You Can't Have What You Don't Want

Captain Ryan Jean of the US Army wants recognition of himself as a humanist lay leader. He, along with a few other soldiers, want essentially the same status as religious leaders of Christianity, Judaism and Islam have in the military. He wants the same rank (please forgive the pun) as his religious brethren.

So, then, is atheism a religion? We asked that question months ago in this very space and were harangued by atheists who asserted that atheism is not a religion. If it's not, then it doesn't merit recognition by the military or anyone else as equal to religion. If it is, then the various commenters way back when owe us a deeper explanation of what exactly atheism pretends to be.

The fact is that the idea of a humanist lay leader is without merit on its very face. Indeed, Capt. Jean's own words work against his cause and display it as pointless. When asked whether life had a long lasting purpose, he answered no. Still, he wants to be able to see to the spiritual needs of atheist soldiers.

What spiritual need could he possibly be addressing? According to atheists, you're born, you live for a time, then you die. You come into then go out of existence. What is there to live for? What kind of counseling can have any real value in that light? Particularly when you are in the military, it is fair to ask what are you fighting for? So that you might die that others might live? Why are those other lives worth defending? Simply because they're life? But they are just like you, brother atheist: worthless people with no long term value. Protecting them or their ideals is little more than silliness coming from a true atheist viewpoint. Arguing that they or their ideals are worth protection, worth fighting and dying for, is meaningless if there is no eternal merit in those people or their beliefs.

Just as your own beliefs, atheist friends, are pointless and meaningless if you are right. How can you counsel a soldier, how can you inspire him or her to fight the good fight, Capt. Jean, when the first thing you must tell them if you're being true to your creed is that their efforts are without merit? That's more than simply lame counsel. It's self contradictory nonsense.

The Army once had a slogan, Be all that you can be. Applied to atheists, that's all they are. They are nothing more, and nothing less, than delusional if they believe their ideas worth fighting for.