http://news.yahoo.com/u-military-problem-atheists-065000534.html
I particularly like this part: Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) told The Huffington Post, “I can’t imagine an atheist accompanying a notification team as they go into some family’s home to let them have the worst news of their life and this guy says, ‘You know, that’s it — your son’s just worms, I mean, worm food.’”
Ladies and gentlemen, meet my wonderful congressman. (Cue the “why I don’t vote” thread)
Perhaps he’s your congressman because you don’t vote.
Please bump my infamous thread…sad but true.
I find an eerie similarity between the US military requiring spirituality and the old Soviet political commissars in the Russian army making sure that the professional soldiers follow the communist party line.
Apart from the obvious discrimination against atheists, it is also unprofessional. Soldiers should concentrate on warfare and associated arts and sciences. Would you deny promotion to a marine who can lead and shoot because he doesn’t pray enough? And who decides that?
As an aside, it looks like everything is bigger in Texas, including aholes.
Well I can see their point though, when you are engaging in the most dehumanizing activity possible (war) having faith in a higher power would definitely be a powerful coping mechanism.
I’m an atheist, but your beef shouldn’t be with Atheists. It should be with the official religion of liberal western atheists, “Political Correctness.” That’s the new religion and it’s less tolerant to dissention than wahabi Islam.
/thread
It is easier to send people to get shot up and mutilated if they think there’s an afterlife and that God is on their side.
how the heck else do you convince people to kill themselves for meaningless things?
Brainwashing young impressionable minds in military academies is akin to brainwashing young impressionable minds in militia academies a.k.a. madarsas.
Someone who served in the military can speak to this better than I, but I suspect that very few people join the US military with the intention of dying in combat.
Well, you could change Flintheart’s statement to say “how do you convice people to kill other people…” and the point stands.
I think Flintheart is basically unable to comprehend that while he believes god and religion to be meaningless, that is not the case for everybody. I know plenty of officers that attended the Naval Academy who are not religious whatsoever. These are the leaders and future leaders of the Navy so religion is not completely pervasive at all. I think in the military religion is priminent because of:
Tradition
Many elisted people are raised religoiusly, often in a Christian household.
I think that in past generations people joined because of the honor and respect of serving. It’s lost that appeal mostly since the Vietnam war. I still see a few kids who want to be Marines because it’s elite as f*ck. That’s like definition BSD if you run an infantry troop. Mostly people are joining now to get a good job and start to a career.
The people who join the Marines and volunteer for the infantry are those who played with too many GI Joes and didn’t spend enough time in VA hospitals. They watch too much "Commando"and not enough “Saving Private Ryan”.
http://www.johntreed.com/dangerous.html
“There is no more image-conscious, Hollywood, public-relations-oriented military branch than the Marines.”
You don’t think these people know the risks? I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what makes them go - to be “that guy.” This is the whole idea of valor. A lot of them want to be the baddest in the room, want to carry on a tradition of their family serving, want to make a difference on a ground rather than at a desk, etc. I don’t think we should encourage these people differently. You can tell them the risks, but I’m positive they’re aware. Don’t judge them because you feel intellectually superior and that they’ve been brainwashed.
No. Marines are not an elite unit, they are a regular, conventional unit with a strong mythology, as Greenman noted above. These days the military has a problem with finding enough physically fit applicants for the enlisted ranks.
Given the nature of the work Marines do, they need that mythology to attract and retain young men.
The marines tried to recruit me at the end of high school, and I have to say that those nice shiny uniforms sure were tempting to a pimply 17 year old boy that had little success with girls. Fortunately, I knew I wouldn’t survive the physical rigors of boot camp, because if I could, I would have been shipped off to Iraq almost straight away.
@lxwarr - You might not know my background, since you’re new. I’ve shared it with most of the WC folk.
I spent five years as an enlisted Marine. I know what I’ve seen, and I know who serves. And I can assure you that they don’t know the risks. But they wouldn’t listen if you tell them otherwise.
And Palantir is right. The Marine’s aren’t elite. They think they are, and they do have the highest standards, but that’s still a pretty low bar. Just because the Army stands 2 inspections per week, and the Marines have 6, that doesn’t make them three times as elite. (Don’t ever tell this to a Marine–it might shatter his world.)
Physical rigor? High school football two-a-days are more rigorous than Marine Corps boot camp. The physical part is not the tough part.
I was not a sports guy. But maybe the movies painted boot camp as more painful than it really is. In that case it turned out to be a good decision.