The US military has gathered up a collection of soldier’s bibles…and destroyed them. No word yet on whether Satan’s imps were observed dancing in the flames; I’m sure the wingnut news services will soon be melting down with hysterical tales.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This ought to be fun.
Important note, they destroyed( I almost wrote deleted :))the bibles that were translated into the local language, correct? Not the ones written in English for use by the soldiers themselves. So, any freak outs about religious repression can go ahead and stop before they start.
Oh boy. I can’t wait for the persecution posse to get in full swing over this.
Uh-oh. The Anti-Christ’s armies are on the move.
I can see them destroying the localized versions, but in my dozen years in the Army I could never ever imagine a situation where a soldier’s personal Bible (or torah, koran,etc) was taken away and/or destroyed. If this report is true then it’s corrective action to avoid potential IO problems with the locals.
Tinpinkinsin, I’m sure the kooks will still be outraged, that is the word of their lord after all. Lets just hope these conspirators are discharged. The effort in Afghanistan is too important for some ignoramus chaplain to ruin it.
http://www.TheNewAtheist.com
Uh-oh. The Anti-Christ’s armies are on the move.
A good start, but way short of the final goal.
Since bibles can’t be recycled, even as toilet paper (too much shit on the paper already), incineration would be the only option.
Clean up the world, burn a bible!
*sigh* – was a nice dream
Wow! Could this be an example of that long elusive quality thought completely non-existant called Military Intelligence? (I say this as a former vet.)
Except, of course, evangelical Christianity.
You are allowed to bring a Bible to boot camp. You may bring a holy book (Bible, Koran) with you; so, I am aure these soldiers are allowed a personal Bible.
These solders have forgotten their orders and should be disciplined but I doubt that will happen considering the fundies have been evangelising the Army and Air Force to the extent that other religious people have complained. And I wouldn’t be so sure these Bibles have actually been destroyed. They only said they destroyed them.
Wait a minute, I thought PZ’s ilk were Satan’s imps.
Be sure not to miss the poll with the article. It’s pretty special.
The way this was written, I was incensed. Who are they to be destroying soldiers’ reading material, no matter how vacuous?
Then I read the article and saw that the army had gathered up a soldier’s collection of bibles written in Pashto for the purpose of converting locals.
It’s more likely that they just don’t give a shit about their orders, Qwerty. After all, only Skippy can’t have his orders countermanded by God; the Evangelicals think the purpose of the army is to spread God’s word at the point of a gun (when they’re not thinning out the ranks of the incorrigible Darkies, that is).
It took me a minute to figure that out (before I read the link). I’m impressed the Army would be that…diplomatic in another country.
Oh, and what Qwerty/#11 said. Any pictures of the Bibles in tatters?
Oh crap, a sure sign of an early rapture! Burn a god’s holy insanity will you? Fire, brimstone, and a apocalypse of earth-smothering crackers will descend on you all. Screw the faithful, as they had it coming for causing those imaginary gods so much grief and ridicule from the rational hordes.
Do NOT read the comments on that article… the stupid will suck you in.
The wording of that headline is itself a “reaction”. At first glance it seems like these were the soldier’s personal Bibles, his fondly held possession and comfort in times of trouble, rather than being intended for distribution to the locals, and in a language he probably cannot read.
For every wingnut who objects to this, I want to know: were they equally outraged by the destruction of Korans belonging to prisoners at Guantanamo? (Those being at least, personal items of spiritual comfort).
i’ve got mixed feelings on this. on the one hand, i view it as a necessary corrective action. on the other hand, they’re still *books*, and i have a knee-jerk reaction to idea of burning books. and i do mean any books at all, not just ones i’d like
but since this is about getting rid of ONLY a specific translation (Pashto/Dari) in a specific area (Afghanistan) for a specific purpose (evangelism toward the locals), i guess i’ll just have to bite back my instinctive cry of outrage
ok that one hurt. I’m going to have to take a knee.
Man that was painful
If the soldiers were deliberately violating orders not to proselytize then merely destroying the Bibles falls a little short. The personnel involved should also have been subjected to disciplinary action.
Excellent strategy there. Convince the residents of Afghanistan that this is another xtian crusade. That should work out at least as well as the previous crusades, right?
There’s a poll there that needs a good crashing:
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Poll.aspx?ekfrm=517114
The penalty prescribed for leaving Islam is death.
Pretty brutal , but it is what it is.
In a place like Afghanistan, there would be swift action and a corpse with its head somewhere else for any converts.
So what are these fundies doing? Gaining converts with a life span measured in days? Also, to be sure, the local government was complaining. Bad enough to have mostly white xian foreign soldiers running around without having them try to undermine the local power base religion.
I think this is related to the al Jazeera article you blogged about the other day.
Here’s what CNN is saying: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/05/04/military.conversion/index.html
Oh wow, the Nazi “comparisons” will come thick and fast.
They burned (well, I’m pretty sure they didn’t burn them, really) the Holy Word of God. How could they do such a thing?
Because it’s never really about the law for the Bibliolaters, except where law and Bible agree. Or anyway, are said to agree.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Did anyone catch this part? It said right there in the article that the Bibles were destroyed by the chaplains. I wonder what the fundies would make of that, if they were capable of seeing anything but red once they read down that far.
Whew. That was a weird twisty thing in my brain that happened there. I did the same “Oh NO THEY DIDN’T” until I read the article, and then switched to “Well, ok then”. No, you cannot proselytize on the military’s dime and under their name. Sorry. I do agree that the headline is a huge problem.
Geez, the site of the original story is incredibly biased. Does anyone have a link to this story from something other than a reich-wing propaganda site?
The comments really are hilarious.
Good call by the military, the next step is just removing military chaplains altogether.
@25
…”gaining converts with a lifespan measured in days.”
Actually, yeah, or at least that’s what many of the Christians I know would say. It would be better for them to die, probably in a horrific and bloody way, and go to heaven rather than to live out their lives in a benign, productive, non-Christian fashion.
This whole weird thing about living for heaven so it doesn’t matter what happens on earth is most of the reason why I left the church.
I’m a little confused from the article. What’s the bottom line, were the Bibles destroyed or returned to the church by mail?
Regardless of what book it was, and without any intention to make comparisons, I feel very uncomfortable about book burning (even if it wasn’t literally burning).
Oh I am SO going over to Rapture Ready to watch their heads explode over this!
“come quickly Lord Jesus”
His arm must be getting tired.
I’m a little confused from the article. What’s the bottom line, were the Bibles destroyed or returned to the church by mail?
Regardless of what book it was, and without any intention to make comparisons, I feel very uncomfortable about book burning (even if it wasn’t literally burning).
Why waste time on stuff like this when there is a new Kurzweil book demanding to be reviewed? ;-)
Bleurgh. Anywhere those evangelicals can slime their way in, huh?
Well, there’s book-burning as a surrogate for burning writers and as an expression of loathing for an idea. And then there’s getting rid of redundant volumes (pulping is more usual.)The latter is just housekeeping.
Report back. I never go to those sites, afraid my head will explode.
Definitely some very strange xians running around. On anotther forum of my interests, unrelated to science or religion, a couple of posters are fundie xians. They occasionally get going about how they are Real Xians(tm). The Fake Xians(tm) are wasting their time and will go to hell anyway. Their tone is usually a mix of rabid hatred of Fake Xians(tm) mixed with sadistic glee. They have been asked to stay on topic and knock off the wingnut bigotry but it never works for long.
The comments are down rigth terrifying.
Did anyone catch this part? It said right there in the article that the Bibles were destroyed by the chaplains.
Obviously, those chaplains were fish-eating Catlickers, jello-eating Mormons, or homo-lovin’ Episcopalians. In other words, not True Christians TM.
The fundagelical right is suffering massive butthurt from the crushing defeats of ’06 and ’08. They’re ginning up the base with these inflammatory headlines, and I fear the return of the bad old days of the McVeigh/Rudolph wing of the Christian Identity movement.
“Report back. I never go to those sites, afraid my head will explode.”
Didn’t see anything on RR yet. The Freepers however are having a conniption.
Excellent, every day we grow stronger. Our evil plan shall soon come to fruition and we shall usher in our new age of eternal darkne… Oh, crap. Sorry, I forgot we’re not supposed to talk about that stuff outside of our secret meetings and ceremonial robes.
RC Nelson @ 24 – You’re right; that poll needs crashing bad!
The last answer (If this had been the Koran, this would have never happened.) is stupid. Who is going to pass out Korans in a land where the Koran exists as the holy book?
This poll gives a new twist to PZ’s “meaningless poll” diatribe as the last answer is “meaningless.”
Shonny (#8), a better use for Bibles would be education–as in getting these whackjobs to actually *read* the Bible seriously. It’s not for nothing that Penn said nothing’ll get you to atheism faster than reading the Bible.
I know…like you say–nice dream. But a fella can hope.
Yeah. Lucky Muslims. Why, even in US military run prisons like Abu Ghraib they get to do all kinds of fun things like make human pyramids, and wear Halloween ghost costumes any day of the year. And waterboarding? I don’t know what that is, but given that Gitmo is on the sea I’ll bet it’s all kinds of fun, just like surfboarding. I hear they even let kids as young as fifteen stay at the resort well into their twenties, while Christian kids have to go to stupid ol’ school.
But that’s political correctness for you. Just keepin’ the white man down.
You know, when I burn my Bibles I usually stoke the flames with a stack of Quarans. The smell is just divine.
onenewsnow.com also has a poll on this topic. I think it needs to be pharyngulated: http://www.onenewsnow.com/Poll.aspx?ekfrm=517114
That hed’s designed to inflame.
The bibles collected were transcribed into Pashto and Dari.
What makes proselytizing a forbidden activity is that in tribal afghanistan, shari’a laws may make forsakeing Islam a punishable offense. So is recruiting for any god but allah.
The USofA has enough trouble convinciuung the natives that wwe’re not on a crusade, and then there are these guys, or those descibed in Jeff Sharlet’s Harper’s mag piece this month,. Jesus Kills Mohammed. It’s not on-line yet, i doubt, but it’s at libraries, and it’s superb…
While I fundamentally oppose destroying books, if you’ve got to I can’t think of a better choice.
A simple case of possesion with intent to distribute. The violators need to be procecuted.
Last time I saw Satan’s imps in a fire, they weren’t dancing, just sitting around playing cards. Hey, even sStan’s imps are getting older.
How is it that nuanced response and military action never appear (except right now) in the same sentence. Book burning, even a reprehensible book, is not a laudatory act. Prosecute the proselytizers and recycle the paper. It appears that enforcement of a long standing policy against proselytizing is being met with a response calculated to inflame the ignorant rethuglagelical base. Do I hear black helicopters overhead?
The poll at #24 is way stupid.
Sponsored by the American Family Conference or some dumb shit.
DUMFUX! TOTAL DOUCHEBAG DUMFUCKERY!
It it had been Korans, there wouldn’t be a problem, would there?
Koran + Afghan Muslims = NO FUCKING PROBLEM, you dicheads…
#45 Qwerty
The last answer (If this had been the Koran, this would have never happened.) is stupid. Who is going to pass out Korans in a land where the Koran exists as the holy book?
Knowing the US Government, they would have sent them printed in English.
Yeah, I know – If you read the small print, these “Bibles” were sent to a soldier by a congregation in the US outside of the military/governement system.
I’m of two minds. One, thank goodness this was detected and prevented before we inflamed the entire Moslem world by trying to lure their followers into apostasy. “Bad PR” doesn’t begin to cover it.
On the other hand, Islam is about the most thin-skinned religion I can think of short of scientology, and their probable reaction to this is one more example of the worst aspects of religion, any religion.
Why can Jesus have sex all night long? Because he never comes.
On the other hand, Islam is about the most thin-skinned religion I can think of short of scientology,
Or “Christians!”
Remember the war on Xmas?
All patriarchal religions are ‘thin-skinned,’ as you put it. There are few outfits on the planet as thin-skinned as the acolytes and apostles of Tony Perkins, or Dobson, or Robertson, or Falwell, or Swaggart…
A bit of googling turned up the Al Jazeera English video that seems to have started the whole thing:
Well, the Rapture Ready people have noted it…just watch and see how that thread grows and how much hand-wringing they’ll do.
The Joint Chiefs Chairman said that the military would not “push any specific religion.”
They shouldn’t be pushing religion at all, specifically or generally.
That reminds me of an incident I observed in 1991.
One of my friends was joining the Louisiana National Guard. The recruiter was asking him questions for paperwork he was filling out.
One of the questions was something like, “What is your religion?” or “What is your religious preference?”
My friend said, “None.”
The recruiter paused and said, “I’m going to make you a Baptist,” and continued filling out the paperwork.
Here’s our armed forces hard at work hunting people for Jesus:
Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of the US military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility “to be witnesses for him”. He goes on to say:
“The special forces guys – they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down. Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That’s what we do, that’s our business.”
Who gives a shit? Islamic response isn’t the issue here; it’s the fact that there’s a very good reason why the US army, by law, isn’t in the practice of spreading religion to those it’s fighting or protecting, whether they’re spreading Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Jainism, Scientology, Christianity, of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. The fact that any potential apostates might die the next day because the Taliban is even more repulsive than the Evangelicals (who would’ve thought it possible?) just shows how stupidly selfish the average fundie Christian is.
If these stupid fucks want to crusade for Christ, they can eat a bullet and ask God to send ’em back to the Middle Ages.
There is just so much wrong with this all around.
It isn’t just Afghanistan. Soldiers are forbidden from evangelizing in any locale whne on duty. And since when a soldier is deployed they are considered on duty at all times any evangelizing is against UCMJ. Whether or not adminstrative action was taken probably depends a lot on the soldier involved the command structure and the soldiers attitude when it was pointed out that yes you are an idiot and yes you plan on violating UCMJ.
There does exist a bias for evangelical Christianity in the many areas of the army at least. The last time I was in Iraq my idiot commander would occasionally go off about Jesus to Sheik Ali, a man far more educated, intelligent, and ruthless than my commander. We did our best to steer him away from that and to patch up afterwards. Said commander only came out when absolutely necessary. Thank FSM.
And yep that headline is damn well bogus an misleading and will give the dumber or more manipulative of the evangelicals a wonderful oppurtunity to make use of the fainting couch and smelling salts.
And as for burning the bibles in theater it is often the only option. Whoever did it probably just used a burn barrel. I doubt that there were any theatrics or undertones of a good old fashioned bigot book burning.
You MUST go out an buy the May # of Harper’s!
They don’t put their featured pieces up til the next # is in print.
There’s an article by Jeff Sharlet, who is one of those eagle-eyed watchers of the EvangiFundies, called Jesus Kills Mohammed…
This apparently refers to graffiti seen on many walls in Iraq, promoted by the Evangi-Fundi chaplaincy, which amouth to more than 2/3 of ALL military chaplains…The Xians colonized the USer military like cockroaches in a messhall…
So it’s finally happened here, too. :-O
Why has the useful but sadly misnamed “Last 24 hours” collection of recent posts from across SciBlogtopia been disappearing from the upper-right corner of each page, one blog after another?
Does this eerie phenomenon pertain to the heading of this post?
Or did Ditchkins do it?
Brayton’s blogged about this in the past. There’s a serious fundie infestation in the Air Force, and to a lesser extent in the Army, and they see foreign deployment as an opportunity to fulfill the Great Commission and spread the Gospel to other countries. It’s essentially the same phenomenon as teachers who think their job is merely a opportunity to proselytize — just far more obnoxious as it’s being done with the implicit threat of military force backing it up.
Don’t believe the bullshit about this being an isolated incident, either; military proselytization is a pervasive and ongoing problem.
Oh, never mind – they’re just hiding the “Last 24 Hours” under the “Channels” section.
None of which either negates the Eschaton nor exculpates Ditchkins the Damned!
OK, then.
Just how many religions is the military pushing?
Don’t believe the cover story. We all know, only the KJV of the bible is the one true God inspired word of God. Any translations are misleading and have to be destroyed.
Anyone for a rousing chorus of “Onward Christian Soldiers?”
*** ducks ***
*throws rotten tomato*
*slings ketchup*
Uhhh. As an Active Duty Navy man this crap pisses me off to no end. If it’s having chaplains in the armed forces, it’s have the chystians whining about the burning of their book (er books.. I hope it was all of them). I am normally against book burnings, but I think this situation justifies it. That kind of crap, whoever thought it up, just adds to the violence over there. Muslims are not going just flip script when they read a new fairy tale. Granted their book is full of more holes than the bible. I didn’t think possible until I started reading.
Man, none of the options in that poll are any good. “This wouldn’t have happened if it was the Koran” feeds right into their persecution complex, and the one about political correctness is just using it as a buzzword. “Rules are rules” is probably the best one, but it’s got a scary undercurrent of OBEY NOW.
The single source for all of the wind blowing through the internet tubes is a Reuters followup to an original filmed news report showing U.S. soldiers in a bible study class in Afghanistan with a stack of bibles translated into local languages for the express purpose of the conversion to christianity of Afghan citizens and having been deceitfully sent to the soldiers by U.S. church groups.
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSSP481223
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE5431RL20090504
No mention of the public book burnings described by the writers @ xtian whine & loaf sites. No mention of burning books at all.
I also note a common theme among the bible-thumpers that; perhaps (nod, nod, wink, wink), the soldiers didn’t really intend to proselytize any Afghanis with those Pashtu & Dari Bibles. They, being the absentminded good ol’ boys that they are, could’ve just accidentally left some of those weird unreadable Bibles lying about for strangers to just pick up. It’s not like they intended for the Afghanis to read them.
Lying about, indeed.
Well, what did you expect with a Kenyan Muslin Zionist usurper occupying the Oval Office? /snark
the responses of the RR’ers remind me of the reaction of evangelicals a few years back after a report on the sighting of an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon, and the explicit ban on contacting them. first thing those evangelical idiots started spouting was how to find ways to circumvent that law and proselytize to the tribe. because missionary work just hasn’t caused enough destruction in the Amazon yet
This is good news. A few soldiers got out of line and their superiors did the right thing without being overly punitive.
A lesson in how it’s supposed to work for a change.
If they destroyed his personal bible, I’m upset.
If they destroyed bibles he was planning to use to convert the locals to Christianity, I’m glad they did. The US is not a Christian nation, as per the constitution, and thus it’s armed forces should not be proselytising.
As usual, the most complete story is on al Jazeera English.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/05/2009542250178146.html
Still no burning bibles though.
USCENTCOM’s General Rule Number 1B, item k prohibits any promotion of religion, faith or practice. The kooks are saying this is the President’s fault. The original incident seemed to have happened a year ago and is based on a rule enacted on March 13, 2006 while a christian president was in command.
The stupid… it burns.
I’ve always said that the fundie efforts at the USAF Academy are part of their effort to acquire a nuclear bomb. Why build your own bomb when you can infiltrate a command structure that controls many bombs? The fundies want their own General Ripper and since they’ve been working for 20 years, they may soon have one.
In any case, if the bibles were in Pashto or Dari, they were intended for evangelizing the locals, and this is contrary to standing orders. The bibles should be siezed and disposed of, as seems to have happened.
What about evangelizing through respect and love? Show the locals you respect their traditions. Be more impartial and fair than their local Talib religious police. Isa (Jesus) and Miriam (Mary) are mentioned as prophets in the Koran. Isa is an importantvend-times figure in the Koran. Maybe if they are treated respectfully they just might decide there’s more to Isa than they think.
BTW, I think the fact that Isa is an end-times figure in the Koran is proof that end times weirdness, The Rapture, and all that BS goes back to the earliest days of the church. It is NOT a recent invention as liberal Christians and their misguided atheist and agnostic defenders like to assert. Parts of the Christian faith were end-times batshit crazy from day one. Why else would the Apocalypse of St John have been declared canonical long after the sack of Jerusalem, the persecution of Nero, or whatever else it’s supposed to be a metaphor for?
I wonder if they proselytise on a regular basis. Maybe the only reason to destroy these bibles was because they’ve been caught by al Jazeera.
http://www.truthformuslims.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=5&products_id=3&zenid=c79ec5aafb6c9bdfb71ad1d5f0455c64
I’ve tryed to get a copy of these bibles but they are sold out. What a pitty.
is it really such a bad thing trying to convert afghanis? i think christianity is a better alternative to islam.
They think otherwise, as is their right. They also kill those who attempt to leave islam. What an idiot.
Man, you can really feel the fatwa envy in the comments and the poll. “If it had been a Koran, this would never happen” is winning by 40 points.
@57: I laughed out loud for the first time in days on the internet. Good show!
@72: I got’s a daid cat to throw…
@78: You selling sheets? That’s musliM.
@King of Typos, are you anywhere near Southern California?
And, yeah, those transliterated buy-bulls are bad news anywhere but providing heat for freezing soldiers. They’ll leave papercuts on your ass. Don’t even ask how I know that, although I will admit it involves a session in a hotel with a gideon’s buy-bull.
I wonder how they destroyed them. I assume they just burned them, but with all that military equipment it would be tempting to do it some other way.
Me, I would make a pile of them and huck a grenade at it.
Tom wrote:
When it’s being done by uniformed soldiers? Yes, it’s a bad thing. Imagine if it was armed Muslim soldiers passing out English-language Korans in your hometown.
#9
That’s because MI finally realized that the bible had all the really cool code words.
Religious nuts tend to like to burn books. Burning the bible seems ironic in a way. So I hope they burned them.
No, thats not true. I hope they recycled them. You can make toilet paper from recycled books (according to how its made.)
What a waste, they should have done what we used to do in lean times, cut up the pages and use them for rolling papers. Those real thin pages are perfect.
RC Nelson
“There’s a poll there that needs a good crashing:
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Poll.aspx?ekfrm=517114”
The problem with the poll is that the only options you have are: 1. we must follow the rules, 2. political correctness = bad, 3. boo hoo damn liberals treat muslims better than me.
I would go for option 4: following the rules is important and the soldier was endangering himself and everyone around him by preaching apostasy to fundamentalists, and the army is a part of the government and needs to be politically correct and should be culturally sensitive anyway, and the point of destroying the books was to hopefully prevent any hurt feelings and even the physical safety of civilians and soldiers and isn’t the word of “god” supposedly immutable anyway and it’s not the fairytales inside the stupid book that are important but the point that “jesus” wants to go inside your heart and fill up your brain with love anyway and why are religious groups that are supposed to do so much good wasting their money and resources on translating bibles and sending them to Afghanistan where there is only a very tiny chance that they’ll be read before they’re pissed on and then burnt anyway?
It’s good to see there is still some intelligence in the US military. Bad enough they’ve invaded the country, but the people will be really up in arms (literally) if the brass actually allowed soldiers to force christianity on them. They are having enough problems doing what they went there for (finding Osama, et al) without having to fight the locals every step of the way (more than they already are that is).
@84 End times predates christianity. It was an offshoot of judaism that would have influenced Jesus if he was a real man.
The name of them escapes me. They were the first death cult who had the idea of immortality through life after death and the idea of an apocolypse.
I could be confusing some info, so please correct me if wrong. It was a few months back and it was only mentioned in class, we didn’t talk about them extensively. Freshman elvel history class, we didn’t discuss anything extensively actually. Jesus was presented as a real person in the class (not devine, the prof was a mess and really unorganized, but I took him twice because A. I like history. B. He was an easy A — he openly said the first day that he knew it was a core requirement class and so he didn’t expect as much from his students, and C. I did like him. His classes were interesting for the most part.
I reckon they should have just sent them all back to the church that collected them…C.O.D. They might not have UPS in afghanistan, though.
Bit of disingenuity going on there. How did one soldier’s podunk church get their hands on Bibbles translated in a language spoken in only some parts of a country that (I bet) NONE of the church’s members would be able to point out on a map (presuming they have a map of the world – thank you Miss South Carolina)?
Atomjack@90
Google “half-breed Muslin”. dguy didn’t make the mistake, some random moran did.
this thread needs 666 posts
Oh this is an old story, that’s rarely ever told
of the raping of the country of the valley
Of the men who came to reap, with a musket and a Bible
They wanted to take the valley…
(The Men they Couldn’t Hang, Iron Masters)
TOM @ #61
I had a very similar occurence. When I was brought to the emergency room in severe pain, and before I was given any pain meds, this woman is standing next to the bed and asking me questions to check me in to the hospital system. She asked me if I had a religious preference, presumably so the hospital chaplain would know what magic words to say, or something. Anyway, I realized I shouldn’t answer “none,” since, to them, that would mean “non-denominational christian.” I answered, “I’m atheist.”
She paused, then asked, “Do you HAVE a religious preference?”
I laughed about it later, but at the time it made me mad.
The recruiter paused and said, “I’m going to make you a Baptist,” and continued filling out the paperwork. #61
The propper response to this is, then you can tear up this piece of paper and I’ll go talk to the AF recruiter.
The only end times I care to see would be the end of the toad-brained, interventionist, would-be theocrats. The comments on the linked page make me retch.
Al Gideon?
From a comic strip I saw long ago;
Religion?
Pagan.
I’ll just put you down as ‘Unitarian.’
I don’t think they’d mind.
Hey! I recall a number of people on these pages recounting how actually reading the bibble was a step in their recovery from religion. Surely translating it into pashto can help more people deconvert. Of course, it would be better to have muslim actually read the horror that their own ‘sacred’ book contains. What percentage of afghans actually read?
The proselytising is clearly wrong. Any news on the guy’s firing squad? At least a dishonourable discharge is in order.
Comment eleventy one!
When my Dad joined up (England, 1939) and was asked about religion, he said “Methodist” since that’s what he was raised, even though he was in the process of abandoning it at that point. A while later he got commissioned, and had to answer a bunch of similar questions again. This time he answered “agnostic”. When the sergeant filling out the form asked “What’s that?”, my Dad answered “Nothing, to you!”. But IIRC it was enough to get him out of Church Parade on Sunday mornings.
This article was posted at Talk to Action:
MRFF Responds to Military’s Denial that U.S. Troops are Proselytizing Muslims
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2009/5/5/133344/8582
As has been said here before, these aren’t just the acts of a few mavericks; they’re institutional.