Congress Recently Amended A Bill To Prevent The Military From Hiring Secular Humanist Chaplains, And I'm Not Too Upset About It

-- because, what the heck is a Secular Humanist chaplain anyway? I've only encountered one so far, Chris Stedman, a Secular Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, and Stedman is hard for me to take when I'm in a good mood. It's hard for me to imagine him being much comfort to military personnel in crisis. To me he's barely distinguishable from a "modern" Christian or Jewish theologian. He's more supportive of religion, more quick to excuse its flaws and more critical of other atheists, than many of the conventional sort of religious clergypeople.

Jason Heap had been attempting to become the Navy's first Humanist chaplain. It's unclear at the moment whether -- excuse me. Let me re-phrase that in a less pompous manner: I don't know whether this amendment will prevent his appointment. Heap is 38 years old, a graduate of the Brite Divinity School and Oxford University, and has the endorsement of the Humanist Society, whoever they are. In case you're wondering whether Brite Divinity School might be some sort of atheist institution, associated with the so-called "brights" -- no such luck. It's a Christian seminary affiliated with Texas Christian University. Oh joy, another theologian, just what the world needed, and atheists in particular.

It is my considered opinion that what is most urgently needed in the military, what has been insufficiently replaced by chaplains for a long, long time, and, I fear, would be just as insufficiently replaced by Secular chaplains, is psychologists. Unfortunately, of course, there is still a great stigma attached to psychology: ("You want to consult with a specialist in the human mind in order to improve your mood and coping skills?! What are ya, crazy?!")

I'm not crazy about the idea of Secular clergy, in the military or elsewhere. I've noticed that some atheist churches have sprung up, and I'm not dying to visit any of them. (I attended a Unitarian church for a little while once, and I'm not going back anytime soon.) I think that the atheist monuments going up on public land next to things like copies of the Ten Commandments are silly, and I think the energy put into the court battles for permission to erect those monuments would've been much better spent supporting science education and combating the efforts of pseudoscientific Creationism to attain the status, legally and in people's opinions, of science. I think that the formal debates between atheists and creationists lend Creationism an air of seriousness it doesn't deserve. The fact that "In God We Trust" is on our money doesn't bother me. It seems I disagree with the typical New Atheist on every one of those points, with the possible exception of the Unitarians. It seems that snake handlers, "modern" theologians and New Atheists all differ from me in their need for forms and institutions which are either religious or copy religions.

The Belief-Action Connection: An Open Letter To Greg Epstein

The belief-action connection is like the mind-body connection in that not only is it obvious, it's so obvious that it requires quite a bit of make-believe to pretend it's not.

In your protest at not being invited to take part in an interfaith memorial for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, you claim:

"Including the nonreligious in interfaith ceremonies doesn't have any negative impact on religious communities"

But of course it does affect communities who believe they have a sacred duty to convert the entire world. (For the good of the eternal souls of the entire world, of course.)

"any more than allowing gay marriage has a negative impact on straight marriage"

Clearly, some people think it is their business what ALL consenting adults do in private, and who wants whom as a mate and partner.

These and many other beliefs encompassing what all of humanity should and shouldn't do have been an integral part of Christianity throughout its history, and we all know it, although well-meaning people such as yourself often stick your heads in the sand and do your utmost to ignore the obvious.

"We would never ask you to change your beliefs. We would never want you to change who you are."

You need to make up your mind. You ARE asking people to change their beliefs. (Or to act as if they believed differently, which really amounts to the same thing, since all we can see are people's actions.) And there's nothing wrong with such a request when the beliefs are tyrannical. Obviously, not all religious believers wanted you excluded from that memorial service, because things have changed a lot already. Things including beliefs.

It's just a very unpleasant and awkward (and completely obvious) fact that there are all sorts of direct and important relationships between beliefs and actions. Many religious beliefs which you are constantly at such strenuous pains to respect do not call for respect for you or me or many other non-believers. They don't even call for respect for different kinds of believers. Yes, many Christians are very respectful of you and me. They have strayed very far from the original Christian path. (For once the fundies and literalists are right about something.) And they need to stray farther, if we non-believers are going to be accorded full rights and full respect. And that's not going to happen without them confronting the full reality of Christian history. And it's simply not possible that that confrontation will not be unpleasant and traumatic for many people.

I'm sure you hear the following all the time from atheists, and I'm sure you disagree with it, but I don't want to leave you with any doubt at all about where I stand: I don't feel that you represent me at all. You are much too nice to believers for that. In fact, you're so exaggeratedly nice to them and so critical of us atheists who supposedly are "militant" that half the time it's difficult to tell that you are not a believer. I didn't enjoy saying that. I don't relish saying unpleasant things to you or to believers (or to other so-called "militant" atheists -- I think "outspoken" is a more accurate term -- when I believe they're talking nonsense, and believe me, that happens often enough). I say them because I think it's important to do so.

Wishing you and yours all the best,

yr pal,

The Wrong Monkey