{"id":8813,"date":"2011-01-03T01:20:49","date_gmt":"2011-01-03T06:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=8813"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:15:37","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:15:37","slug":"military-atheists-stretch-for-something-to-be-offended-by","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/03\/military-atheists-stretch-for-something-to-be-offended-by\/","title":{"rendered":"Atheists Stretch for Something to be Offended By"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the Christmas season it is not unusual to hear the controversy over whether “Merry Christmas” is being intentionally censored or avoided.\u00a0 Regardless of your political or religious persuasion, there are some ridiculous examples of scornful<\/a> “Merry Christmas” retorts to what may be sincere well wishes expressed in the “wrong” words of “Happy Holidays.”\u00a0 Some have rightly said that some Merry Christmas-ers are just looking for something to get twisted over.<\/p>\n

Likewise, atheists now have their own manufactured cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Global Assessment Tool (GAT) Soldier Fitness Tracker (SFT) is part of the Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness initiative<\/a>.\u00a0 It is designed to help Soldiers self-assess their Emotional, Social, Family, and Spiritual resiliency.\u00a0\u00a0Atheists have taken umbrage at the “Spiritual” section, claiming the Army is judging fitness to serve.<\/p>\n

Atheist organizations are now stepping all over each other in their calls for the Army to pull the survey and its supporting training materials.\u00a0 The Freedom From Religion Foundation stole much of the thunder<\/a>, though the Christian Post<\/em> did an adequate job of debunking their claims in a fairly short article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The assessment has a section titled \u201cSpiritual Fitness\u201d that questions soldiers on their personal support systems, motivation, and methods of dealing with stress, among other things…<\/p>\n

Contrary to FFRF\u2019s claims, the program does attempt to acknowledge and cater to the beliefs of secular soldiers. According to the training manual, spirituality and the human spirit is defined, for the program purposes, as “the essential core of the person.”…<\/p>\n

Army chaplains trained last month to participate in the CSF\u2019s spiritual fitness initiative say it is about protecting soldiers\u2019 mental health in the event of a traumatic experience, not conversion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That hasn’t stemmed the atheists’ righteous indignation, however.<\/p>\n

In fact, Kathleen Johnson (1SG, US Army, Retired) works for American Atheists and is also a US Army government civilian.\u00a0 After learning of this “offensive” survey — which she was not required to take as a civilian — she said she used her official access<\/a> to voluntarily take and publish aspects of the publicly inaccessible material.<\/p>\n

The Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, which Johnson founded and is now run by Jason Torpy, has posted large portions of the material associated with the survey.\u00a0 It, too, shows the bias and presumptive scorn the atheists have about the military and religion.<\/p>\n

For example, according to the data posted on its site, the MAAF takes issue with a discussion on ‘water washing’ in the Army’s training material:<\/p>\n

The Rituals section devotes two paragraphs on how washing with water, like in a shower, can be a useful cleansing ritual. This emphasis, the second largest section after flag folding, speaks directly to Christian baptism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note the hypersensitivity to Christianity despite the fact Christianity isn’t even the topic<\/em> — in fact, the opposite<\/em> could be true.\u00a0 Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Shintoism, to name a few religions, actually use<\/em>\u00a0water in a “cleansing ritual.”\u00a0 Christians are actually divided, with Catholics and some liturgical denominations viewing water as a “cleansing ritual,” while the rest of Christianity does not.\u00a0\u00a0Still, Torpy’s MAAF is so myopically focused on its offense at Christianity that it categorically assigns to all of Christianity a belief it doesn’t even universally hold — while other religions are ignored.<\/p>\n

The MAAF also conveniently misses the fact that cleansing as a religious ritual was long preceded by cleansing as, well, a means of cleansing.\u00a0 Apparently atheists are happy to claim\u00a0Christmas is actually appropriated from paganism<\/a>, but they’ll pass on pointing out that water was used for cleaning long before religions used it ritually.<\/p>\n

Not to be left out, there are grumblings Michael Weinstein’s MRFF may also be weighing in.\u00a0 It’s been almost exactly a year since Weinstein’s last lawsuit against the military was tossed out<\/a> before even making it to trial.\u00a0 Perhaps another futile public relations prop cleverly disguised as a viable judicial case is in the making.\u00a0 Look for a press release on a Tuesday to Thursday, a slow news day, with buzzwords about handing Islamic extremists ‘propaganda’ and Christians ‘crusaders’ trying to take over the world.<\/p>\n

The Truth of the Matter<\/strong><\/p>\n

The “scandal” over the Army’s SFT would be a tempest in a teapot — if it was a tempest at all. Instead, its an imagined (or contrived) offense.\u00a0 It is no different than someone accusing the Wal-Mart greeter of being anti-Christian because they said “Happy Holidays.”<\/p>\n

The purpose of the survey is to assess meaning, connection, and purpose — period.\u00a0 Meaning, connection, and purpose are\u00a0directly linked to the Army’s desire to support\u00a0“resiliency” and mental health — which are directly linked to its fight against the increasing tide of suicide<\/a>.\u00a0 Even apart from religion, the positives of someone feeling their life has meaning, a connection with others, and purpose are obvious on their face.<\/p>\n

The US Army daily sends thousands of 18 to 20-somethings out in teams of varying sizes, armed with lethal equipment and authorized to use it.\u00a0 Those same men will eventually return to the United States and try to find “normal” again.\u00a0 If statistics are correct, an abnormally high percentage of them will take their own lives.\u00a0 The Army is fighting an uphill battle in stemming suicides<\/a>, and helping Soldiers understand the value<\/em> of their own lives — their meaning<\/em>, purpose<\/em>, and connection<\/em> — is a reasonable, noble, and secular <\/em>effort to that end.<\/p>\n

The decision by atheists to manufacture offense over this assessment is opportunistic and selfish, and it detracts from the Army’s purpose:\u00a0 It is one tool in a kit designed to do what it can to save the lives of American Soldiers who have sacrificed so much already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the Christmas season it is not unusual to hear the controversy over whether “Merry Christmas” is being intentionally censored or avoided.\u00a0 Regardless of your political or religious persuasion, there are some ridiculous examples of scornful “Merry Christmas” retorts to what may be sincere well wishes expressed in the “wrong” words of “Happy Holidays.”\u00a0 Some have rightly said that some […]<\/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":[88,20,4,166,1307,73,44,253,39,235,107,85,2,5218,7,76,167,1306,917],"class_list":["post-8813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-army","tag-atheism","tag-churchandstate","tag-comprehensive-soldier-fitness","tag-freedom-from-religion-foundation","tag-hindu","tag-islam","tag-jason-torpy","tag-jewish","tag-kathleen-johnson","tag-maaf","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-pagan","tag-resilience","tag-spiritual","tag-suicide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8813","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=8813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}