From Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Antonio McElroy, speaking about Justin Griffith and Rock Beyond Belief:
“All the chaplains on post are under orders not to speak about the atheist festival. But off the record… Sgt. Griffith is doing the work of Satan himself.“
Damn it, they’re on to us! Satan would have been there himself that day, but the rain tends to put the flames out.
17 comments
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peterh
April 28, 2012 at 9:14 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Gotta maintain the delusion at all costs.
Michael Heath
April 28, 2012 at 9:22 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Lt. Col. McElroy’s comment is flat-out funny from a handful of perspectives.
DaveL
April 28, 2012 at 9:26 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Not commenting on the atheist festival: you’re doing it wrong.
Off the record: you’re doing it wrong.
shouldbeworking
April 28, 2012 at 9:29 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“All the chaplains on post are under orders not to speak about the atheist festival. But off the record… Sgt. Griffith is doing the work of Satan himself.”
I must misunderstand the concept of under orders.
frankb
April 28, 2012 at 9:42 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This whole satan thing is really being over done. When I was young Flip Wilson made us laugh saying, “The Devil made me do it.” Forty years later adults are still talking about the Devil as if he is real. Chaplain McElroy is counseling men with guns??
sailor1031
April 28, 2012 at 9:44 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Didn’t McElroy organize the christian rock festival at Ft Bragg in 2010? I guess he doesn’t like competition any more than he likes following orders.
Michael Heath
April 28, 2012 at 10:22 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
frankb writes:
Bob Altemeyer’s research reveals it’s a standard reaction by fundamentalist Christians who are right wing authortarians, where those two sets largely overlap within the adult subsets.
Altemeyer’s observations are consistent with my personal experience. The assertion Satan is controlling the other person is often a defense mechanism used by these types of Christians to avoid the threat of cognitive dissonance. I.e., facts are being presented within a dialogue which the Christian denies, so “Satan is blinding you from the Truth” is presented to shut down debate and allow the Christian to impotently flee while maintaining their delusions.
The last time it was thrown at me was when I was having an email dialogue with someone I know well where I was explaining the convincing evidence for common descent, e.g., the presence and patterns of mammalian ERVs which humans share. This person is a YEC and most concerning which motivated me to engage, a public school administrator. This person maintains their delusion they aren’t anti-science while denying all scientific findings which contradict their inerrantist belief and interpretation of the Bible, which is consistent with Sarah Palin’s beliefs [This person is a Palinbot as well, in spite of having a bachelor and master's degree in education - an illustrative example of how defective our current college curriculum is in teaching teachers how to think at even a level middle school kids are ready to develop.]
raven
April 28, 2012 at 10:30 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Satan is an atheist? Who knew? In the OT, satan is god’s buddy, the Adversary. You’d think he would believe his friend god exists, after all they hang out together often and tortured poor Job for fun.
You have to be a xian to believe in satan, although roughly half of all xians don’t bother anymore. Satan is part of their mythology.
To an atheist or anyone from a non-Magic Book religion e.g. Hindus, Buddhists, Pagans, satan is just an imaginary character in an ancient book of mostly fiction. Satan is as real as Yahweh, which is to say, not at all.
grumpyoldfart
April 28, 2012 at 10:51 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You Americans make me laugh.
raven
April 28, 2012 at 10:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s even funnier when you realize we have half the world’s supply of nuclear weapons.
Shawn Smith
April 28, 2012 at 11:31 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And that we are the only country to actually initiate any nuclear events with the intent of killing as many civilians as possible. Hi-fucking-larious.
And to pick a nit, according to This site, which claims to get its figures from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in 2010, Americans had closer to 37% of the combined Russian / American active stockpiles. But your point isn’t substantially wrong.
KG
April 28, 2012 at 12:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Surely Hell’s cadre is up to the task of producing a flame-resistant umbrella and raincoat? I think he just had a hot date, and put you off with an excuse.
Pinky
April 28, 2012 at 6:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Screw this beating around the bush talking about Satan this and Satan that, say it in plain language: “Our bogeyman will get you.”
peterh
April 28, 2012 at 8:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“…initiate any nuclear events with the intent of killing as many civilians as possible.
”
More in the order of doing it as quickly as possible and avoiding a wider-spread and longer-lasting carnage with commensurately higher casualties on both sides. Horrible, yes, but no more horrible than the alternative; “running up the score” was not an objective.
KG
April 29, 2012 at 3:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Nonsense. Having lost the Dutch East Indies, Japan would have run out of oil, rubber and tin within months. No invasion would have been necessary, and this was known at the time. The only possible excuse was the danger that POWs might have been massacred, and agreeing to the Emperor retaining his position (as the Americans did anyway not long after) if and only if they were kept safe would have ensured that this did not happen. The lie is given to any such claim as yours by the nuking of Nagasaki just three days after Hiroshima, and one day after the Soviet declaration of war on Japan.
Walton
April 29, 2012 at 9:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Bollocks. There is never an excuse for deliberately killing civilians. Ever. You’re engaging in apologetics for mass murder. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were atrocities; so were the carpet-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo. Men died. Women died. Children died. Painfully, horribly, in huge numbers, for nothing other than being the wrong nationality and in the wrong place at the wrong time. I get so fed up with “patriotic” Brits and Americans who are so blinded by national loyalties that they’ll defend everything the Allies did during WWII.
birgerjohansson
April 30, 2012 at 4:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If there had been an isolated big military installation/naval base several km from civilian settlements, it would have been an appropriate target.
Hiroshima had lots of soldiers, but the barracks were intermingled with civilian parts of the city, on the scale relevant for a Hiroshima-size bomb.
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Since atheists rarely hang out with Satan Mc Elroy might have been thinking of N’yarl-lath-hoteph* or some other Elder God.
*But he is more associated with flutes