Do Atheists have a right to oppose war?

[stone space]

11 votes, 1 pass | Time left: Unlimited
	Yes.
	11 (100%)
	No. Atheists who oppose war should be legally stripped of all educational grants and loans, under the Solomon Amendment. They are Traitors, and should be dealt with as such.
	0 (0%)
	1 DU member did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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[skepticscott]

1. Why should this be regarded as a serious or necessary question?

And why are people named snot, deathrind and boobooday heading up the respondents?

[stone space]

2. It is not a serious question for those in favor of WAR.

Last edited Sun Apr 17, 2016, 06:32 PM - Edit history (2)

Why should this be regarded as a serious or necessary question?

But for those with mixed feelings, and for atheists and those of other faiths, it may be an important question, indeed.



Do you want the government telling you who to kill?

What governmental order would justify forcing an atheist to kill others?

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. It'd be better if you weren't so coy about why you bring this up

It was obvious in your locked GDP thread (what did you think it had to do with the primaries?) that people think you are trying to continue an argument you've had somewhere else. Posing a poll question without context, and with only 2 answers, 1 of which is highly leading, is really a waste of people's time.

[stone space]

4. I bring this up as an atheist out of personal experience.

I've been denied educational grants and loans.

This has had a real impact on my life.

Are atheists now not allowed to bring up our own personal experiences?

Do we suddenly become suspect when we do?

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Was it a long time ago?

These days, non-religious people can register as conscientious objectors: https://www.sss.gov/consobj

Did you refuse to sign up for selective service, rather than to be forced into the military?

[stone space]

6. I, like many atheists at the time, violated the law by...

...counseling, aiding and abetting draft registration resistance to the best of my ability.

(such as it is...lol...but we won't go there)

Sometimes atheism demands noncooperation with the official religions of the state.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Well, if you won't go there, it sounds like there was more to it than your OP let on

and you still haven't told us the era this happened in. In the early 70s, Jerry Coyne, an atheist, successfully got CO status, and then showed that the alternative service he was doing instead was illegal, since they'd stopped drafting into the military:

When I was in college I went to the chaplain exactly once: when I was trying to get conscientious objector status (CO) in the military draft. Had I not gotten that status, I had resolved to go to jail rather than fight in Vietnam or serve in the army. (One of my friends, more of a purist than I, refused to even seek CO status and wound up in prison, where he had a rough time.)

At the time there was a religious-objection requirement for CO status, though the draft board could waive that on rare occasions when one’s objections to war were sufficiently philosophical to be seen as almost religious. But I was told that letters from credentialed religious people would help. So I went to the chaplain at William and Mary and laid out for him the reasons I was opposed to war—none of them religious. (I had already written a long paper for a philosophy class justifying my pacifism.)

The chaplain was sufficiently helpful to write me a letter. I also obtained letters from my father (an Army officer) and other military men who testified that they knew I had a sincere objection to killing. Those letters (and my term paper) were enough to get me my status without even having to be grilled by the Virginia draft board in Newport News. I then worked for 13 months as a hospital technician—my alternative service job.

A coda: Having realized that I and 2500 other COs were drafted into service illegally (I was a draft counselor and knew the law), I went to the ACLU and initiated a class-action suit against the government: Coyne et al. v. Nixon et al. What sweet words those were! The government had acted illegally by drafting conscientious objectors into alternative service but didn’t draft anyone into the army after 1972. We won in a half-hour hearing, and were all freed from service.

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/08/29/huffpo-to-students-even-if-youre-not-religious-go-hang-out-with-your-college-chaplain/

But since the Solomon Amendments dates from the 1980s, it sounds as if you're talking about after that.

[stone space]

10. Solomon Amendment: 1980s. Post Draft Registration.

Still not sure if you are voting "yes" or "no".

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. If you insist, I'll vote 'pass'; since you load the possible answers

and have been reluctant to discuss this, making me drag things out of you.

[stone space]

12. Your non-support of atheists is noted. (nt)

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. No, you see, that's you drawing false conclusions

By putting in the stuff about the Solomon Amendment, you tried to make it look as though that would happen to any atheist who said they opposed war. But that isn't true. You've now admitted you were helping people avoid registering for selective service, which is different from opposing war. I think it's OK for the state to get everyone to register, and for them to have to state their objection to military service. It's like the Little Sisters of the Poor should have to list the employees they're refusing to allow contraception on their health care plans.

It wouldn't be difficult for you to discuss this reasonably. But you just have to distort other people's positions, for your own idea of point-scoring.

[stone space]

14. Isn't that just a case of morality?

You've now admitted you were helping people avoid registering for selective service, which is different from opposing war.

Are you condemning me for my atheist morality?

Would you have preferred me to help folks kill other folks?

I don't think that you have a good understanding of atheist morality, if that is the sort of behavior that you expect from us atheists.

We're not like that.

We have morality.

You paint us as immoral or amoral if you expect differently.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. You seem to think all atheists think exactly the same as you do

We don't. But there's no point in discussing it with you if that's the way you insist on talking.

[stone space]

16. Under what circumstances do you feel that you have the right...

...to force atheists to murder for you?

Who do you want us to murder, specifically?

You tend to speak in generalities, but us atheists like to know the specifics of exactly who we are being asked (no, ordered!) to murder for your benefit.

You proclaim the right to demand this of me, but your demand lacks specifics.

Who is it you demand that I murder for you, and why are you holding my education as a hostage?

Why should I have to murder people for you just to get an education?

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. As I said, there's no point in replying to you

Your posts are just a mass of strawmen and non sequiturs.

[stone space]

21. I gather that you have no specifics.

You wish to force atheists to murder for you, but you refuse to tell us who it is that you want dead.

Do you realize how cowardly that is?

Do you think that us atheists are stupid?

Do you think that we will murder at your behest without information?

How stupid do you think we are?

If you want us to murder for you, you really need to provide more information.

This whole secrecy thing just isn't working for you.

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. Now you're just being insulting

Don't say that not responding to strawmen is 'cowardly'.

[stone space]

24. Who do you want me to murder?

Either tell me or admit that even us atheists don't have to murder at your behest without knowing the intended victim.

[mr blur]

38. I'm sure that this is not your intention, but the more you say,

the more ridiculous you make yourself, your arguments and your obsession(s).

"Do Atheists have a right to oppose war?" - what kind of ridiculous question is that?

Do stamp collectors have a right to wear pink?
Do mathematicians have a right to ask irrelevant questions?
Do you ever intend to make a sensible point?

[bvf]

27. What a hoot.

"Do you think that us atheists are stupid?"

I don't know. Is you?

[stone space]

32. Not stupid enough to murder at your behest.

"Do you think that us atheists are stupid?"


I don't know. Is you?

Why should I?

[bvf]

33. Why should you what? Learn middle-school grammar?

[stone space]

34. Why should I murder at your behest?

Why not allow atheists like me to get an education without murdering anybody?

Is that really too much to ask?

Atheists aren't hurting you, are we?

Why attack us simply for not murdering people?

Is not murdering people really that big a problem for you?

Why not just let atheists be?

And let us get an education like everybody else.

Is that too much for atheists to ask?

[bvf]

35. Are you OK?

[Act_of_Reparation]

36. Drunk at the keyboard again?

Or is that your attempt at poetry?

[AtheistCrusader]

44. There are other avenues for obtaining an education, than joining the military.

In fact, joining the military is not a guarantee that you will in fact obtain an education in anything useful at all.

Moreover, you are signing over to a civilian authority, the right to order you to pick up a gun and kill someone with it.

So, it's a pretty stupid deal. Small wonder, said deal is always offered to the young, who have little experience in deciphering such bad deals.

[cleanhippie]

48. Your support of obtuse, disengenuous bullshit is noted.

But keep blasting away at that horse.

[rug]

19. Lol!

Sorry, that second sentence was genuinely funny.

[LeftishBrit]

7. Anybody does! I don't see your point?

[stone space]

9. My point isn't much different from yours.

Anybody does!

Yup! We have a winner!

[skepticscott]

17. So in other words

your question was so trivial, and the answer so blindingly obvious, that it scarcely needed to be asked.

But I'm still wondering why posters named snot were your primary respondents.

[stone space]

18. Not so obvious, aparently.

Some feel that that have a right to force atheists to murder for them.

Even some so-called "atheists" fall into this camp.

[skepticscott]

25. Yes, they do

but that wasn't your question, now was it?

So yes...trivial and obvious.

[stone space]

31. But why would atheists feel that they have the right to tell me who to murder?

You may consider it a trivial observation that some of them do, but I'm asking the "why" question.

What's in it for atheism?

Why is a willingness to murder considered as a positive by them?

I don't get it.

[skepticscott]

39. No, you obviously don't

Try asking a question that makes sense, for pity's sake.

[AtheistCrusader]

43. Atheism doesn't tell me anything about whether or not to kill others, or to force others to kill for

me.

The Non-Aggression principle informs my views on that subject, not my lack of appreciation for a magical invisible boogeyman.

[rug]

23. Make love, snot war.

[kevink077]

26. Not a serious question...

Of course, Conservatves would like mandatory church for all.

[stone space]

28. It's a very serious question.

We're being asked to murder as an educational requirement.

But murder has absolutely nothing to do with education.

And many atheists, such as myself, are actually opposed to murder.

[cleanhippie]

49. You're apparent fetish for everything gun makes taking your posts difficult.

Put down the gat and try a more rational approach.

[struggle4progress]

29. Didn't obtaining CO status in the Vietnam era require proof that the applicant

opposed all war on the basis of some standard religious faith?

IIRC, it wasn't possible for an atheist to get CO status then, but the legal definition of "religious belief" has since evolved to include beliefs that play a role in the person's life analogous to adherence to a faith

[stone space]

30. Not sure, but I do know that it doesn't apply to draft registration.

(We could get into what is and isn't considered as Conscientious Objection by the government, as if they are the experts, but that's another matter.)

The government was defeated in the court room during the Draft Registration trials, and could not continue prosecutions due to the resistance surrounding the trials, and then switched to cowardly thefts of educational opportunities for folks who they were too scared to prosecute.

The result was the Pacifist Purges of Higher Education, initiated in the early 1980s, but ongoing to this day, and apparently blessed by many of the so-called "atheists" here at DU.

[muriel_volestrangler]

37. See the links in #5 and #8

An atheist did get CO status then, but it sounds like the official test was still 'for religious reasons' then - support from a religious chaplain and his army officer father may have helped. And you're right, the link in #5 now says it needn't be religious, but does need to be sincerely held for some time:

Beliefs which qualify a registrant for CO status may be religious in nature, but don't have to be. Beliefs may be moral or ethical; however, a man’s reasons for not wanting to participate in a war must not be based on politics, expediency, or self-interest. In general, the man’s lifestyle prior to making his claim must reflect his current claims.

[struggle4progress]

47. Thanks!

[rug]

40. US v Seeger (1965) struck down the requirement that a c.o. belong to a religion.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/380/163/case.html

But those beliefs had to be "parallel to that filled by the God of those admittedly qualified for the exemption".

Five years later in Welsh v. United States, the Supreme Court finally eliminated the requirement of a belief in a "Supreme Being".

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/398/333

More practically, it also loosened the requirements of proof on an applicant's beliefs and prior actions in accord with those beliefs. No small matter for a 18 year old.

[struggle4progress]

46. Thanks!

[trotsky]

41. LOLOLOL

Yay amnesty!

[AtheistCrusader]

42. Seems a bit of an extreme bifurcation.

[trotsky]

45. Everybody's got a hobby. n/t