sheet. My hand did move very quickly that day. It was curled up and torpid due to the cold weather. 

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