Posted on Jul 28, 2014
SGT Alicia Brenneis
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First.. to each his own

I am reading the August Army Times (pg10) and came across this article. Apparently the American Humanist Association is filing a Law Suit because they want the military to include chaplains who are atheist to be a part of the chaplain corps. The overall idea is that they can mentor both Christians and atheists. This confuses me. If you do not believe in God why do you need a chaplain? Chaplains mentor many types of religion. Religion is the belief in a higher power (a god or gods). By definition (correct me if I'm wrong) atheism is the absence of a religion. Why does someone who does not believe in a religion need a mentor with a religious title? Why would you want one?

Personally if a chaplain will mentor/ encourage not believing in God I would not trust them to be sincere when mentoring someone who does believe in God and vise versa. You cant have it both ways.

Thoughts?
This is a duplicate discussion and the contents have been merged with the original discussion. Click below to see more on this topic...
CPT Jason Torpy
Go to basically any chaplain office and you'll find Bibles, Qu'rans, Books of Mormon, Hindu sutras. You'll see advertisements for various Christian services and Jewish services. Anyone who asks is referred to Buddhist, Muslim, or other Christians services on or off post. Presumably the chaplains are there for everyone. But most don't provide humanist pamphlets though such pamphlets are free and easy to obtain. They don't advertise humanist services even though they know humanists are in the unit. They don't tell people that if the troop wants it, then nontheist support including humanist is available. Often, they turn the person away or defer to non-chaplain resources. They don't restrict themselves to 'god' for suicide, marriage, family counseling, at least not officially. Should they be allowed to refuse advertising and referrals to troops with nontheistic beliefs and values?<br>also see militaryatheists.org<div>edit: chaplains not chaplain...</div>

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