Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Because of course religion isn't allowed in the military
Well, unless it's Christianity. A while ago a small article was published about a pair of soldiers who had been killed in Iraq. What's special about these soldiers is that they happened to be Wiccans, and as such their wives requested that a pentagram be placed on their tombstones. A reasonable request, after all Christians are allowed crosses on their tombstones, part of Church-state separation is that no one is allowed to tell anyone what they can't have on their tombstone after all. Well it looks like the government didn't see it that way (surprise, surprise) and has been dragging its heels in an attempt to keep the tombstones pentagram free. The excuse is that the pentagram isn't among the symbols allowed on military headstones.
So, what happens if your symbol isn't on this list and you've given your life to the service of our supposedly free nation? It would stand to reason wouldn't it that if one simply asked for their religion's symbol to be included the Department of Veteran's Affairs would be more than happy to oblige. Well it turns out that (big surprise) they haven't and now the widows of those two soldiers are having to sue the Department in the hopes that this at least will get their husbands' religion properly represented. Will they succeed? The government is notoriously difficult to sue, but hopefully they will be successful.
Naturally I became curious and decided to look up just which symbols are allowed. As it turns out there are symbols allowed for just about every denomination of Christianity (gee, one would think a simple cross would suffice, possibly a crucified half-naked dead guy), atheists (apparently our "religious" symbol is the atom with an A in it), Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Native Americans, various Japanese and a few I've never even heard of. It should be noted that the Native American symbol is just a teepee with three feathers, not any of the many religious symbols of various Native American tribes (the Thunderbird, the kokopelli, the sun, various animal symbols such as crow and bear, etc.)
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Ignorant Christians...
...think that everything they don't understand is satanic. Which covers pretty much everything, but they have an especially hard time distinguishing between Wicca and satanism. To them, the pentagram is satanic, end of debate.
- No More Mr. Nice Guy!
yup
It's kind of the same thing as many people having difficulty differentiating between the Nazi swastika and the original swastika (often going by other names to more directly show the difference) that has been an almost universal pegan symbol of good fortune, a symbol still used by Buddhists and Hindus.
In the case of the pentagram from what I understand early on it became demonized by Christianity because of its association with peganism, something they saw as devil worship. In addition pegans that converted would have brought along the mythos of the inverted pentagram, sometimes used as a symbol for imbalance/evil. Without any real reason to tell the difference fundamentalist Christians would easilly forget that such a difference had ever been. Ironically, perhaps, the pentagram was also a symbol for the Pythagoreans, as they felt the pentagram was a mathamatically perfect shape.
As an aside...
Well of course the military has a set of approved symbols for the different religions, with a heavy emphasis on Christianity. Can't have no Heathens in the military!
*sigh* Yeah, I was as appalled as you when I saw this item in the news.
And, as an aside, did you catch PZ's piece on atheism symbols 10 days ago? You can find it here.
Jim Downey
"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."
- R. Buckminster Fuller