As far as I can tell, a sizable fraction of shrinks are religious, to varying degrees. Some of them are devout, yet many somehow manage to treat clients/patients of all stripes, by employing a technique called “compartmentalization”: they address individuals’ issues in the context best fit to that individual and save their devotion for church and stuff.
Religion is the oil of the war machine. It is a very effective motivator, given how very good it is with ussing us agin thems. Hence, chaplains provide a valuable service in keeping it running properly. For the atheists in the lines, the chaplain may be a handy sounding board or whatever, but they are not in particular need of his specific service. He cannot inspire or console them with god stuff, but it is kind of hard to see how having him there would be problematic for them. I mean, the lion’s share of atheists do not really give a flying fuck about the fact that the guy next them might be chewing on a rosary or praying to jesus or whatever, so it should be no big deal.
Not all Atheists see religion as bullshit. There are entire religious branches that are full of Atheists. Heck, there are entire religions that are primarily Atheist. Not believing in a particular concept of God does not mean you aren’t religious or don’t have spiritual beliefs.
It’s difficult to ascertain just how much influence Scalia might have had on the decision.
The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice Burger, and joined by White, Blackmun, Powell, Rehnquist, and O’Connor.
There were three dissenters: Stevens, and a separate dissent by Brennan, joined by Marshall.
It’s possible Scalia didn’t contribute because he wasn’t a Supreme Court justice at the time. Scalia was confirmed September 17, 1986, and Marsh v. Chambers was decided July 5, 1983, and so we see that it was probably Scalia’s mastery of both law and total proton tachyonic reversal that allowed him to sway the Court in this matter three and a half years ahead of his appointment.
You said “Is there some reason it is not also correct…”; I responded that it was not correct in the first place. You posed the question; I answered it. Clearly you felt there was a possibility that it was not correct. Correct is not the same as legal. If you wanted to discuss the legality and not the correctness, you should have said so. But the a priori assumption that the decision was correct is something I reject.
As near as I can tell (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), in the military the chaplains are the MAIN providers of routine counseling services for issues such as marital strife or stress. If you’ve got major depression or PTSD, the mental health professionals want and need to be involved, but if your primary need is for somebody to talk to about your spouse or job issues or troubles with your kids, then you are referred first to the chaplain’s office, and the chaplains are the ones expected and tasked with running the various programs (such as the marriage retreats above-cited) for sorting out these kinds of problems.
Can somebody with current knowledge of the military lifestyle confirm or refute this?
The statements did indeed sound very linked, to be honest. If you wished to have them considered unlinked, you should have been clearer (like a “for instance” in front of the Scalia sentence).
Well truth is the secular humanism movement more or less descended from a French philosopher Auguste Comte who founded the positivist “Church of Humanity” as a ‘secular religion’ supposedly based off of science, to be a replacement for Christianity during the French Revolution:
So essentially the forefather of secular humanism more or less admitted himself it was a religion, yet tell a humanist on the internet it’s a ‘religion’ and he’ll just stereotypically respond with the “not collecting stamps isn’t a hobby!” stuff, lol
And sure I’d agree that vanilla “atheism” in the most basic sense isn’t a religion, but I see New Atheists more or less use the terms “atheism” and “humanism” interchangeable themselves. An “atheist convention” is more or less a “humanist convention” in everything but name, for example.
My first reaction was that the original intention was that they were linked and that this deflection was offered up when he learned of his timing error.
jayjay is disparaging the inanity of your assertions and lamenting the dialogue constraints imposed by the Great Debates forum. Because, well, trying to paste religion onto atheism is pretty pathetic.
Then tell that to Comte, the forefather of secular humanism - since it was his idea to attempt to create an “atheist religion” complete with its own churches:
Religion of Humanity is a secular religion created by Auguste Comte, the founder of positivist philosophy
*According to Tony Davies, Comte’s secular and positive religion was “a complete system of belief and ritual, with liturgy and sacraments, priesthood and pontiff, all organized around the public veneration of Humanity”. In Système de politique positive Comte stated that the pillars of the religion are:
altruism, leading to generosity and selfless dedication to others.
order : Comte thought that after the French Revolution, society needed restoration of order.
progress : the consequences of industrial and technical breakthroughs for human societies.*
Last I checked, it wasn’t the 18th Century anymore. Just because someone tried to set humanism up on religious lines in the 1700s (which are between 200 and 300 years gone at this point) doesn’t mean that modern secularism or humanism is a religion.
He’s the forefather of secular humanism, if you want to debate whether or not it’s a “religion” by whatever definition you’re using, that’s another story. Fact though is humanism is a positive ideology and belief system, not just vanilla “atheism” in the sense of “not believing in a god”.
But if it’s not a religion what’s the point of “humanist chaplains” or “humanist churches”? And why have humanist organizations applied for religious tax-exemption?
Bullshit. Comte was the founder of Comte’s “Religion of Humanity”. He was in no way the singular originator of the idea of secular humanism, nor is his particular atheology representative of all, or even many, humanists, agnostics or atheists. Your argument is ridiculous and holds as much water as a Pastafarian’s head gear.
How the military checks that special branch folks are actually professionally qualified is a problem if we tried to implement this. You don’t just want anybody showing up and say “hey I’m qualified for that… trust me.” For things like lawyers and doctors there are readily checked civilian certifications.
For chaplains they require endorsements. There’s a National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces (wiki) as an umbrella group. From the above link
To have some kind of secular/atheist/humanist chaplain, without just exempting them from the same rigor other religions face, there needs to be an organization recognizing them as religious professionals within their organization.
Unitarian Universalism does have a tradition that includes welcoming atheists, agnostics, humanists etc to their fellowship. That would be one way to have an established organization endorse religious professionals who might be say atheist. There are already UU chaplains in the military. An atheist who’s a chaplain could already be in uniform.
This seems to reference the very simple (and mostly wrong) idea that getting a tax exception (or other legal moves that puts Humanism in the same column as religion) leads to declare Humanism as a religion, the reality is more complicated: