Anyone still here?

I just took over as admin of the group because:

a) I asked for it.

b) No one else wanted the job.

Hoping to revitalize it just a bit.

Anyone have any recommendations for a new group photo?

Thank you for becoming the admin. I noticed that another group which had been rather quiet became much more active as soon as an admin took over. I hope the same can happen for HH.

I'm still around, and yes, thanks for taking up the baton.

Still a heathen and still happy

>2 Taphophile13: & >3 paradoxosalpha: You're welcome. I was sad that this group was languishing. It just needs a little TLC.

>4 jjwilson61: Glad to hear it.

Still heathenish and happy.

Not sure how much I'll participate. I grumble about religion quite a bit, but it won't really get me anywhere. For instance I wanted to go wine tasting in California on the day we get in and drive to Carmel, but no it's frigging easter. As if I care about it. Oy vey, but it's the way it is and imposing their crap on me is just fine apparently.

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

>6 Bookmarque: The vineyards are closed for Easter? That's odd. I'll have to see if any of the ones around here will be open, just for comparison.

Tasting rooms. Tried two in Carmel - Talbott & Hahn. Not open. Bah.

Ah. Are those tasting rooms that have wines from multiple vineyards? I think we only have a handful of those. Each vineyard tends to have its own tasting room.

No they’re individual to each winery.

Many of ours are outdoor tastings only because of Covid. A lot of them added fire pits or propane heaters. One of my favorite places has its tasting room open, but they added a time limit. And I suspect many of ours are closed on Easter for tastings, but will be open for selling bottles and cases.

I'm still here, too. Just haven't had much of anything to say.
Atheists don't speak out much because gathering support for a cause is:
1) tantamount to herding cats; and,
2) as rewarding as an attempt to feed a badger.
In short, we don't organize well, and when we do, we get a lot of crap for it from rabid fantasy believers.

Would love to see this group become more active, but no idea how.

>1 clamairy: Thank you for taking over the admin. I hope it doesn't prove to be too thankless a job.

I'm not sure there's much to talk about, particularly from Britain, which is one of the more godless corners of the planet. We'll find out how godless when the figures from this year's censuses (last Sunday) for England, Wales and Northern Ireland come out. Scotland is postponing their census in the hope of more normal times next year.

>13 Cynfelyn: Thank you. I'm pretty sure it will be fine.

What's this I heard about a blasphemy case going on in England? Maybe that should get it's own topic.

Still here

>14 clamairy: "What's this I heard about a blasphemy case going on in England?"

"The common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were formally abolished in England and Wales in 2008 and in Scotland in 2021. Equivalent laws remain in Northern Ireland, ..." (Wikipedia).

I'm afraid I don't know what you have in mind. The closest we've got to blasphemy now is the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, which creates an offence in England and Wales of inciting hatred against a person on the grounds of their religion. So - and hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong - gods have no more protection from being denied or insulted than faeries, djinns, ghosts and other hob-goblins, but people are protected under various bits of legislation from having hatred incited against them on the grounds of certain protected characteristics, including race, religion, sex, (gender to some extent?), disability. If your problem with the other person is an unprotected characteristic - I don't know, their politics, income, hair style, cycling while you're driving or whatever - you're apparently free to try to incite hatred against them, as long as you stay on the right side of Public Order Act. Free speech is not a thing in the UK.

Also still here, still heathen, still happyish. :-)

*Raises hand*

Still here! Happy and heathen-y.

I've always appreciated the premise of this group, but it did go quiet. Very happy to see a new admin, so thanks to Clamairy for taking it on!

If there's a chat, I'll join in. :)

Aw hell, I ain't there yet. It does sound rather interesting, however...

That's the trouble with being an atheist. If I were to try to recruit anyone by going house to house, I'd knock on the door and if they answered (and here in central Texas, NO ONE answers their doors anymore -- they shoot through them first), what would I say to them? "Hi, I'm Mike, and I'm an atheist. I'd like to talk to you about absolutely nothing."
Yeah, that's going to go over big.

>20 WholeHouseLibrary: I'm throwing out an old encyclopedia these days and been reading a bit here and there before saying goodbye to each volume. Once in a while I come across some religious movement and try to read about it to find out what it is all about. So far, no luck :-) (Latest try: Socinianism)

"After Jesus's death, there was good news and bad news for anyone who would set out to carry the Christian message of salvation across the Roman Empire. Both kinds of news are embodied in little figurines that archaeologists have found in the northern regions of the empire. There, scattered across burial sites, are bronze renditions of a god named Osiris. Exploiting trade routes, this god had traveled all the way to Gaul — what is now France — from his native Egypt.

Osiris, who had been a major god in Egypt for millennia, bore a striking resemblance to the Jesus described in the Nicene Creed. He inhabited the afterworld, and there he judged the recently deceased, granting eternal life to those who believed in him and lived by his code. Hence the good news for Christian evangelists: Osiris's penetration of the Roman Empire suggested a widespread thirst for a divine figure of this sort, a sizable niche that a figure like Jesus might fill. And hence the bad news: at least some of the demand for this kind of divinity had already been met. As Christians carried the gospel across the Roman Empire, they would face competition from a god that already embodied some of the emotional appeal we associate with Christianity.

The earliest of these evangelists faced a second kind of bad news as they preached the gospel in the Roman Empire. Not only was there already some crowding in the market for a blissful after-life via spiritual salvation; Jesus himself, it turns out, didn't initially fit into this market niche very well. This will strike some people-including Christians, as strange. Doesn't the Nicene Creed describe a Jesus tailor-made for that niche? Yes, but the Nicene Creed was written centuries after Jesus died. The common picture of Jesus it reflects—Jesus as heavenly arbiter of immortality—would have seemed strange to followers of Jesus during his lifetime. So would its corollary: that the righteous ascend to heaven in the afterlife.”

Robert Wright, The Evolution of God

Here and still happily heathenish. Thank you for taking over, clam.

Here also. Definitely heathen. More so.

godless & masterless, present! :)

Still here but less heathenish as my Unitarians have been zooming for the last year.

So happy to have you all here. There is strength in numbers!

I did notice someone from the 'Islamic Republic of Iran' was on my LT profile last night, and all I could think of was that they found me because of this group. Or perhaps the Jesus & Mo group, though I don't post in there much. I'm not nervous yet. But if they keep coming back I might be.

Hello again everyone

>28 stellarexplorer: *waves*

I am adding Bookmarque as a second admin for this group.

Oh boy!

>31 Bookmarque: So now people need to misbehave just to test the system.

As you wish, Clam.

Thank god you found a secondary admin! The HH threads are going straight to H E double hockey sticks.

>33 WholeHouseLibrary: Haha! This used to be quite the battleground. People have moved on, thankfully.

I try not to get too squiggle-eyed about religion, but it still chaps my behind and I've had to stop following my mom on fb because she posts all kinds of inane drivel. Some of it is downright hateful and racist if I'm honest and I just don't know what to do other than walk away. She's 75 and not going to even question what she thinks is right. Amazing how she can twist her religion to fit her bias. The WWJD thing seems highly subjective and makes me crazy when clearly the man would have done the polar opposite than the stance he's being used to take.

Oy vey.

>35 Bookmarque: Oh, you have my sympathies. I have an older sister who practices an über-conservative version of Catholicism. We are no longer Facebook friends. She thinks Jeebus loves Trump, and Trump is fighting the devil in the deep state. 😞

>36 clamairy: The whole Trump thing mystifies me with Christians. On what planet can the man be considered even a half-way decent human being, never mind someone who has convictions, beliefs or a conscience? He's vile, deceitful, rapacious and a fraud, but somehow he's righteous. It's cognitive dissonance at its height. I don't get it. If he ran as a Democrat he'd be Satan himself to those very same people. It's complete madness.

>37 Bookmarque: Agree 100%, but most of that breed already excell at self-delusion, so loving Trump wasn't that difficult for many of them.

Now that you mention it, there must be a type of psychic constitution that interprets the frisson of cognitive dissonance as the thrill of virtue. There appear to be entire schools dedicated to the technique.

>36 clamairy: Are you sure your sister has not moved away?

She sounds like a neighbour who turned up lately. Please would you come and take her back before I strangle her. 😊

>40 PinkSeeSaw: Are you in Florida? That's where she lives these days. (That means I don't have to deal with her in person.)

>41 clamairy: Phew .. .. So she's in Florida. Best place for her.

And Trump.

>1 clamairy: Hello Admin. Why is God's Mum no longer of the topic list. I have members contacting me asking where it has gone.

>43 PinkSeeSaw: I can still see it, even after re-loading the page:

(Topic) God's Mum . . .; (New/Total) 21; (Last Message) PinkSeeSaw, Today 10:04am

>43 PinkSeeSaw: I can still see it as well. I'm not sure if you (or someone else) accidentally hid the thread by clicking the red X to the right on the topic list.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/336346#n7648213

>44 Cynfelyn: >45 clamairy: Thanks you two:

I'm a bit new to LT and others here are giggling in the background so I suspect sabotage .. ..

Have been working on this for some time this PM but do not have a red X on any of my screens. Yes, on one of the other laptops in the house everything is fine. It's just mine.

I am NOT going to give in and ask them how to fix it. 😊

YES ! It's back on the topic list ********

I promise you I did not do anything to fix it. It just returned of it's own accord.

Having said that, I think I have learned a lot about LT, searching through for the last couple of hours.

Thanks.

>37 Bookmarque: He's vile, deceitful, rapacious and a fraud, but somehow he's righteous. It's cognitive dissonance at its height. I don't get it.

Hmm,mm Sounds like someone who could have written a holy book .. .. .. ..

>48 PinkSeeSaw: Perhaps he could have used a Holy Ghost writer.