An atheist just captured a Chaplain doing the wrong thing. And he’s admitting to it as part of his regular routine. The sad thing is, he is not even aware of it.
His job is to tend the needs of the existing flock, not to grow it.
Other than in the extremely rare context of an atheist inviting such a conversation, he has no business bringing up the (pathetic) conversion tactics like complexity (appearance of design) and “It takes more faith to be an atheist.”
I can’t even imagine a scenario where it’s appropriate for a Chaplain to say “turn from your denial before it is eternally too late for you.”
Chaplain Steven Firtko, you are wrong.
Forced or not, you are not supposed to ‘offer’ that the Soldier you are standing near is risking eternal torture if he doesn’t change his mind. Even if you believe this to be true, you are absolutely not allowed to proselytize like that.
I just sent Chaplain Firtko a message
I hope you realize that we are entirely capable of living pluralistically within the army. I won’t deconvert your flock, and you don’t proselytize mine.
If evangelism means you can’t respect other’s beliefs as genuinely valid (not needing fixing), then evangelism has no place in the government.
He seems to have dug his hole deeper along these lines a month ago in the Fox News facebook page when the same atheist posted the screen shot. The conversation there was telling – the Christians stopped defending his actions and instead pretended that the Chaplain’s Facebook account was fake (in the face overwhelming evidence).
Just goes to show, there are no atheists in FoxNews.