{"id":28155,"date":"2014-02-04T03:11:52","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T06:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=28155"},"modified":"2016-10-01T23:41:52","modified_gmt":"2016-10-02T02:41:52","slug":"airman-on-being-an-atheist-in-the-military-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/04\/airman-on-being-an-atheist-in-the-military-video\/","title":{"rendered":"Airman on Being an Atheist in the Military (Video)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An Air Force Airman posting as &#8220;A1C Venom&#8221; has started a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/A1Cvenom\">YouTube page<\/a> in which he comments on various issues of religion, including &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/3GQxNlSgeo4\">Atheism in the Military<\/a>.&#8221; His video is calmly presented and not altogether unbalanced, though a few of his comments are confusing, leading one to wonder if he actually understands some of what he&#8217;s saying or how well informed he is.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3GQxNlSgeo4?list=PLxUdDVC8NRNpiwWp07EOk2Bz4SdyPEnbI\" height=\"315\" width=\"560\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>For example, he states at the beginning of the video that he&#8217;s &#8220;seen a lot of discrimination&#8221; as an atheist in the military, yet he doesn&#8217;t provide a <em>single<\/em> example of discrimination. He <em>does<\/em> talk about prayer at military events (which he feels is <!--more-->improper but not a big deal), but prayer at military events isn&#8217;t &#8220;discrimination.&#8221; It&#8217;s possible he simply misunderstands what that word means &#8212; a <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/30\/words-have-meaning-discrimination-in-a-post-dadt-world\/\">regrettably common problem<\/a>. Similarly, he says at one point that Airman aren&#8217;t supposed to talk about their faith at work &#8212; but then a moment later says they have free speech and <em>can<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, he talks about &#8220;problems&#8221; with troops engraving &#8220;Bible verses and Christian crosses on their weapons,&#8221; providing &#8220;propaganda for jihadists&#8221; &#8212; but that appears to be a gross misunderstanding of <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/27\/jesus-rifles-and-the-trijicon-sword-drill\/\">the Trijicon &#8220;scandal.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A1C Venom similarly talks about Mormonism, hell, and the &#8220;flaws of Christianity&#8221; in other videos.<\/p>\n<p>While he clearly presents himself as an Air Force Airman, he is absolutely free to express his views on religion, even if those views are negative &#8212; just as <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/02\/air-force-atheist-ponders-spiritual-fitness-officially\/\">other atheists in the military have<\/a>. There is no reasonable expectation that &#8220;morale, good order and discipline&#8221; will be impacted because an Airman gets on YouTube and criticizes Christianity, or even because he chooses to comment on his perceptions of how the military deals with religion.<\/p>\n<p>As to his errors, therein lies the benefits of free speech in America. Any person is free to state their case, and others are free to support, correct, or rebut their position.<\/p>\n<p>A1C Venom&#8217;s videos also provide further evidence that troops have, and express, a wide variety of views &#8212; and the mission still happens.<\/p>\n<p>As an aside, its interesting to see the atheist Airman appearing to wear <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/23\/veterans-affairs-adds-thors-hammer-to-approved-symbol-list\/\">Thor&#8217;s Hammer<\/a> around his neck.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-layout=\"standard\" data-action=\"like\" data-size=\"small\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-share=\"true\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>ADVERTISEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- blogpost --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-format=\"auto\" data-ad-slot=\"2728423835\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6450825356098669\"><\/ins><script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Air Force Airman posting as &#8220;A1C Venom&#8221; has started a YouTube page in which he comments on various issues of religion, including &#8220;Atheism in the Military.&#8221; His video is calmly presented and not altogether unbalanced, though a few of his comments are confusing, leading one to wonder if he actually understands some of what he&#8217;s saying or how well [&#8230;]<\/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":[4609,134,20,23,96,2,11,10,171,4024,152],"class_list":["post-28155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-a1c-venom","tag-air-force","tag-atheism","tag-bible","tag-christian","tag-military","tag-prayer","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-thor","tag-trijicon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28155","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=28155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}