Name: Jody White
\nBranch:\tU.S. Army National Guard
\nRank: SPC-4 (Specialist)
\nBasic Training: October 1996-January 1997, Fort Jackson, South Carolina; B Company, 6th Brigade, 2nd Battalion, 4th Platoon
\nAIT: Ft. Gordon, Georgia; MOS 31N (Tactical Circuit Controller)
\nMain Unit: Florida Army National Guard, B-Company 111th Signal Battalion, 1st Platoon<\/p>\n
Most of the time I was in the military, I was somewhere between agnostic and Wiccan. I hadn\u2019t given any particular thought to being an atheist until 1999.<\/p>\n
On my dog tags, I specified \u201cNo Religious Preference,\u201d and left it at that. During Basic (Fort Jackson), I half-heartedly joined some of the other trainees in \u201cchurch\u201d in the first weeks (services were held in the auditorium)\u2013but this was just to get out of doing the Sunday barracks clean-up. I got bored and decided I\u2019d rather push a mop than sit in on a multidenominational christ-fest.<\/p>\n
My entire Company was marched to a pre-xmas church service, all because the duty NCO wanted to go. We were on our own time, but he took it upon himself to get everyone into uniform so we could all<\/i> go watch the chorus sing praises and listen to preacher-talk. I was one of maybe a dozen out of a couple of hundred men and women who simply sat in the pews and didn\u2019t participate. I got a lot of dirty looks, but I\u2019m sure I was giving them right back. I amused myself by playing through the entire Def Leppard \u201cPyromania\u201d album.<\/p>\n
When I got to AIT at Fort Gordon, I had a deck of Tarot cards confiscated \u201cfor my protection from the powers of evil\u201d by some sergeant who turned out to be one of the chaplains, and the pastor of one of the holy-roller churches on base. I stole a deck of playing cards and used them until I got my own back\u2026 not an atheist even, but just one more strike against those who wish to dominate others\u2019 lives with their own beliefs.<\/p>\n
During a 2-week Annual Training exercise in Live Oak, FL, I bought a guitar\u2026 and had another run-in with some local religious goober sergeant. I had no idea how to play the thing, but I was learning to tune it. This sergeant walked by my cot and asked me what sort of music I played; I replied, \u201cRock.\u201d He gave me that Look the faithful get when they\u2019ve spied another lost soul and said, \u201cWell, just remember, Jesus loves you.\u201d Then he vanished like I had the plague. Too bad I wasn\u2019t an atheist back then *g* <\/p>\n
I\u2019m not sure I even knew what an \u201catheist\u201d was when I was 18 or so. I hadn\u2019t given it any thought\u2013and I think that\u2019s very common. People simply absorb the \u201cconventional wisdom\u201d that gets thrown around by others, rarely thinking about it. Government propaganda and the media portrayed the USSR as \u201cgodless\/atheist Communists,\u201d purely for political purposes. But that sort of thing gets accepted as the truth by the average flock-dweller American. It wasn\u2019t until I specifically looked for a newsgroup about atheism and started reading posts from actual people that my brain awoke and started sifting through the garbage of 33 years of subtle media\/social programming.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until then that I realized that I\u2019ve always been an atheist to some degree. I did my time in foxholes during training\u2013so that\u2019s just one more atheist in a foxhole for the nay-sayers to deal with.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Name: Jody White Branch: U.S. Army National Guard Rank: SPC-4 (Specialist) Basic Training: October 1996-January 1997, Fort Jackson, South Carolina; B Company, 6th Brigade, 2nd Battalion, 4th Platoon AIT: Ft. Gordon, Georgia; MOS 31N (Tactical Circuit Controller) Main Unit: Florida Army National Guard, B-Company 111th Signal Battalion, 1st Platoon Most of the time I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1308,"featured_media":0,"parent":5349,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6341","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n