Navy replaces Bibles in lodges
The other day, the Navy removed from it’s temporary lodgings bibles placed by the folks from Gideon International, a Christian organization known for that practice. The atheists celebrated it as some sort of great accomplishment, for some reason. The Navy has now reversed that policy decision, according to Stars & Stripes;
Atheists had cheered a victory after a complaint prompted the exchange to begin moving the Bibles to its lost-and-found bins this summer, but the Navy said the decision was made without consulting senior leadership.
“That decision and our religious accommodation policies with regard to the placement of religious materials are under review,” Navy spokesman Cmdr. Ryan Perry wrote in an email to Stars and Stripes. “While that review is under way, religious materials removed from Navy Lodge rooms will be returned.”
I know the atheists think the First Amendment protects them from religion, but anyone with a 1st Grade education knows that’s not the founders’ intent at all. Every hotel I’ve ever been in has had a Bible placed in the nightstand from the Gideon folks and it hasn’t influenced me to change my ways, probably because I’m a true free thinker and can make own decisions without being influenced by the mere sight of the Holy Bible.
The memo was prompted by a complaint in March by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, a Wisconsin atheist group that claims 21,000 members including hundreds of active-duty troops and veterans.
The group sent a letter claiming the Navy is showing an unconstitutional preference for Christianity. Staff attorney Sam Grover said a couple of members had served more than 20 years in the military and said they had never seen any other religious text in Navy lodging other than the Bible.
“That demonstrates the Navy’s preference for Christianity over all other religions and nonreligious sects,” he said.
Just the name of their little club is enough to make me stay from them.
Good for the Navy to ignore the small-minded anti-intellectuals who are so insecure in their lack of beliefs that they feel a need to force it on the rest of us.
Category: Navy
PETA beat Special Forces Medlab.
Athiests beat Navy.
N.O.W. is fighting DOD with infantry.
The picture doesn’t look good.
I constantly hear these athiest twatwaffles complaining about “evangelicals in the miltary”. In close to 30 years I have met exactly 1. And he only found Jesus after getting the clap from a Olangapo bar girl. A few people ridiculed him, most just ignored him.
LOL! Twatwaffles! I love that! Consider it stolen for my use! HA!
When I did Base Honor Guard last year we were being trained on the table of honor and they changed the verbage and removed the bible from the table as well. Being a former Atheist/Agnostic I can say I was never once demanded The Holy Bible removed from a building. It never offended me.
To be fair, though, you were never your average Atheist/Agnostic, Whitey…you could actually wrap your head around the fact that some people hold different views than you do and don’t care what you think. Militant Atheists can’t seem to do that.
At least sanity has prevailed in this instance.
Touche Moxie and granted I haven’t really met any real militant atheist in the military since either.
True Agnostic/Athiests are not threatened by the Bible or religion in general as they don’t believe in it. Might as well be threatened by The Tooth Fairy. The actual ones I have met could really care less about God, Church, In God We Trust on our money. It’s meaningless to them and most acknowledge our right to pray in public if we want. Only those that are attention whores make a fuss about it.
You can bet your sweet ass that if the Muslims wanted the Koran in those facilities, the Atheist group would buy them to put there. All it would take is one scary looking bearded Imam with a mid eastern accent showing up at their Starbucks Atheist weekly meeting to worship lattes and overpriced coffee and saying, “If you do not put the Koran of Allah and his prophet Muhammad, praise be his holy name, in the Navy sleeping places…there will be a problem with us. Do you want problems with we Muslims?”. The reply, “Why oh no. We love you guys. It’s those Christians we don’t like and the God they worship. You guys are all cool with us. Hey, how about we buy about a 10 copies from your Mosque and we’ll distribute them.” The Imam, “How about you buy 10,000 copies of the Koran of Allah, praise be his holy name, and put them there. They are $10 a copy. This is okay with you, because we do not want problems with you about Allah, praise be his holy name”. The Atheists, “That’s, uhm, $100,000. But yea, sure, it’s uhm, fine with us. Just don’t hurt us okay?”. Imam, “Hurt you? Oh no. We do not hurt infidels, I mean Americans, we are a religion of peace and harmony”. Yep, I can see it all now. The Gideons were out, the Koran is in. Sorry for the sarcasm and minor rant. These folks, who call themselves Atheists, are simple cowards, using their small voice, like the “Lion That Roared”, to impose their wishes on everyone else. Not much freedom of speech and religion in their agenda. If they are veterans and stay in those places and don’t want to read a Bible, then leave it in the drawer. I never saw a Gideon Bible mysteriously move from the drawer onto the pillow next to me. Just like I never saw my pistol moving through the house on its own, locked and loaded and looking for something to shoot. Atheists are as free to believe or not believe anything… Read more »
Absolute best factual opinion/response/theorem/whatever I’ve read in a long time. Thank you so much Sparks for making my day. As I read this, it’s as though you pulled a Professor X and read my mind and put it on the interwebs!
Derek…Well…thank you, I don’t hear that often. If I get you the contact info would you share your views that my opinions about anything having validity…with my wife? 😀 😀 😀
Ha, an excellent proposition, so long as you would return the favor and tell my wife I too have valid thoughts. But….with my luck, it would backfire and my wife would be rather upset I bring outside council to persuade her I have valid points when the ONLY point that matters is hers. 🙂 Cheers!
Sparks – how bout we tell the neighbor’s Greek wife that you are a feaking genius? Anything to help. PS: glad she didn’t catch you trying to reason with that rattlesnake the other day. LOL
GDContractor…It would be a no go for the Greek neighbor, her husband gets no slack in Greek or English and my wide would have talked the rattlesnake up until it was so fed up it would have drowned itself in the canal! 😀 😀 😀
Meant “my wife”. Man if knew I had referred to her as wide…the horror…the horror. 😀
This is why I am an antitheist, not an atheist. I could not give any fucks over what another man/woman believes as I reject all religions. However I am not in the position to push that on others. Unfortunately for my fellow nonbelievers, the “Atheist” platform has been overrun by a liberal agenda which stains those who truly do not wish to believe or truly do not believe. This makes anyone associated with such people as bad, asinine, ignorant, “militant” when most are not like that at all. Alas it only takes one bad apple to spoil the rest.
-atheist, proud conservative
I could never understand how the mere presence of a religious symbol could drive some people to distraction. It’s a book, people! No one is twisting your arms to read it and it won’t jump out of the drawer and forcibly convert you. I suppose those less than free thinkers didn’t stop to realize that it really has nothing to do with the Navy. Those bibles are given to the hotels. They don’t cost the government a dime. I’m sure the Navy would be more than happy to accept atheist, muslim, and even satanic books if given the same way the Gideons have given bibles.
As an atheist, books in drawers don’t scare me. I don’t have a problem with the Navy putting donated religious material in their lodging. Then again, I’m not a part of an atheist group, I don’t tilt at windmills, and I respect that some military members are religious. If having that book handy provides comfort, that’s fine by me. I hate when groups like this paint the entire atheist population in a bad light; probably the same way most of you here would like to kick a few veterans in a small place when they blame PTSD for plagiarizing their master’s thesis or say the Second Amendment needs to be radically changed because there ‘s that Army officer who says so.
Your point would be valid if everyone here was painting all atheists in a bad light. If you had paid attention you would have noticed that there are actually a few atheists commenting here.
I noticed a few post above and below after mine. I noticed a few others on the wide brush perspective, too. I should have replied to one of those and not yours.
Your point would still be invalid. You used that broad brush of yours to do the very thing you wrongly excoriate us for, using a broad brush. No where here has anyone commented saying, “all Atheists…” As a matter of fact many commenters have gone out of their way to say it is only a certain percentage or type of Atheist. If you stick around, you’ll find that this group has varied opinions on damned near any subject. The only thing we are in lockstep on is the issue of stolen valor thieves. We universally detest them and take great pleasure in their misery at being called the liars they are.
I stand, well sit, corrected. Stolen valor is a common enemy that set me to lurking here 3 years ago. On that issue, we stand quite together!
They better pull the phonebooks out too. They have phone numbers to churches in them. And while they’re at it, pull those pizza flyers too – don’t want to upset PETA.
Why does a butt hurt vocal minority once again change policy?? Are people who believe in God that cowed by the liberal agenda that they will just suffer in silence?? It amazes me that a group that small can rend such large consequences. And there is no reasoning with them, there is no compromise.
Whatever happened to telling obvious shit disturbers to fuck off? We used to have leadership that would do that. I guess today’s “leaders” are afraid of offending the sensibilities of those who continue to tear at what makes this country great.
Pretty soon our national exceptionalism will be gone and we can look back at decisions like this one that led us down that road.
They should be happy, they are winning. In any hotel room I have ever been in, the Bible is in at most one drawer. Since atheists believe in nothing, that means they have all the other drawers.
I once stayed in a hotel south of San Francisco which had a Bhagavad Gita instead of a Bible. Somehow I escaped unscathed and unconverted. Miraculous.
A miracle of biblical proportions perhaps??
Certainly not, that might be construed as supporting religion. Can’t have that… Insh’Allah.
A miracle indeed. I ended up in a 12 step program to rid me of my Hinduism after a similar exposure. Or was it Buddhism? And was it a 12 step program or 3 nights in Pattaya? Not sure but I am pretty sure that it gave me the PTS as well…..or some other three letter disease.
Someone should tell this group of numbnuts that the Constitution prescribes freedom OF religion – not freedom FROM religion.
They’re free to choose – including the choice “none”. However, that doesn’t include any guarantee they will never be exposed to religion in any way/shape/form/fashion.
Don’t like the Bible in the room? Simple. Do what I do when I’m traveling: leave it in the drawer unopened.
I was about to say the same, Hondo.
In my opinion, Atheism is a religion in it’s own, just one that believes that there is no God. Similar to how indecision is a decision. So, if these guys want to be free from religion, as the song goes, they’d “better free [their] mind instead”.
In any case, the argument that having a bible in a desk is going to offend someone is ridiculous. It’s not out in the open, it’s not in your face, and there’s nothing compelling you to even read it.
Just a waste of time, like every argument every left-wing group has against the military. If it wasn’t for the moron in chief and his idiot of defense, they’d be ignored.
Whatever happened to just leaving people alone to do as they pleased? A book sitting in a drawer isn’t harming anyone. No one is trying to convert them and no one is making them read the book. I also wonder about the hypocrisy of the so-called “free thinkers.” Any bets that they take off the national holidays that began as religious observances, such as Christmas and Easter?
Small point, ArmyATC – Easter isn’t observed as a national holiday. Never has been.
Actually, there are today only two observed national (Federal) holidays with a overtly religious background: Thanksgiving and Christmas. The others (New Years Day, MLK Birthday, Washington’s Birthday [yes, that’s still technically the name of the holiday, not President’s Day], Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans Day) are generally considered of secular origin.
In some religions, New Year’s Day is a religious feast. However, that’s not universally the case, and in any event it no longer is primarily a religious observance.
Easter, by definition, falls on a Sunday. So making it an official holiday would be somewhat redundant. 😉
Actually, Hayabusa – some states and localities have the Monday after Easter as a school holiday (“Easter Monday”). It was a public holiday in North Carolina between 1935 and 1987, and is a public holiday in a number of other nations – including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Further, the fact that it falls on a Sunday would be irrelevant regarding it being a holiday. Holidays often fall on a Sunday. We still celebrate them.
There are 5 Federal holidays that are not defined as fixed Monday observances. New Year’s Day, 4th of July, Veteran’s Day, and Christmas are defined by date; while Thanksgiving is defined as the 4th Thursday in November. When a by-date Federal holiday falls on a Sunday, the following day (Monday) becomes the observance. When it falls on a Saturday, the previous day (Friday) becomes the holiday observance day.
Hondo,I,for one,IMHO,believe they should’t have moved Decoration/Memorial from 30 May to the last Monday in May. That only further takes away from remembering what the day is intended for and just makes it into the three day weekend that the Indy 500 takes top billing.
Oops,it should say Day after Decoration/Memorial. My Bad.
Hondo, point taken. I let my rant get in the way of my common sense. Thanks.
I think I’ve posted enough about my religious views to make it clear I’m not much for it. My dog tags had “NO PREF” where religion was supposed to be back in the 70s.
I’m not offended by a Bible in a hotel room anymore than I am by the presence of a cross in a cemetery listing the names of the dead from some US conflict.
I can’t stand these jagoff atheists who think they need to tell the world they don’t believe in god….and then act as though they have their own form of religious zeal with respect to being anti-god.
Maybe I’m just more apathetic in that I don’t care about god, no matter what flavor.
If someone I know does what do I gain by being an asshole and belittling their faith? I’m not saying I haven’t been an asshole about it when someone is stuffing it in my face, just saying of all the things we have to worry about some Bibles in the drawers of a Navy Lodge hardly seem to register on a scale of 1-10.
There is no guarantee to be free from religion anymore than a guarantee to be free from being offended, it only states that Congress can’t create a national religion and force you to participate nor can Congress prevent you from exercising your preferred choice. It doesn’t mean anything beyond that. No one is making the atheist open the drawer and read the bible and no one is making them attend church.
Perhaps atheists could take some time to actually read the history of the nation before attempting to lecture on it.
As a born again, Baptist…I couldn’t agree with your argument more.
Well stated.
Here’s a suggestion for the easily offended: The Gideons encourage you to TAKE THE BIBLE from the room if you want it; it even says as much on the flyleaf. So, you want the Bibles removed? Rent the room and keep the Bible as a gift from the Gideons.
I’m sure the Navy Lodge would love the business and the Gideons will gladly replace the Bible so the next guest has the same opportunity as you.
How do you know somebody is an atheist?
They’ll tell you, just like the rest of the false rebels in modern America. I guess when you believe this shit world is the be all and end all of existence you can’t help but become a bitter asshole bent on forcing your obnoxious intellect everywhere.
I haven’t run into an atheist in a while, but the last time I did and he started in on the ‘there is no God’ stuff, I sat, blinking rapidly, while he ranted.
When he paused for breath, I said ‘I’m a reformed druid.’
“Huh?”
‘A reformed druid.’
“I never heard of that. What’s that?”
‘Oh, it’s simple. Orthodocx druids worship oak trees. Reformed druids worship bushes.’
That shut him up and while he tried to sort out what I mean by all that, I left.
I have been on my knees in front of a lot of “bushes” too… does that make me a reformed druid?
he he he
How sad … these atheists are so vocal and frightened of something they don’t even believe in. If they don’t believe in it, why should it bother them one little bit if someone else does?
Fox news reports that the Navy has reversed this decision and will return bibles to the lodges.
Ummm..Maybe it is just my Arkansas public education showing, or perhaps my 15 years in the Marine Corps infantry…
But may I ask, WHY atheists get so offended by something they don’t believe in?
I don’t believe in Santa Claus, but I am not running around demanding that all images of him be torn down and banned?
I don’t believe in Allah, but I am not going to scream and get all mad until Korans are destroyed.
Just curiosity.