http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467004575463833265055248.html
Navy Chaplain Terry Moran is steeped in the Bible and believes all of it. His assistant, Religious Programs Specialist 2nd Class Philip Chute, is steeped in the Bible and having none of it.
…
“He trusts God to keep him safe,” says RP2 Chute. “And I’m here just in case that doesn’t work out.”
Ha!
In all honesty, though, the chaplain here sounds like a Grade-A dimwit. Not sbout his religious beliefs (though his belief that the world is 6,000 years old is pretty dimwitted), but because he seems completely oblivious to the fact that he’s in a combat zone. If he wants to act the dumbass and win a Darwin award, hey, great… but unfortunately it seems likely he’ll put other people in harms way through his obliviousness.
“Tell the [expletive] chaplain to get behind the goddamn vehicle,” Gunny Shawhan yelled into the radio.
“Like bullets aren’t going to kill the goddamn chaplain,” he muttered to the men near him.
The chaplain does say one thing that’s terribly important to take note of:
“He’s familiar with the Christian doctrine, but he chooses not to believe it,” … “That’s what I find puzzling.”
To far too many True Believers of any religion, the idea that someone can be familiar with their faith and not be a believer is just mind-snappingly puzzling. It is, I suppose, much like the way I feel when someone tells me that such-and-such relatively mundane occurance was a “miracle” and “proof” that God exists/loves us/whatever, or when I hear someone say that all the vast collated store of data regarding paleontology, astronomy and geology somehow provide not evidence for an old universe that has seen evolution, but instead is easily handwaved away as being irrelevant to the story of how the Earth is only 6000 years old.
For some belief systems, there is no understanding of some others.
9 Responses to “So, an atheist and a chaplain walk into a war zone…”
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I see nothing in his behavior, with regards to safety however that separates him from General Patton.
Patton would shoot back.
Darwin will handle this one, too.
Patton probably believed he _was_ Jesus Christ in a past life.
What behavior of this sort reminds me of is the minister in the George Pal version of WOTW that takes his bible and goes out to have a chat with one of the Martian war machines.
I saw Hal Holbrook’s “Mark Twain Tonight” stage show, and he had a story like this also:
“They were missionaries, and set out to convert the cannibals…they were et.”
>Patton probably believed he _was_ Jesus Christ in a past life.
Nah, Jesus wasn’t nearly martial enough to have been Patton in a previous life. 😉
> Jesus wasn’t nearly martial enough
Oh, I dunno…
Luke 19:27 But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.
“For some belief systems, there is no understanding of some others.” Such as Islam?
Regarding Jesus: “Let the man who does not have a sword sell his cloak and buy one.”
I’ve got a theory about this; I think all the “Peace and love” stuff was when he was three sheets to the wind on wine, and the “Buy a sword” stuff was after the hangover hit the next morning.
That’s how it always worked for me.
Oh, BTW, favorite Islamic statement of intellectual rationalization:
“Does it not show the wisdom of Allah that he only lets the rain fall on fertile areas, and not in the desert, where it would be wasted?”
That sort of pales though after considering the question of where all the water from Noah’s flood went when it started receding from the slopes of Mount Ararat. 😀