Rock Beyond Belief has an official statement from Fort Bragg saying they are allowed to be critical of organized religion. Chris Rodda explains how that happened.
So, why are we thanking Major Dowty? Well, because it was his blog post about his “concern” over the lyrics of a Rock Beyond Belief performer being picked up by FOX News that caused Fort Bragg officials to scrutinize the Rock Beyond Belief lineup and attempt to require additional promises from the performers and speakers that they would not be critical of religion.
But Justin stood his ground, as he always does, and got it in writing that the speakers and performers at Rock Beyond Belief can be critical of religion (just like the speakers at similar religious events are, by the very nature of the promotion of their beliefs, critical of non-religion or what they deem to be “false” religions).
The Christian Fighter Pilot (as Air Force Major Jonathan C. Dowty is not-always-fondly known) made a boo-boo. This is good.
If any of you are able to get to Rock Beyond Belief, do. They need a big turn-out. Go hang out with a bunch of foxhole atheists and other good people.
“If any of you are able to get to Rock Beyond Belief, do. They need a big turn-out. Go hang out with a bunch of foxhole atheists and other good people.”
Then again, you might just be cosying up to people who are such wonderously critical thinkers that – at the behest of a religious loon, no less, and largely in the interests of American capital – they allow themselves to be transported thousands of miles away to drop bombs on women and children, kill people they’ve never even met before, torture those taken as prisoners in their (self-defined) ‘war’, piss on the corpses of their victims, and wipe out entire families on murderous rampages.
But hey, when you’re a ‘new’ atheist and desperate for respectibility and acceptance and, well, just friends, you can’t be too choosy about who you associate with.
Oh yes? And who are you, exactly?
You do realize that soldiers don’t actually make foreign policy, I hope. You realize that foreign policy, diplomacy, what wars to fight and what wars to avoid, are all decided by civilian governments in the US, I hope. You also realize that not all of them behave badly (that’s an understatement), I hope.
But maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re really that thick.
“i weigh up this is good,strange & appreciating…..there is no doubt in this that we are instantly in that kindly of world where wer come athwart poles apart and peculiar things 🙂