A lot of people don’t like Lyndon Rush, the Christian zealot who also happens to be a bobsledder in the Olympics. I think he’s wonderful. It’s so helpful to have someone like him openly demonstrating that Christians are morons.*
You know there’s no atheist in a foxhole, right? There’s no atheist at the top of a bobsled run, either.
But there are atheists in the military. I don’t know about any specific godless organizations dedicated to the plight of unbelievers in bobsleds — bobsledding is a rather trivial issue to focus on, anyway — but there probably are some. They’re just smart enough to know it’s pointless to make a sport a place to issue a philosophical manifesto.
Oh, but wait…here’s why I love Rush as a paragon of Christian idiocy. There are no atheists in bobsleds, but there are atheists right there on his team. And Rush doesn’t even notice that he contradicts himself!
I’ve had atheists on my team and they have no problem talking to God before the run. Everybody likes it. Even the atheists, for instance, they like how it sets the tone. We all come together and I pray about things that they want, too. Maybe they’re not in a period of their life where they believe in God, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t really believe in atheists.
I marvel at that. It’s a miracle that the same person who has the awesome intelligence required to plummet down an icy track could babble so…he doesn’t believe in atheists, but atheists are on his team, and there are no atheists at the top of the bobsled run, and the atheists there like to hear him chatter about god. He is so self-unaware, so oblivious, so Gomer Pyle.
Guess what, Lyndon? The atheists don’t like to listen you preach your inanity, except in the mean-spirited sense of watching yet another dumb Christian proudly demonstrate what an ass he can be. They probably get together for beer after a run and tell Lyndon Rush stories, and laugh and laugh.
*I know they aren’t all morons — they just believe in incredibly stupid ideas. But you have to appreciated what great negative PR Lyndon Rush is for Christianity.
Oh, yeah, just to be even meaner about it all: he finished 15th. What kind of medal do you get for that? Does someone pat some dogpoop into a roundish shape, stick it in a snow bank to freeze it with a loop of fishing line, and toss that to the wanker as he’s praising Jesus for getting him across the finish line?
RE: “Atheists in Foxholes…”
“”The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes. I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, “There’s a Chaplain who never visited the front.”””
Kurt Vonnegut
Fuck you Lyndon
http://www.ffrf.org/outreach/atheists-in-foxholes/
Enough said.
This means he doesn’t think anybody really really thinks there id no god. The deep down you atheists know you’re wrong and are pretending for some reason.
Similarly, “no atheists in foxholes” doesn’t mean atheists are cowards. It means ahteists aren’t really atheists and this is revealed under pressure.
People who say these things aren’t merely slandering athiests, they cannot compherend that atheists really exist.
Is he mistaking tolerance for taking part? Yeah, he’s a moron.
Please! Please! Please! Can we talk about Tim Tebow, the greatest college quarterback of all time and the second best human never aborted by his mother?
I like to watch bobsledding and all, but for Pete’s sake it’s bobsledding. It’s gravity. If it real were a test of faith, then they should do it backwards. Either they should go down the shoot backwards, and the team that prays the hardest will make it down safely. Or they should start at the bottom, and pray. If God is truly with them then they should be able to make that sled go uphill. Does Jesus change the gravitational constant for those who pray hard enough? The FSM does.
Creation and Heaven
RAmen
I’m sure Mr. Rush’ prayer was something like this:
“Dear God: Even though there is no evidence you ever answer prayers, if you do finally answer this one, please ignore my impending bobsled run. I’d prefer to win fair and square on my own merits anyway. Instead, go help any number of the diseased, destitute, starving, or enslaved people who are horribly suffering right now.”
Someone should ask steroid-boy what a foxhole is.
I wonder how many competitors in the Skeleton are atheists ?
Skeleton is even scarier than Bobsleigh, as in Skeleton you lie on a glorified tea-tray about an inch from the ice, and go down the track head first.
I wonder if he just isn’t seeing the atheists roll their eyes because his head is bowed in prayer…
“There’s no atheists in foxholes” is one of those ideas that Christians must believe in just to get through their days. In the same categories are: all atheists are unhappy and humanity feels a deep need for god. No matter how many times they are told and shown atheists living very contented lives, they refuse to understand; they refuse to even seriously consider the possibility. It would lessen their faith if they believed that Nonbelievers could be happy. For every Christian knows that God is the only path to happiness. Their romantic vision of the world needs certain ideas, to continue, and Christians will believe those ideas regardless of their basis in truth. We see evidence of this every day.
Only in a mind trained to maximum illogical capacity by the belief that the Earth is 6000 years old could hold such incongruous ideas within itself simultaneously.
It’s a kind of self imposed brain damage. There should be a law against that.
The Blessed Atheist Bible Study @ http://blessedatheist.com/
Speaking of athletes and Jesus, for the past couple of months I’ve been watching mixed martial arts stuff on TV, you know, UFC and WEC. OK, I admit it – it’s like a rush of testosterone and I can’t stop watching.
What’s amazing is how many of those guys, after they’ve won a fight and beat their opponent bloody, will say on camera how they “just want to give the glory to Jesus” or some such. WTF?
Who is this moron? I hate these Christian sports-tards.
Dude, Jesus was the originator of mixed-martial arts. He had some time between wrangling dinosaurs. Fuck yeah!
And I say Rush knows the truth about about his irrational “beliefs”, but is a coward who won’t face the fact of his non-immortality.
See, I can mind-read, too!
Ummm, you mean “adulthood”?
Once again, a believer states that they can’t even imagine how a person can *not* believe in supernatural nonsense.
Big surprise there, eh?
Sorry, that was ambiguous. Should be “you mean they’re not in that period known as ‘childhood’?”
This was my favorite part of Left Behind too. Nobody who isn’t a Real, True Christian (IE Batshit insane Evangelical) can /honestly/ hold their beliefs, so when Nicky Appalachians, the antichrist, institutes a One World Religion, everyone instantly drops their own religion (Or non religion!) for it. Except, of course, for the Real, True Christians.
It was stupid then, and it’s stupid now. But, we know the REAL root of this stupidity (And Romans 1). To acknowledge that people can truly believe in a /wrong/ religion opens the possibility that their passionate sincerity is in something /wrong/. I like this kind of faith, because it’s so flimsy, and built on such idiotic grounds, that it’s the easiest to destroy.
This line is so hilarious to me for someone reason.
“I pray about the prayer before the race,”
I giggled for like a minute.
Let me guess – this Lyndon Rush is probably on the American team?
#23 He’s Canadian actually, (close enough from this side of the pond though).
*sigh* Why are the cute ones always crazy?
PZ @1
That’d be dog poop with hydatid eggs, I insist.
The reason “there’s no atheists in foxholes” is offensive is because it implies atheists are not patriotic, are unwilling to stand up for ideals, etc.
“There’s no atheists at the top of a bobsled run” would simply suggest that atheists aren’t interested in that form of risk for entertainment.
It’s also just false.
Skwisgaar Skwigelf: Dis is dildoes. Doesn’t he know there’s no such things as religion?
Nathan Explosion: You mean *you* don’t believe in god. There *is* such thing as religion.
Skwisgaar Skwigelf: Den proves it! Shows me a miracle that religion exists!
Nathan Explosion: Well, there’s a bible right there.
Skwisgaar Skwigelf: Oh. Well. Then I guess I re-evalutates my life then.
What a treasure trove of contradictions!
About atheists on his team:
Does he know what atheists want? Does he think god will grant these things?
My brains hurt now.
No, that’s not the implication. The implication is that in times when someone is in fear for his life, he’ll stop that silliness of denying that a god exists and pray.
It’s equivalent to saying that there aren’t any Jews in foxholes, because they know deep down that they really believe in Jesus and when times are critical, they’ll ask Jesus into their hearts. I’d like to hear one of these guys say that, and then see what happens.
Presumably, they wanted a gold medal. Fucker prayed to the wrong goddamn god and let everybody down. How come Christians aren’t happy unless they’re fucking everybody else’s shit up too?
Oh, no!
This retard is Canadian. I bow my head in shame at his stupidity.
Still, it is some comfort to know that he’s from Saskatchewan. That’s smack damn in the middle of Canada’s Bible Belt. It would have been worse had he been from somewhere enlightened like British Columbia, Ontario, or Quebec.
Note: Yes, I know Quebec has been a stronghold of the Catholic church in Canada but younger Québecois don’t really give a crap about religion and it is showing in church attendance, which is the lowest on the continent.
He would never say there are no Muslims in foxholes!
[/fatwa envy dipshittedness]
I think his teammate is just saying whatever he thinks will make Rush shut the fuck up. I imagine most of “his guys” spend the prayer time fantasizing about throwing Rush down the track head first but are too tolerant and polite to ask him to stop.
Yup. Shoulda prayed to Urcaguary.
Re: #29 That’s how I always interpreted it, and how it seems Rush is using it (“When people are under fire or standing at the top of a really steep slope, they turn to God”).
Which, even if its true, is hardly as ringing endorsment of faith (“There must be a God! People pray to him when they’re stressed and frightened!”)
Quetzalcoatl is pissed.
Competition medals represent various stages of man: Gold= when men live gods, Silver= when youth lasted hundreds of years, Bronze= era of heros.
So if we go by named medals after eras, 15th place should be either:
mesolithic medal, neolithic medal, iron medal, medieval medal, dark age medal, pre-ceramic medal, woodland period medal, pleistocene medal,
what about speed medal and death medal?
Something about this fails.
Fails hard.
So he “knows” one thing that is wrong, and bases his assumptions about life on that wrong thing? He’s a Christian, all right.
Bobsledding is just steering down a chute, for the gods sake. He isn’t likely to die.
I recently took a long bicycle trip, which involved many instances of riding down a long, winding and bumpy hill road on an overloaded recumbent. I may not have gone quite as fast as ol’ Lyndon, but I was dodging cars, and hadn’t a friend in a thousand miles. I started that trip as an atheist, I was an atheist up and down hill, and I finished the trip as an atheist, and I had a damn good time, thank you.
I also met a few Christians along the way, and never once made snarky remarks about their religion. Nice people are good people, and only a jerk would assume otherwise.
(Speaking of religious tolerance, I spent some of the trip listening to MP3s of muslim muzzien calls, just because they sound great, and practiced my own attempts at calling, out on a few back roads and bike trails.)
Rush is not necessarily lying here, or even self-deluded. There are quite a few atheists who have no problem with cheerfully blending in, participating, even encouraging public displays of religion. They think that it fosters tolerance, and shows how open to to diversity they are; they often just don’t give a frick anyway. Prayer before a team event is seen as a bonding ritual, and one that helps them focus on the importance and seriousness of whatever it is they need to focus on.
The problem here is that this sort of accommodationism backfires in the long run. In the short run, the religious will all nod and smile and approve of the “good atheist” — why can’t all atheists be like this? But the longterm effect is that the atheist is only accepted on the most superficial level, because he’s reinforcing the view that religion is true and good. Deep down, the atheist believes in God. Deep down, the atheist accepts that faith is a wonderful thing. There is no other side. There is no real dissent.
You can feel comfortable with an atheist like that.
It’s like a gay man going with his straight friends to stripper bars, and having a grand old time shoving dollar bills down g-strings of lovely ladies. Everyone therefore accepts him, their “gay friend.” He’s not really different. He’s a regular guy — going through a funny period in his life, which he obviously wants to change back to the Standard.
He just likes to pray before a run so he can feel better about putting his life at extreme risk for no other reason than to feed his ego.
In fact, praying can make us feel better about doing all kinds of stupid shit!
“Well, I quit my job so I could spend more time spreading the good word. I know my wife and seven kids will be fine because I prayed about it first.”
Good job.
Whoops, misspelled “muezzin”.
Christians also tend to confuse “not particularly religious” with “atheist.” While some of these non-religious individuals may certainly lack a firm belief in god, they often haven’t considered the issue very deeply, and as such haven’t arrived at atheism as a rigorous conclusion. It’s easy to view these non-religious types as merely uninformed or still on their spiritual journey.
But it’s incomprehensible to many Christians that atheism can actually be a considered conclusion made after evaluating all the evidence, and not simply a state of unawareness of how awesome and sensible Christianity really is. If any theist ever utters the phrase “it takes more faith to be an atheist,” then you know you are dealing with one of these Christians who have no clue where the balance of evidence actually hangs (the great majority, to be certain).
Hey, that’s the same thing that priests pray for!
I don’t know about Minnesota but up here in Canada it is generally considered good manners to overlook someone’s psychosis. Injecting your personal religious opinions into almost all social situations is considered very bad manners and such people are generally treated the same way one would treat someone talking to a lamp post. I suspect Rush has mistaken other people’s tolerance for his poor manners as concurrence with his opinions.
Oh, I guarantee there are atheists in foxholes. I was one when I was in the USMC. 30 years later, one of my friends, who’s a captain in the USMC is a staunch atheist. He’s already served in Iraq.
I suggest Lyndon Rush shut his pie hole, because he’s promulgating a LIE.
Hmmm, with all that praying going on, you’d have thought Lyndon’s god might have arranged it so he actually won something.
A loser in every sense, me thinks.
Thanks Peter. You said it much better than the draft I just discarded did. We’re also a culture of people who think it’s acceptable to just stop shaving for a month when our team is in the playoffs; we’re not about to start arguing with someone whom we’re hoping to win a medal with. And who knows? Perhaps this guy is actually quite pleasant to be around, other than his tendency to evangelise. Sure, we’ll be brusque if you show up at our homes with a copy of The Watchtower, but if his teammates generally think he’s a good guy they’ll look at their shoes appropriately when he prays and when the God talk starts they’ll politely nod and say, “Yes, well, you’ve given me a lot to think about. Now, let’s hit that track, eh?”
The two most strident atheists I know are combat vets and they told me it was the bad things happening at random to both the good and bad people that de-converted them.
Like that is going to stop a TrueChristian©
Their whole belief system is based on a lie, anyway.
There are atheists in sports a lot more dangerous than bobsledding. When I roadraced motorcycles I once found at the track a leaflet advertising the Sunday “service” of a group called the “Racing Atheists”. It mentioned that the service would not be taking place, where it would not be taking place and when it would not be taking place :)
The tag line was, “For those not afraid to face the void without a crutch”.
What a wuss. I race motorcycles for fun, and I am only an atheist.
Seriously though, how juvenile can a grown man be? He beats his chest about how badass he is because he rides a bobsled, which is so dangerous that only people who believe in god, and ask him for help, can face the danger of the bobsled?
Does not work. Makes him sound like a child who can’t wipe his ass without help from mom or dad.
If he is such a badass he should say before each run, “Fuck off god, if you interfere in any way I’ll come looking for you! And you won’t like it!”
This was the guy who was driving when he finished Run 3 sliding on his head? His God must have been chatting up the Canadian Women’s Bobsled team instead.
Win.
Although I think it not unlikely that 15th place gets Black Medal.
You only start in the playoffs? Hell, I stop shaving in October.
They probably tolerated his inane babbling because they didn’t want him to get worked up and lose the bobsleigh race for them by pitching a hissy fit.
I don’t know that I’d want the driver of the bobsled I was in to be quite so anxious to get to the afterlife.
… Sooo, to sum up this guy’s speech, what he’s basically said is: “Yes, I’m such a wuss that when I face the thought of actually getting in that sled, I need to imagine my magical sky guy is holding my hand while I do it… But no, actually, not everyone on my team needs that, and I tend to regularly to beg said big guy to hold my hand aloud and in front of them, and they manage not to laugh.”
… cool, kid. Allow me to wonder aloud if the guys who just handed you your cowardly ass in competition had a little more self-respect than that.
Mr. Rush and his co-pilot were considered serious contenders for gold until Mr. Deity decided to turn them upside-down for his entertainment and they went sliding down the course that way.
I’m in the Army……………
… test his faith. :)
PZ, maybe you can do a quick piece on something called the “Global Assessment Tool,” or GAT, which is ostensibly designed to measure soldier’s strength of character or something along those lines.
The problem is that one of the sections of the test measures the religious convictions of the soldier, and that the test is mandatory.
Well I was never in a foxhole while I was in the Navy.However, I served in the submarine service and I knew of several other atheists in my crew.I can assure we were aware if we ever had to fire our missiles we would be destroyed, if not before we finished firing them then shortly thereafter. (This was at the height of the cold war and I can say we never uttered a prayer.)
Lyndon didn’t pray quite well enough before the race, it would seem, or perhaps there really are atheists. What a fine job he does at making an ass out of himself.
the same person who has the awesome intelligence required to plummet down an icy track – PZ
“Awesome intelligence”? I think you mean “crass stupidity”.
Actually, I never shave and I don’t really care too much about sports. “Growin’ a beard for the playoffs” is just something I tell my manager when she complains about my
slovenlyrugged, manly appearance, regardless of the time of year.Frankly I’m a little disappointed in you tsg: falling for a silly superstition like that.
I have taken a bobsled run down the Olympic track in Cortina, Italy. I was an atheist at the top, an atheist in the middle, and even an atheist on the final bend as more than 5G crushed my spine.
I was also an atheist at the end. A very happy atheist, enjoying the biggest adrenalin rush of my life.
People like this twat are just spiritual cowards, and they’re also so unintelligent that they are incapable of imagining that other people are not spiritual cowards.
I emailed a few friends the link to the story under the subject line “Fool Runnings.”
*patting self on back*
Bobsled must be at least a little bit scary. The Netherlands #1 4-man team just pulled out after a crash. I guess that driver doesn’t think his god will protect him.
Is there really a difference between a moron and someone who believes moronic things? I just don’t see it in a practical sense.
Is he in charge of these guys? Bobsled Team Forgets Bobsled, courtesy of The Onion.
Maybe they wanted this proselytising idiot to come 15th, so that they got a better driver next time?
It seems to me that if someone gets financial support from the Federal government for his sport, he should not be allowed to use it as a vehicle for evangelizing. He is representing Canada, not Christians.
Prayer and religious beliefs should be a private matter. Anything else is divisive. Not to mentnion rude.
I am trying to figure out how to pass this thought on to the Canadaian Olympic Committee. We really should not tolerate that nonsense.
I wish there more people like him so the public could see how idiotic and stupid religion is.
There are no atheists in foxholes or on the top of bobsled runs, but are there atheists in mosh pits? That’s where you really take your life into your hands.
Hey! No dissin’ Gomer Pyle – he may have been naive, but he was big-hearted and not bigoted – nothing like those all-hating jesus cultists.
Brownian @67,
what, pray, is this “growing a beard for the playoffs” thing?
Does it transfer across codes and, more importantly, does it work? Because if so, unlikely as success might be, I’d seriously try raising a beard in the 18 hours between now and kickoff at Twickers tomorrow.
@daveau #70: People die in bobsled accidents; they do reach incredible speeds. As far as the driver’s being terrified – the article doesn’t indicate whether he suddenly developed a fear of bobsledding (which people can), if he’s convinced that the track he was on was beyond his capability, or if he suffers from performance anxiety. Some of the best target archers I’ve ever known could not win in competitions because they got nervous and their performance just went down the drain.
“As a final touch, God created the Dutch.”
I’m not up on my religious dogma, since I don’t use it, but isn’t it somehow hypocritical for a Christian to be in a foxhole?
I think it’s hypocritical for a Christian to fight in a war, but who am I to question the intricacies of a theology for which every rule is to be absolutely obeyed except when it isn’t? Objective morality sure is flighty.
Mrs. Tilton @78:
As far as I understand it, the playoff beard is a hockey superstition (though I remember some players on my rugby team not shaving the day of a game with the reasoning that shaving stretched and dried the skin, making it more susceptible to cuts and tears in a scrum or ruck.) Generally, hockey players start following the superstition at the junior level, though the difference between shaved and unshaved at that age is often not more than a lone whisker or two.
Since most NHLers usually sport one yet only one team ever walks away with the cup in any given season, I’d say it’s about as effective as praying to God for a win.
Is it the success at the game or success in growing a beard in 18 hours that’s unlikely? I’ve already got one on the go that’s not dedicated to any team, but I could probably shave tonight and have a good start on a new one in a day-and-a-half if you’d like a fresh one.
I think I’ve found a calling for me and my hirsuteness. Brownian: professional playoff beard grower!
Brownian @83,
Is it the success at the game or success in growing a beard in 18 hours that’s unlikely?
Until two weeks ago at the Stade de France, I’d have said only the latter.
Why are we so concerned? The man is essentially ballast.
B
This Lyndon Rush fellow seems like a person who can’t help but vocalize every thought that crosses his tiny little mind. Most people have learned some tact by that age, but apparently not Mr Rush.
Menyambal @40 and others saying things like “Bobsledding is just steering down a chute, for the gods sake. He isn’t likely to die.” If you’d been paying any attention at all you’d have seen that people have been badly injured this year at the olympics and one athlete was killed in the Luge, an event quite similar to bobsledding. Just because Lyndon Rush is talking out of his ass doesn’t mean you should be doing the same.
Funny, but living here in Saskatchewan I don’t think of us as part of a Canadian bible belt. That would be parts of Alberta.
I once read a book about how to be a successful bobsledder. It said, “Don’t fuck up the start.” That’s all it said.
So Mr Rush’s prayer would go something like:
Dear, God.
Please help me not fuck up the start.
Amen.
Right. Except that the bobsled is not the luge or the skeleton. A bag of sand could do his job – except that it might fuck up the start.
Oh, please, everyone here is aware of the risks involved in the Winter Olympic sports. Yah, even an ice dancer can get dropped on their head and die. But “gawd protect me” is a cowardly way to face the risks…risks that every sportsperson everywhere faces and accepts.
Pitching softball can get you killed, too.
This is the true way of numbering those Olympic medals (using only transitional metals and post transitional metals):
1st place is Aluminum Medal
2nd place is Scandium Medal
3rd place is Titanium Medal
Rush was only at Zirconium place. He didn’t pray hard enough. (No offense to people who actually tried and failed rather than relying on supernatural forces)
The 15th place medal is a plastic disk with the words, “Why the fuck did you even show up?” on the front.
The back says, “Don’t even think of asking me for busfare back home.”
funny, but living here in Alberta I don’t think of us as part of a Canadian bible belt. That would be parts of Manitoba.
Regarding atheists in foxholes.
I spent 21 years in the air force. Believers were so rare that they were considered a novelty. Maybe he should join one of the armed forces to find out the facts.
Sigh. True. But only parts of Manitoba.
Really? Why is it I read about proselytizing being so pervasive in the services?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4772331
http://www.atheists.org/press_releases/Atheists_Cite_Pattern_of_Proselytizing_in_Military
Beards, mmmmm.
I’m pretty sure Abdul Alhazred has the correct interpretation of the “There are no atheists in foxholes,” line.
It’s based on the belief that those who profess to be atheists are really just believers who try to repress what they know in their heart to be true. They see atheists as naughty children who are rebelling against God, and think that as soon as the going gets rough, they’ll come running back to daddy Jesus.
These people are convinced that their belief is simply natural, and that everyone else who says they believe anything else just isn’t being sincere.
Have you ever seen one go down upside-down ?
It happens surprisingly often. In the two-men, there was one team who made at least 3/4 of the way upside down. in another one, one of the guys was ejected.
It’s quite funny to watch (I just couldn’t help it, it was so hilarious), but I sure wouldn’t like to be in their position.
This reminds me of that Far Side cartoon depicting the percussionist in the orchestra thinking to himself, “Don’t screw up, don’t screw up, don’t screw up,” while holding only one cymbal.
The caption reads, “Dan screws up” (I may have got the name wrong, can’t remember exactly).
Still learning,
Robert
As a Canadian I am a bit embarrassed by this guy, but what can you do?
Have I got this wrong, but shouldn’t ‘there are no atheists in foxholes’ mean that atheist aren’t in hiding, whereas Xtians are?
I`m a climber and when I feel really scared I remember my mommy not God.
Or I promised I will never be so stupid as to misrepresent the danger, but I don’t remember a single time that I have asked the Lord to save me from the danger.
Yep, the one time I came closest to death while climbing In Zion Nat. park I definably wasn’t thinking about god when half my anchor failed.
I used to be really into skydiving (having a kid nixed that hobby) and I remember one jump that scared the piss out of me. It was a jump from 10k feet. After free fall, I pulled the line for my main chute…and…nothing. After a quick few seconds of panic I pulled the reserve….still nothing. At no time during this interaction did the though of baby jesus enter my mind. At under 600 feet, and some fancy cord work, I finally got the reserve to deploy. Once on the ground, still an atheist. Ended up doing 3 more jumps that day as well.
He believes in god but renounces the existence of atheists?! I believe believing in such nonsense as the former would allow at least some doubt in belief of the latter..
No matter the severity of cortical twists mangling his brains.
I was under the impression that the “no atheists in foxholes” was written at a time when one could not get dog tags with word “atheist” for religious preference.
Thanks for that, ‘no atheist in foxholes’ is not something you hear said in the UK.
I still think that the saying could be subverted.
Yeah, thanks, I knew about the luge guy dying, and was saddened by the needlessness of his death. I also realized that his death made the news precisely because it was unusual. Sledders do not die every day.
Which is why I said Lyndon Rush was not likely to die. There’s a vague chance, yes, but it is quite UNlikely that he will die on any particular run, or even in his career as a sledder. He will, most likely–nay, almost certainly–wind up his life as an old geezer bragging about the plastic disc he traded for bus fare home from the Olympics, and looking forward to seeing Jesus in Heaven.
A soldier crouching in a foxhole has something to be scared of, and an excuse to pray. A grown man playing a sport has nothing to pray about. He is going SLEDDING, for the love of mud. Yeah, it is a bit rougher than sledding down the hill with the neighbor kids, but he is IN an almost-enclosed sled, wearing a frakking helmet. He can refuse to get in if he frikkin’ wants to. It is a game, not a battle. Comparing himself to a soldier is just sick.
And praying is just wussy. Would John Wayne pray before going sledding? No, John Wayne would put on an eyepatch, knock back a bottle of whiskey and disable the brakes, just to make it a challenge worthy of a man. This guy refuses to get into the flipping sled without begging the creator of the entire universe to come along and do the steering for him–how much more help can he get, for God’s sake, and how much more scared can a person be?
Or, to paraphrase Yoda, “Pray not. Do, or do not. There is no pray.“
um, i’ve been in the military, and bobsledded.
John Wayne did pray. Right before he died.
I think all of you are just jealous because the athiest bobsledders don’t get the publicity. And Lyndon Rush is one of the top bobsledders at this time. He was 6th at the World Cup, 2nd and 4th at the World Championships, and, get this, 1st in the two-man at St. Moritz, and four-man at Park City, UT. So this man is a great bobsledder, no doubt.
I bet you all think the Jamaican bobsled team was severely oppressed by the Germans at their first Olympic games and that they were actually world-class sprinters.
You think wrong and you bet wrong.
So how come Rush’s god was only good enough for a bronze medal?
Okay, this motivated me to come out of lurkerdom, just because it irritates me so much.
I have served in Afghanistan. I have served in Iraq. I am an atheist. There are lots of us.
Yes, many people in the military are religious, and many of them use their religion as a source of solace during war. I’m okay with that. I’ve actually had debates with other atheists, because I support the government employing military chaplains, and lots of folks don’t.
But I find it profoundly insulting to state flat-out that our troops are too weak to deal with reality on reality’s terms. I’m not going to say that atheists are better soldiers, because I don’t think that’s necessarily true, but I do think there are some soldiers out there who have performed better under fire because they were only concerned with the immediate task at hand, rather than being preoccupied by crying out to their god or trying to prepare their souls for entry into the afterlife.
Also, the number of Evangelical Christian soliers who think we’re engaged in a holy war is astounding. Personally, I’m going to judge you negatively as a soldier if your motivation for serving is so you can fight a reverse Jihad.
Furthermore, it was my experience in Afghanistan that actually caused me to discard the religious faith I once held. The “foxhole” was the catalyst for my eventual atheism. By the end of my tour, I was officially agnostic, and I served my time in Iraq as a full-blown strong/hard atheist.
Sorry for ranting, but these fuckers who pull out the “no atheists in a foxhole” line royally piss me off. Look at that: I don’t fucking exist. Maybe I’m god, then.
I think they confused “foxholes” with “VBIEDs.” There are no atheists in car-bombs.
P.S. Prof. Myers, I’ve been reading Pharyngula for several months now, and I love it. Thanks for doing what you do.
Okay, I wanted that to display my username instead of my actual name. Is there any way to edit these posts?
Disregard. It’s fixed.
I would like to apologize for the offense some have you have taken from my quotes. This is the problem with print media, they context is not included and the writer puts in what them want. I do not want to down play the bravery of atheist soldiers or bobsleighers. When Media ask me a question I answer it.