Posted on 01/01/2011 2:50:50 PM PST by wmfights
Atheist organization Freedom from Religion Foundation demanded the Army halt a spiritual fitness program designed to combat stress because its diagnostic tool allegedly promotes religion.
FFRF Co-Presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote a letter to Army Secretary John McHugh Wednesday to protest the “spiritual fitness” assessment of the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. The co-presidents say statements in the mandatory “spiritual fitness” evaluation tramples on the freedoms of nonbelievers.
The spiritual statements include: “I am a spiritual person;” “My life has lasting meaning;” and “I believe there is a purpose for my life.”
Barker and Gaylor called the assessment of nonspiritual soliders “deeply offensive and inappropriate.”
“By definition, nontheists do not believe in deities, spirits, or the supernatural. The Army may not send the morale-deflating message to nonbelievers that they are lesser soldiers, much less imply they are somehow incomplete, purposeless or empty,” stated the letter.
The Army established CSF to address the increased stress induced by sustained combat. The program is meant to enhance the resilience, readiness and potential of soldiers, family members and Army civilians.
The CSF uses Global Assessment Test to diagnose the soldiers’ overall level of physical and mental fitness. The assessment has a section titled “Spiritual Fitness” that questions soldiers on their personal support systems, motivation, and methods of dealing with stress, among other things.
Besides the survey itself, FFRF also criticizes the curriculum for those who score low in the spiritual fitness as overtly religious. Soldiers in the programs are told that “prayer is for all individuals” and to seek out chaplain guidance, according to the group of freethinkers.
Yet contrary to FFRF’s 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.”
The manual does make mention of religious practices such as prayer and talking with a chaplain. However, it emphasizes that prayer can be quiet thinking time. It also emphasizes that soldiers can talk with a fellow soldier for support rather than chaplains.
Army chaplains trained last month to participate in the CSF’s spiritual fitness initiative say it is about protecting soldiers’ mental health in the event of a traumatic experience, not conversion.
"Most traumatic events have an element of soul wounding," said the Rev. Dr. Chrys Parker, an Army chaplain, in a statement about the training.
Parker asserts that chaplains are best equipped to deal with issues involving the soul.
"Quite frankly, the chaplains have the expertise on how to deal with the spiritual damage that is inherent in trauma," he said.
I so agree 1010RD!
It's a tad frustrating.
Thank you for your kind words....
The unholy trinity....
Thank you so much for your excellent observation!
Certainly I'm not a Hermes groupie! I had enuf of "occult" stuff with Alice Bailey's Arcane School — from which I departed in the mid-'80s.
But I do like the ring of "As above, so below."
Thank you so much for illuminating Hermes Trismegistus and Meister Eckhardt!
The funny thing about atheists is they know very well that God exists. How otherwise could they complain about Him/deny Him?
Thank you so very much for writing!
Thank you so very much for your kind words, dear TXnMA!
That’s certainly explicit.
“Define your little heart out.”
Meaning you don’t want to be pinned down. Might have to change some part of your identity in five minutes. Wall, nail, custard pie. You should run for political office.
“You didn’t understand what I was saying.”
Don’t put it off on me. You were quite general in your description of whom it is that subscribes to the idea of might equals right. Now you want to walk it back? Are you one of those who “rarely admit” that might equals right? Or, do you reject the concept? Don’t be a Mugwump on the subject . . . get your mug and your wump on the same side of the fence.
“I did not "rise to their defense."
Whom, then, is this “us” and this “we”? You claim you can’t speak for other Atheists, then you proceed to speak for other Atheists. There is such a thing as plausible denial. You don’t have it. It appears that indeed you do rise to the defense of Atheists. Perhaps you mean that it’s merely a vehicle for attacking Christians. Now that is plausible.
“I don't care who else has said it.”
Of course you do. It’s just that if you recognize it, you might have to deal with it. Better to be like a goose . . . every time you open your eyes, it’s a brand new world. When did you come up with this idea of ‘appeal to authority’? Three days ago? Another couple of days and it will lapse into history. Then you’ll have to find something else.
Now it’s time for you to close your eyes and open them again on a brand new world.
It’s been my experience that most discussions of Atheism being the cause of brutality does not center on Atheism as a cause of brutality, but rather is in response to charges of brutality lodged against Christianity, pointing out that, where Atheistic regimes have had the opportunity, no regimes have trumped them for the degree and the extent of their brutality (witness the Soviet Empire, Pol Pot, etc). If you want your case to be plausible, it has to be stated accurately.
With respect to seeking improvement in man’s treatment of his fellow man, I ask you who is it that has labored for a thousand years to regulate the issues of the meaning of lawful war, the origins of war, the avarice and cruelty of war, the treatment of prisoners, when the right of conquest and the claiming of the spoils of war are just and when they are not, the rights of discovery and the treatment of native peoples, the securing of peace as the prime objective of war, questions of maritime law, redress for injuries, restitution of property and recompense for wrongs done, and the laws of embassy and envoys. Asian despots? Atheistic socialist tyrannies? If you’re gagging on the answer, I will spare you the agony and provide it for you: Christian Western Civilization.
“And as I have said about five times now on this thread, I am against the military making spiritual counseling M-A-N-D-A-T-O-R-Y. I hope not to have to say it yet again.”
And I don’t know how many times you’ve been told that M-A-N-D-A-T-O-R-Y spiritual counseling does not exist in the military. Rather it is part of a M-A-N-D-A-T-O-R-Y personnel evaluation and is included where relevant. But I’m sure you’ll find it M-A-N-D-A-T-O-R-Y to continue your shibboleth. You have nothing else. You portray yourself a most reasonable moderate, able to see all sides of every issue and to render justice in so evenhanded a manner as to excite the admiration of Christ himself. Yet you accuse Christians (and no one else that I know of) of being superiorist. Christians state their convictions without reservation. If they held any other beliefs than what they do, they would defend those. Tell me, do you do any less yourself? If you do less, how can we be sure that anything you say is genuine?
If I may chime in here, you know the difference between between a happy, thriving culture and a pile of murdered bodies, but your atheism precludes you from being able to give any coherent account of it. Moral obligation or any kind of moral incumbency cannot be derived from a world that is imagined to be the product of impersonal, accidental concatenations of physical forces and causes.
How do you account for (in the world you purport to be the actual world) your taking for granted that certain physical entities with certain physical attributes "ought" to do certain things and not do other things to other physical things? It seems to me that a consistent atheist would be limited to giving descriptive accounts of what has happened in the past, and refrain from any imaginary prescriptive assumptions about why any organism or society of organisms ought to be moral in the future.
For example when you say, as in post 108, that we should obey "higher laws" because some of them will make our society safer, more civil, more comfortable, more conducive to human happiness and survival, I say, compared to what? To what world are you referring - the hypothetical world that is the product of impersonal, accidental physical forces and causes, where mental events are solely caused by physical events, or the world inhabited by the other part of you in which people who do not fulfill their obligations are not just stupid, weak, or unlucky?
I would like someday to hear a coherent atheist account of the notion that a physical event that does not perform what in the atheist world view can only be an imaginary duty is defective in some meaningful way and deserves a negative judgment. The whole idea of defect or dysfunction or something not operating as it ought is relative to purposes or goals. But the atheist world wasn't designed with any purpose or goal in mind - it was just a gigantic accident. So what is the atheist account of an organism functioning "properly" or as it "ought"?
The long and short of it is why shouldn't we say, on your own terms, that this talk of "murderous societies" and "moral sophistication" is just fiction?
Cordially,
Counseling without reference to God is hollow and meaningless, as they discovered in the old Soviet Union. The USSR was a country full of drunks but the government forbade 12-step programs because of the “higher power” stuff; their atheistic drug and alcohol programs were useless.
In theory it is possible to treat an abstract, completely secular idea as a “higher power” for the sake of a 12-step program (I’m reminded of Christopher on the Sopranos wanting to use the traditions of the Mafia as his higher power) but those are equally hollow. No one wants to turn to an abstraction for comfort.
Diamond: “when you say, as in post 108, that we should obey “higher laws” because some of them will make our society safer, more civil, more comfortable, more conducive to human happiness and survival, I say, compared to what?”
Spirited: Essentially, there are two antithetical classes in contemporary America. In his book “America’s Ruling Class...” Angelo Codevilla identifies them as the Country Class and the Ruling Class.
However imperfectly, the Country Class has nevertheless retained its faith in God the Father and believes that all people are subject to His universal moral law. The County Class is thus the repository of America’s founding Biblical-based philosophical worldvie.
Whether it speaks of a God or not, the Ruling Class is at bottom atheist. Believing itself scientific, enlightened and progressive, it elevates Autonomous Will to the position of First Principle, therefore it need not adhere to any rules and moral law it disbelieves in for Autonomous Will invents meaning, pseudo-morality, and rules per desire and need. It transgresses freely upon all that the Country Class holds sacred.
A_perfect_lady posited Higher Law not because it is a sacred benchmark to which all should adhere but rather because the Ruling Class trembles in fear at the thought that the Country Class...which is the majority...will finally become as lawless as the Ruling Class. “Inviolable law for thou but not for me,” is the mantra of the Ruling Class.
How can an atheist say anything about "oughts"? The atheist evidently rules out any idea of telos — of ends, purposes, goals operating in nature (inclusive of human nature, individual and social) — probably because he rightly suspects that to admit such would "somehow" drag God back into the picture.... And this cannot be allowed!
Diamond, thank you so very much for your excellent essay/post!
Bravo Diamond, Bravo!
How? Why, dear betty, by virtue of the ”stolen concept.” Perhaps with the occasional small assistance of what I call the “smuggled concept.”
Stolen Concept The fallacy of the act of using a concept while ignoring, contradicting or denying the validity of the concepts on which it logically and genetically depends.” – Nathaniel Brandon - January, 1963, from The Objectivist Newsletter.
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