Jason Torpy, the one-man Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, is an atheist and former Army officer.\u00a0 While his MAAF is ostensibly a “community support network,” he recently revealed the true motivation behind his ideology.<\/p>\n
In a recent display of internet frustration, Torpy took fellow atheists to task for not banding together and being “anti-” enough.\u00a0 The context was a comment that people don’t join groups for things they don’t believe in, spoken by Neil deGrasse Tyson<\/a>, a self-described agnostic (who says he is “often claimed by atheists”):<\/p>\n Do non-golf players gather and strategize? Do non-skiers…come together and talk about the fact that they don’t ski? I can’t do that. I can’t gather around and talk about how much everybody in the room doesn’t believe in God.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is the same point raised by many people\u00a0for\u00a0precisely the same reason, including\u00a0here<\/a>, and when military atheists have demanded “equal” representation in the chaplaincy<\/a> (for the apparent intent of being anti-religious).\u00a0 Atheists demanding the government provide them with a “religious” leader is like non-soccer players demanding a school provide them with a non-soccer coach.\u00a0 Even atheists’ own pithy retorts — used when critics accuse them of acting like a “religion” — work against them.<\/p>\n Well, you get the idea, anyway.<\/p>\n The point is Jason Torpy took serious issue with this position when he said:<\/p>\n All this ‘non-skiers’ crap is nonsense. Abolitionists came together and talked about how much they ‘didn’t believe’ in slavery.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The irony of Torpy comparing himself to a movement largely motivated by its Christian faith\u00a0is probably lost on him.\u00a0 That aside, his logic is a farce.\u00a0 Abolitionists didn’t come together to talk about their lack of belief in slavery; they were motivated by their belief in the evil <\/em>of slavery and their opposition <\/em>to it.\u00a0 But Torpy’s next sentence was most revealing [emphasis added]:<\/p>\n It’s necessary to come together as a group and be an anti-something <\/strong><\/em>when ‘something’ needs <\/em><\/strong>a group of people to come toegether against it<\/em><\/strong>. [sic<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And there’s the revelation.\u00a0 Jason Torpy isn’t an atheist; or, at least, he’s not only <\/em>an atheist. He’s an anti<\/em><\/strong>-theist.\u00a0 Many have said that some atheists spend an awful lot of time hating on something (“bullying” would be the term in vogue)\u00a0they don’t believe in; Torpy solidifies the point by demonstrating he’s actually anti<\/em><\/strong>-religion, not merely a<\/strong><\/em>religious.<\/p>\n More importantly, he clearly states his belief that his fellow “atheists” need to “come together against” religion.\u00a0 As a former soldier who targets the military with his ideology, Jason Torpy isn’t advocating the virtue of reason; he’s proactively opposing <\/em>religion.<\/p>\n If ever there was doubt that Jason Torpy — the “president” of his MAAF — was “anti-religion,” as opposed to just an “atheist” wanting to be treated consistently with his “faith,” he’s just removed it.<\/p>\n By his own admission, Jason Torpy is\u00a0not an advocate for <\/em>atheism; he’s a political activist against <\/em>religion.<\/p>\n His attacks, however, rate high on the irony scale.\u00a0 As an American citizen, he’s free to evangelize his beliefs and convert as many people as he wants.\u00a0 However, when he tries to use the state to accomplish targeted government actions based purely on religious belief, his actions are contrary to the US Constitution.\u00a0 His actions neither defend religious freedom nor promote free exercise.<\/p>\n Just like the examples above, when Jason Torpy demanded the cross be torn out of Arlington National Cemetery<\/a>\u00a0— something so extreme even the ACLU doesn’t agree —\u00a0his demand had no neutral or secular purpose;\u00a0it was only because of his opposition to its association with religion<\/em>.\u00a0 Getting the government to take action based on religious belief is precisely what many of his fellow atheists claim they are trying to prevent <\/em>the US government from doing.<\/p>\n To be fair, then, Torpy’s analogy of abolitionists may not have been too far from the mark.\u00a0 He, too, seeks abolition, with one minor difference:\u00a0he seeks the abolition of a constitutionally-protected human liberty.<\/p>\n To his credit, at least Jason Torpy hasn’t hidden behind semantics in the name of his organization, which is named as a group of atheists.\u00a0 On the other hand, Michael Weinstein and his “Religious Freedom” foundation have not only failed to defend <\/em>religious freedom, Weinstein has actually explicitly opposed religious freedom<\/a> and raised money at its expense<\/a>, despite his repeated claims to the contrary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jason Torpy, the one-man Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, is an atheist and former Army officer.\u00a0 While his MAAF is ostensibly a “community support network,” he recently revealed the true motivation behind his ideology. In a recent display of internet frustration, Torpy took fellow atheists to task for not banding together and being “anti-” enough.\u00a0 The context was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[3236,134,2442,1490,88,20,23,891,5284,4,162,253,107,85,2,5218,7,17,10,171],"class_list":["post-17605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-abolition","tag-air-force","tag-argonne","tag-arlington","tag-army","tag-atheism","tag-bible","tag-camp-pendleton","tag-chaplain","tag-churchandstate","tag-cross","tag-jason-torpy","tag-maaf","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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