{"id":7809,"date":"2010-10-27T00:35:56","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T06:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=7809"},"modified":"2011-02-27T22:20:42","modified_gmt":"2011-02-28T03:20:42","slug":"fort-bragg-atheist-celebration-gets-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/27\/fort-bragg-atheist-celebration-gets-complicated\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Bragg Atheist Celebration Gets…Complicated"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Fort Bragg Freedom Festival, the atheist response to the evangelistic Rock the Fort<\/a>, has previously been discussed.\u00a0 How, precisely, it will be executed appears to have gotten…complicated.<\/p>\n

For one thing, the “Freedom Festival” Facebook page now says it is (emphatically) “no longer associated” with its own website:\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The website www.ftbraggfreedomfestival.com is no longer affiliated with the Freedom Festival. Soon it will be redirected to promote another event that does NOT have any connection to the Freedom Festival.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The new website appears to be\u00a0the not-at-all confusing www.ftbraggfreedomfest.com, which, while still under construction, currently looks exactly like their old site.\u00a0 All of these announcements have been made by Geri Weaver, who is apparently the ‘organizer’ of the Cape Fear Atheists\u00a0and Agnostics<\/a> in the Fort Bragg area.\u00a0 (Weaver has been in the news before, complaining to the ACLU when her child brought a Bible home from school<\/a>.)\u00a0 CFAA is presenting itself as the ‘sponsor’ of the event.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the original site is being replaced by Rock Beyond Belief<\/a>, which, aside from the name change, is also identical to the original effort — and the new site.<\/p>\n

Interesting text has also been added to the group’s Facebook page.\u00a0 For one thing, the Freedom Festival reportedly has “support” from the Fort Bragg MWR to host their event, including access to the main parade field — assuming they meet the requisite attendance numbers.\u00a0 At this point, then, it appears Fort Bragg is allowing this festival the same access as Rock the Fort.<\/p>\n

Further, the organizers said the event is a<\/p>\n

celebration of our 1st Amendment Right which states that the government “may not penalize or discriminate against any individual or group of individuals because of their religious views nor may it compel persons to affirm to any particular beliefs”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, which<\/em> part of the First Amendment, exactly, is quoted?\u00a0 For those that are a little rusty:<\/p>\n

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They might need to rethink their wording.\u00a0 In addition, a post by “Audrey”\u00a0said<\/p>\n

Having the event on the main parade field will show that the Army is not afraid to support the right of 20% of its community who have “no religious preference” or who declare themselves atheist, agnostic, etc. [sic<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Problem is, that’s fun with numbers.\u00a0 The misrepresentation of the “20%” to which Audrey makes reference has already been explained<\/a>, but the short version is that declared atheist\/agnostics make up 0.5%<\/em> of the Armed Forces.\u00a0 An additional 22.9% do not declare anything<\/em>, which does not<\/em> mean they are atheists or agnostics.<\/p>\n

Repeated anecdotes detail how Jews in the military use “no religious preference” on their dogtags to avoid persecution if they’re captured; Nidal Malik Hasan<\/a> was also one of those “20%” who declared\u00a0“no preference.”\u00a0 While there are almost certainly atheists\/agnostics in that group, the evident presence of other faiths makes it\u00a0intellectually dishonest to imply that 22.9% of the military needs\u00a0an atheistic event on an Army parade field to feel their rights are supported.<\/p>\n

Audrey was stretching in an apparent unwarranted bid for legitimacy.\u00a0 The fact the Army would provide support for an event with which only 0.5% of the military declares ideological association is impressive and positive by itself.<\/p>\n

To return to the point, in the end, it is difficult to\u00a0tell if there is a single or two separate atheist events vying for support at Fort Bragg, though a concerted effort is certainly underway.\u00a0 Any public event like this will certainly have challenges, and theirs is no exception.<\/p>\n

Hopefully they’ll achieve their stated objective of an event that ‘celebrates’ rather than ‘denigrates,’ though\u00a0they’ll have their challenges there, as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Fort Bragg Freedom Festival, the atheist response to the evangelistic Rock the Fort, has previously been discussed.\u00a0 How, precisely, it will be executed appears to have gotten…complicated. For one thing, the “Freedom Festival” Facebook page now says it is (emphatically) “no longer associated” with its own website:\u00a0<\/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":[20,1125,82,70,1023,85,2,10,171,1126],"class_list":["post-7809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-atheism","tag-cape-fear-atheists-and-agnostics","tag-constitution","tag-evangelism","tag-fort-bragg","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-rock-beyond-belief"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7809","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=7809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}