Hi Terry, and Harry, For Terry:
Thanks for the U-Tube video Clip. I shall pass this along to my Science Fiction friends in Madison. For everyone else: Here's what I previously said: > I suspect that if anyone were to be so foolish as to > conduct a seance and attempt to communicate with the > spirit of Arthur from the Great Beyond all they would > get back for their efforts would be disturbing visions > of a black void filled with stern emptiness. Nobody here! > Nothing! Zilch! Well, of course, you ninny! Arthur was > an atheist. He's dead! And that's the way it's gong > to stay. I fear that the above comments were taken more literally than the actual intent. Let me rephrase. I'm personally not an atheist, and I've said so many times in this group that I'm not. That confession in itself should give one a pretty strong clue! Ok then, if I'm not an atheist then what does the previous paragraph infer? If I was a proud card carrying atheist one that had the capacity of being as honest as Arthur C Clarke or Douglas Adams had been (which I suspect I would have failed at miserably), one of the last things I would do after I died would be to hang around seedy séance chambers in the hopes of getting a message back to the living that I was still alive. For one thing I'm sure I would have more interesting things to do with the rest of eternity as compared to answering a lot of silly questions like "what's it like to be dead?" or "...have you talked to Abraham Lincoln?", or "...is it true the roads are paved in gold?" I suspect this concern was actually inferred to a certain extent by Douglas Adams himself, as in one particular Hitchhiker scene when Arthur Dent, in the midst of another life-and-death situation, manages to find a way to communicate with his dead parents in the hopes that they would be able to resolve a dire situation he was having, specifically concerning how not to get killed! At the end of that brief little terse conversation with his dead parents (where he actually does get a helpful suggestion on how to avoid getting killed) they tell him quite clearly that they had better things to do with their lives than to talk to him, and please don't bother calling back! IOW, if someone was still determined to contact me (I'm still playing the part of an atheist here) and that person put a lot of personal effort into the endeavor I might have to resort to drastic measures, like sending a blast of foreboding images, like a smothering foreboding cloud of dark nothingness, a black void of chaos and feelings of non-existence - basically unpleasant imagery to get across the message that, NO, you ninny, I enjoyed being an atheist all my life. Both living and honoring the principals of atheism served me well for that life time. Out of respect for that lifetime that part of me shall remain in the realms of the respectfully deceased. Therefore, I'm supposed to be dead now, and for anyone to try contacting me, an atheist of all people, is simply rude! It completely disrespects the principals held so dear to a lot of atheists. Go away! Go try contacting Lincoln! As for Sir. Arthur I would like to transmit a single one-way message: So long, and thanks for all the imagination. That goes for Douglas Adams as well. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
