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Airmen denied reenlistment for refusing to swear an oath to God

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xBiffx said:
Controlling entity, worship. You'll get it some day. And calling them gods for your own self serving purposes doesn't mean squat.
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GOD :

(in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.
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A deity doesn't have to be a supreme or omnipotent concept. You do realize that certain religions used to worship things like leprechauns as a type of deity right? Same with wood elves and pixies. A soul is nothing more than the projection of a less than powerful god of a person being their own mini "god" with that belief. Thus the control is that what is done in life affects something in the afterlife. That is the control part. The worship part is ascribing to certain actions in life will make something happen in the afterlife.
 
humblepie said:
god :



A deity doesn't have to be a supreme or omnipotent concept. You do realize that certain religions used to worship things like leprechauns as a type of deity right? Same with wood elves and pixies. A soul is nothing more than the projection of a less than powerful god of a person being their own mini "god" with that belief. Thus the control is that what is done in life affects something in the afterlife. That is the control part. The worship part is ascribing to certain actions in life will make something happen in the afterlife.
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WORSHIP. Read your own link.

Afterlife and souls aren't gods just because you want to call them that.
 
xBiffx said:
Really? How is this even close to verging on unconstitutional?

It's a volunteer service, you either take the oath or you don't. When you don't, you aren't volunteering now are you? Now if they made draftees take it, then you might have a case. People volunteer for many things. It's a take it or leave it proposition every time.

Whiny atheist.
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Well good thing you are not in charge of anything then if you cant tell its wrong.

It will be over ruled.
 
xBiffx said:
WORSHIP. Read your own link.
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WORSHIP JUST MEANS DEVOTION!!!

it means having belief. Fuck man. It doesn't mean having to make an altar, or bowing every time you fart, or eating some moldy cracker on Sundays. Those are expressions of worship. Ugh are you dense?

Worship has it root in worthiness. It means that what paranormal entity you ascribe to can find a worthiness to your actions. Having a belief is an action. Thus belief and devotion to that belief is worship.

To expound further, a person that solely only believes in a soul and the afterlife is meeting the following criteria.

1) The soul/afterlife is a paranormal entity
2) The actions of the current life affect the afterlife
3) The change to their actions to do something as defined in number 2 for their afterlife is thus showing worship. By being worthy to have an after life.

Which means all 3 meet the requirements for a religion and a deity setup. So any atheist that believes in the fucking after life is not an atheist. Period.
 
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HumblePie said:
WORSHIP JUST MEANS DEVOTION!!!

it means having belief. Fuck man. It doesn't mean having to make an altar, or bowing every time you fart, or eating some moldy cracker on Sundays. Those are expressions of worship. Ugh are you dense?

Worship has it root in worthiness. It means that what paranormal entity you ascribe to can find a worthiness to your actions. Having a belief is an action. Thus belief and devotion to that belief is worship.
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Does believing that people have a soul and it goes to an afterlife require worshiping said souls or said afterlife? No, it does't. It just requires acknowledgement of their existence.

Again, if I believe in ghosts or unicorns, am i worshiping them? What if I believe in a concept, like true love?
 
xBiffx said:
Only to you, especially when I've stated that I have no problem removing the phrase and given reasons why.
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Clearly not only to me, as there's about five or six other people telling you similar things.

You're also making the dubious claim that such a requirement is in keeping with the constitution.
 
HumblePie said:
To expound further, a person that solely only believes in a soul and the afterlife is meeting the following criteria.

1) The soul/afterlife is a paranormal entity
2) The actions of the current life affect the afterlife
3) The change to their actions to do something as defined in number 2 for their afterlife is thus showing worship. By being worthy to have an after life.

Which means all 3 meet the requirements for a religion and a deity setup. So any atheist that believes in the fucking after life is not an atheist. Period.
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Where are you coming up with 2 and in turn 3. Belief in a soul/afterlife doesn't mean that you automatically think you can do anything about what happens to it or in it. In fact, there are many who don't think you can. I would think many of those are atheists.
 
eskimospy said:
Clearly not only to me, as there's about five or six other people telling you similar things.

You're also making the dubious claim that such a requirement is in keeping with the constitution.
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And they stopped when they realized that they were incorrect in assuming I thought the phrase should be a part of the oath.

Since we don't have any decision on the matter to support your claim of unconstitutionality, it is equally dubious.
 
xBiffx said:
Since we don't have any decision on the matter to support your claim of unconstitutionality, it is equally dubious.
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You're welcome to that opinion! It seems the Air Force itself is wary of the constitutional implications as they dropped the requirement from their cadet oath after a similar complaint was filed.
 
eskimospy said:
You're welcome to that opinion! It seems the Air Force itself is wary of the constitutional implications as they dropped the requirement from their cadet oath after a similar complaint was filed.
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Seeing is how the law is still written that its compulsory to read the entire oath, I doubt its the constitutional implications that they are wary of here. They went for the easy out this time. Good enough for now.
 
xBiffx said:
Seeing is how the law is still written that its compulsory to read the entire oath, I doubt its the constitutional implications that they are wary of here. They went for the easy out this time. Good enough for now.
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That doesn't make any sense. The law in this case simply prevents them from acting on the same reservations they had in the case of the Air Force Academy.
 
xBiffx said:
Where are you coming up with 2 and in turn 3. Belief in a soul/afterlife doesn't mean that you automatically think you can do anything about what happens to it or in it. In fact, there are many who don't think you can. I would think many of those are atheists.
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Religion definition.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion

Belief in an afterlife is thus to believe in something like a "soul" which is a paranormal entity.

The first definition of religion in the dictionary is the belief of a god or gods. I gave the definition of a god previously. It doesn't have to be the mono theistic omnipotent Christian style god. A paranormal entity of any sort is a subset of a god. Be it a rain spirit, leprechaun, unicorn, or a soul. As long that paranormal entity has something ascribed to it that is beyond normal. Ie, the ability of a soul to enter the realm of the afterlife, something that nothing living can do, is by definition an ability that is beyond something that something in the physical world can do. Thus a soul has a "godlike" attribute by having something paranormal to it.

So a soul is by definition given above a type of god by the ability of the soul to endure in the afterlife.

The continued belief in the existence of souls or the afterlife is all the requirements needed to fulfill the definition of worship. As worship by definition is devotion and devotion is the loyal belief in something. There are expression of worship, but believing in the paranormal is the basic form of worship.

So anyone that believes in the afterlife is thus believing in a paranormal godlike entity. Belief of such entity is tantamount to devotion. Thus anyone that believes in the afterlife cannot be atheist. Period. I hope I broke that down simple enough for you to understand. Because if you still fail to grasp that concept something is seriously wrong with you.
 
xBiffx said:
No Venn diagram needed for false equivalency or independent concepts.
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Keep floundering, buddy...


Monotheism is a subset of religion. The name "God" refers to a deity in a monotheistic religion. Thus, "God" is a subset of religion, and not independent.

This is pretty simple stuff, I'm not sure why you're having such a hard time with it.
 
xBiffx said:
Does believing that people have a soul and it goes to an afterlife require worshiping said souls or said afterlife? No, it does't. It just requires acknowledgement of their existence.

Again, if I believe in ghosts or unicorns, am i worshiping them? What if I believe in a concept, like true love?
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Worship of a deity is not necessary for religion to exist, only the belief in supernatural entities.

Otherwise animism wouldn't be a type of religion...
 
MrPickins said:
Keep floundering, buddy...


Monotheism is a subset of religion. The name "God" refers to a deity in a monotheistic religion. Thus, "God" is a subset of religion, and not independent.

This is pretty simple stuff, I'm not sure why you're having such a hard time with it.
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I know, and that is the simpler concept I was trying to explain to him. Then I went into explaining why spiritualism = subset of religion and I think I blew his head. He is pulling the equivalent of a 7 year old with his fingers in his ears going "nah nah nah nah."

Normally xbiffx though is an agreeable fellow from my limited interactions with him on this board. He's usually not this dense to most subjects. Not sure what is happening here with him.
 
One of two things is happening here:

1. Biff's logic is correct but he lacks the communication skills necessary to adequately explain his position to the rest of us, hence his failure to convince a single person of the point he is attempting to make.

2. Biff's logic is wrong.

Either way, through a purely democratic process, Biff is wrong. Time to move on.
 
mnewsham said:
Though the air force is technically correct in enforcing it, Congress should just change the rule for all armed services so that the air force can't use/abuse that particular part which is obviously verging on unconstitutional.
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First of all there is no "verging" on unconstitutional, it is flat out 100% unconstitutional for the .gov to force a person to swear an oath to a specific deity or any deity for that matter.

Beyond that, why in the hell would we want to force the first act of one of our soldiers to be a lie? Plus it doesn't really have the intended effect if one doesn't believe in the deity. I don't believe in god therefore, in theory at least, I have absolutely no problem "swearing to god" that the sky is purple because there are no repercussions.
 
MrPickins said:
Worship of a deity is not necessary for religion to exist, only the belief in supernatural entities.

Otherwise animism wouldn't be a type of religion...
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Actually, worship just means devotion as a definition. Devotion is just loyalty to a belief as a definition. So someone that believes in a supernatural entity at any level is having worship of that entity.

An expression of worship would be bowing, chanting, wearing funny clothes, doing certain actions, or whatever to gain some sort of reaction from the entity. That is just worship at a different level.
 
xBiffx said:
Really? How is this even close to verging on unconstitutional?

It's a volunteer service, you either take the oath or you don't. When you don't, you aren't volunteering now are you? Now if they made draftees take it, then you might have a case. People volunteer for many things. It's a take it or leave it proposition every time.

Whiny atheist.
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Because its the government and we have the first amendment that's why.
 
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