I guess there are many people in this world who wish to be defined by the country or religion that they are part of! Certainly jews, christians and muslims define themselves by some hocus pocus make believe bull shit that is in reality entirely irrelevant but quite deadly in perception. I don't agree with what those f'd up christians said about those f'd up muslims but I don't care what they said. You know, if muslim hocus pocus is better than christian hocus pocus then why do the muslims care?
It is all just a bunch of crap any way but they kill each other over it! What is up with that?

I don't know nothing about Mohammad
I was raised in a christian world
The world where we hated Russians and Chinese
and we beat the Nazi's
My family was involved in all that best generation shit
they went through Europe carrying guns
or worked on bombers to make sure they
could fly over Europe and bomb Nazi's
and I grew up hearing better red than dead
and listening to blowin' in the wind
and I was baptized southern baptist

and I tell you flat out
I hate god!
I would love to sit down with Jesus and have a beer
and talk about this and that and stuff
I hate the concept of god!
Nothin' good there!

what i say about talking, and better understanding, i put in with the freedom of speech thing.

i don't like all that killing stuff either.

the christian world i grew up in was not involved in the military (so at least there is that) but there was still so much weird stuff that made no sense to me. it can be very distracting? and consuming? it is a lot to explain i guess

Now if you just looked at this stuff as oral tradition if you didn't put it in a setting you could misconstrue some of this stuff.
It is an interaction of two people from a christian society. Time frame is sometime between WWII and the early 21 century. Based on the descriptions of WWII you can say they became conscious of their worlds in the late 50's to mid 60's. Why say that? We beat the Nazi's. They weren't people they were Nazi's. We didn't bomb people, we bombed Nazi's. Don't even talk about the Japanese at all. And, we won. Beating the Nazi's defined America. America has assumed the mantle of leader of the free world. That is the world described when you hate commies and would rather be dead than red. It was obviously a christian world. The consciousness developed in the 60's as you get the line about blowing in the wind. And again, it is a christian world as both speakers attest. A christian world with "so much weird stuff that didn't make sense." There was an acceptable level of hatred for people we didn't know We were the children of the people who had nuclear bombs poised to destroy the world. We were just playing baseball in the backyard and listening to somber conversation of crying mothers talking about people we would never see because of fire fights in Vietnam. Then there is the southern baptist line. Historically, just a few hundred miles away from where I was baptized...white southern baptists set a bomb off in the basement of the church of black southern baptist killing little girls and terrorizing a community. As time has passed, god has become more and more militarized. A large vocal percentage of the country want to insist America is a christian country instead of a country that tolerates religious freedom. They want this in response to a region of the world with a well armed jewish country and well armed islamic countries. They want a god square off complete with armies and weapons of mass destruction.

It is insanity?

So naturally, one might say, I hate god!

i appreciate your thoughts. if i can gather some of mine, for whatever they are worth...the us and them mentality (in the christian world i knew) (from birth) was not centered around (or divided by) race or nationality or military might. it was a case (another case?) of this is the one true organization of god, and you shall be no part of the world. we learned of the nazi camps (for one thing) and if it should ever come to it...one must stand up and face death. all the wars and riots were signs that the end of the world (not the earth, but the old world) was at hand. culminating in the great battle of har meggido. if one wasn't part of the organization, one was considered lost. and the end was always near. i would look around and like people (they did not seem evil to me) who were not part of the organization and had trouble wrapping my head around it, that unless they would buy into all of the dogma (that i myself didn't quite understand), they were lost. there are gaps that are hard for me to fill in,,, but i had trouble understanding all this, and still somehow i felt i was wrong, and so i figured i must also be among the "lost". because even though i was "there" i didn't really get it. so i felt i was among the doomed.
it kind of messes with your head i guess, is what i am saying

I know exactly what you mean.

In my case it was even those that seemed to buy in (again the reference to Black America who often appeared quite christian but they were unacceptable in many of my social experiences) and I also remember seeing church sponsored anti-catholic films even though I had cousins who are catholic. In those days, they were actually the church of the devil (now catholics and evangelicals have even banded together with (oh no,not that) the jews). None of it made or makes sense!

Hidden in that old gospel tune (Woody knew it was there), (Oh, and what a clever place to hide it!), are the lines:

You've got to walk that lonesome valley
You've got to walk it by yourself (no mention of god)
Ain't nobody else can walk it for you
You've got to walk all by yourself (AGAIN: We're on our own!)

I was just listening to that song and I recall a verse like this:

Some people say John was a Baptist
Other People say he was a Jew
Oh the holy bible tells us
He was a preacher man too!

Don't know what that means?
Not really the strongest verse in the world, is it?

I hope, at the very least, it means what each individual thinks it means - not what somebody else proclaims it means.

Another verse:

Daniel was a bible hero
He was a prophet brave and true
In a den of hungry lions
He showed what faith can do for you.

Faith in what? [Maybe] faith in one's self?

It's a puzzlement for sure.

Either way, we get to decide.....or not decide.

Even if you believe in this sort of hoo doo voo doo nonsense, I still don't see how this justifies killing somebody who does not believe in the same hoo doo nonsense that you doo! You have to walk a lonesome valley but god gives you a free pass if you kill in his name? take one of the other god's people out and hocus pocus here is your get out of hell free card!

(That Mississippi John get down though! DAMN!)

Yes, he does!

I hope you're not misunderstanding me........

I have not disagreed with anything you've said so far. I don't buy no HOO-DOO-VOO-DOO. Don't even shop 'round there.

I was just talkin to the rhetorical self there

Gotta love that guy

i remember the phrase "the devil's house"!
so i see a church and i am like, "so is that 'the devil's house'?" with such a straight forward blunt question for a sunny drive in the country i guess, i wonder if i was even 7, the answer a sort of haltingly, sort of, "mm-hmm" which i was plainly trying to wrap my head around, just mystified me to the point of being humourous i am pretty sure.

but hey, i got a small porcelain disc my grandmom painted, a simple country scene
includes one of them quaint little country churches (denomination unknown)sort of in the back, and an entrance into the scene as a whole, is one of them firewood fences i guess you could call it, etc...anyway, i really like it...go figure?