Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
A few weeks ago I mentioned a powerpoint presentation by a military chaplain that advocated creationism as a means of keeping soldiers from committing suicide, but I couldn't make it public yet. Now my friend Chris Rodda, who discovered the powerpoint on the web, has published about it at DailyKos so you can see the details.
As Chris notes, this presentation was given at a mandatory meeting to more than 1000 soldiers and sent out as an email to 5000 more. Capt. Christian Biscotti says that the solution to suicide in the military it to convince soldiers that evolution is false and that they were created specially by God. Much of it is based on Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life.
The powerpoint continues much ignorant blather about Darwin, evolution and humanism. It's the usual litany of "evolution leads to communism" arguments you've seen a thousand times. In the third slide included in the post, you can see Biscotti compare America and the Soviet Union and he actually lists Darwin as a leader of the Soviet Union! Here it is:
Staggering. Apparently Biscotti has never heard of Lysenko and is ignorant of the fact that the Soviet Union explicitly rejected evolution in favor of Lysenkoism. In fact, as fellow ScienceBlogger John Wilkins documents at TalkOrigins, Lysenko criticized the chance aspects of Darwinian evolution the same as creationists do:
"Such sciences as physics and chemistry have freed themselves from chance. That is why they became exact sciences.Animate nature was developed and is developed on a foundation of the most strict and inherent rules. Organisms and species are developed on a foundation of their natural and intrinsic needs.
By getting rid of Mendelism-Morganism-Weismannism from our science we banish chance out of biological science.
We must keep in mind clearly that science is the enemy of chance."
As Wilkins notes, "Mendel, Morgan and Weismann were the biologists who discovered genes and mutation. Their work underpins modern biology and modern evolutionary theory."
Biscotti also misuses Pat Tillman, who was an atheist, as an example of the power of faith:
Another segment of Capt. Biscotti's presentation, titled "FAITH is Foremost," contains three stories -- his own personal story, the story of the woman who made the news a few years back by talking her way out of a hostage situation by reading to her captor from The Purpose Driven Life, and, incredibly inappropriately for a presentation promoting religion, the story of Pat Tillman. I'm sure everyone remembers Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich's outrageous remarks that Tillman's parents' dissatisfaction with the investigation of their son's death was caused by their religious beliefs, or lack thereof, saying in an ESPN.com interview, "When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don't believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more -- that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don't know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough." I'm fairly certain that the Tillmans would not be very happy to find out that their son is now being used as an example in a presentation promoting religion to the military.
All of this would be merely stupid if not for the fact that attendance of this fundamentalist drivel was mandatory for more than 1000 American soldiers.
Politics
Comments
Someone on active duty please tell me: I spent 11 years in the Army, ending in `95, and I never saw prosletyzing this blatant. Was I just lucky to be in the right units, or has it really gotten that much worse?
Posted by: WScott | December 2, 2008 9:56 AM
Posted by: James Hanley | December 2, 2008 10:03 AM
I agree James. This guy's name really takes the (Christian) Biscuit!*. - :) DJ
*I wonder if he's a "hot cross" biscuit. Like the buns, only crunchy!
Posted by: DingoJack | December 2, 2008 10:09 AM
WScott, it has gotten worse, although I've personally seen very little of it in the guard. This shit makes my blood boil, but I'm not sure what I can do as a lone NCO.
Posted by: Josh | December 2, 2008 10:15 AM
So Darwin, an Englishman, and Marx, a German, were leaders of Soviet Russia?
Stupidity's afoot.
Posted by: Jon | December 2, 2008 10:16 AM
It appears Capt. Biscotti's commander is Lt. Gen. Rod Bishop.
Posted by: Charles Dickens, call your office | December 2, 2008 10:17 AM
As an Italian, I'd say it's more like Captain Christian Cookies.
Posted by: Dr X | December 2, 2008 10:25 AM
Umm... someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall Lincoln being a great "Theistic" leader of the United States... (Washington, either, but at least with Washington you have lots of references to "God.")
Posted by: Umlud | December 2, 2008 10:29 AM
Dr X - I thought 'biscotti' were rather dry, not very sweet biscuits (or as Americans call them, 'cookies') usually eaten with coffee. Or I am completely 'off-base' here?- DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | December 2, 2008 10:32 AM
So, what would happen to a soldier if he stood up in a presentation such as this and told the chaplain: "You're a moron." ?
Posted by: Greg Esres | December 2, 2008 10:53 AM
it's just more evidence that the military has no clue how to combat rising suicide rates within its ranks. the air force thinks god will do it, the army has an interactive that leads you through suicidal thoughts... for. the suicidal.
certainly wouldn't want to address the reasons for rising suicide rates.
Posted by: arin | December 2, 2008 10:56 AM
Funny I didn't feel like slitting my wrists until after I started viewing the PowerPoint. It doesn't seem to be working.
So we're not using atomic half-life anymore? Probability has been removed from thermodynamics, statistical physics, quantum mechanics and quantum information theory, and spacetime theories? The probabilistic models of protein building are gone? Hundreds, if not thousands, of physics and chemistry theories and formulas are out the window?
That's amazing! Who shifted the paradigm when I wasn't looking?
Posted by: Abby Normal | December 2, 2008 10:56 AM
Biscotti are double-baked.
So is Biscotti.
Posted by: T. Bruce McNeely | December 2, 2008 10:59 AM
In addition to the entire presentation being against military policy, it is just plain backwards. If Capt. Biscotti actually convinced any airman that his or her life was designed to suit God's purposes, wouldn't that imply that he or she should follow God's commands and "NOT KILL". If one truly believed this message, you would turn the other cheek, have mercy, resign from the Air Force and get a job helping others. You would not drop bombs on civilians or even other misguided soldiers. You would not drop bombs on any portion of the Earth that your God created. As usual with these kinds of religious messages, they are as absurd as the religion itself.
Posted by: Ann Klein | December 2, 2008 11:00 AM
In addition to the entire presentation being against military policy, it is just plain backwards. If Capt. Biscotti actually convinced any airman that his or her life was designed to suit God's purposes, wouldn't that imply that he or she should follow God's commands and "NOT KILL". If one truly believed this message, you would turn the other cheek, have mercy, resign from the Air Force and get a job helping others. You would not drop bombs on civilians or even other misguided soldiers. You would not drop bombs on any portion of the Earth that your God created. As usual with these kinds of religious messages, they are as absurd as the religion itself.
Posted by: Ann Klein | December 2, 2008 11:03 AM
I was a military spouse for 17 years and never saw anything this bad. Then again, my husband is retired and in a field where they don't use the chaplain services very often. In fact, the only time we ever saw a chaplain was when he came by to visit after our son was born. He asked if we wanted to pray and was perfectly respectful of our decision not to pray.
Posted by: Donna | December 2, 2008 11:11 AM
DJ, does Jesus Bickie translate better?
I wonder if in Al-Qaeda of Mesopotamia there is a Cpt. Islam Mammoul?
How about Cpt. Orthodox Baklava in the Hellenic AF?
Cpt. Hindu Nan-Khati of the Tamil Tigers? (sorry for the mixed cultures there)
Cpt. Nazi Pfeffernuesse of the Luftwaffe?
Posted by: marnk | December 2, 2008 11:11 AM
Gee, I thought that the ideologies motivating the Soviet Union were revolutionary Marxism and Leninism, forms of totalitarian socialism. These ideologies have nothing to do with evolutionary biology, and very little to do with atheism. And I also thought that the United States was driven not so much by ideology at all but by a defense of free market liberal democracy (at least for the developed world. Useful right wing dictators were fine in the third world). The United States' was not motivated by theism in the Cold War any more than it was motivated by the philosophy of William James.
Goddamn nutjobs.
Posted by: Chuck | December 2, 2008 11:11 AM
If that's the case then my research is done - where's my PhD? I wish someone would have told me that physics was an "exact science" a long time ago. I wouldn't have had to spend the last two and a half years trying to quantify and reduce the uncertainty in nuclear physics measurements.
Posted by: Cory | December 2, 2008 11:24 AM
"Such sciences as physics and chemistry have freed themselves from chance."
It's incredible how fundamentally wrong one can be. Quantum mechanics not only doesn't remove chance from physics, it posits that it is fundamentally impossible to remove chance from any physical system.
He's exactly wrong.
Posted by: Coriolis | December 2, 2008 11:38 AM
Ann Klein,
I've heard an interpretation of Exodus and Numbers (or is it Deuteronomy? I forget) that if you change the punctuation on those commandments, it turns out that the one you refer to said "Don't murder, don't steal from, don't bear false witness against, ... your neighbor (kinsmen)." Attacking (and committing genocide) against your non-neighbors as Joshua did was perfectly okay.
Posted by: Shawn Smith | December 2, 2008 11:50 AM
Okay, reading fail. Lysenko was not quoted in the powerpoint, he was quoted by Ed. I'm not sure who you guys are making snarky comments towards, but if it's a Russian biologist from the first half of the twentieth century, do it in your time machines, not the blog. (okay, it was John Wilkins, not Ed, but still...)
Posted by: Drekab | December 2, 2008 12:10 PM
The Christian hard right may have failed to secure the government, but they're going to make up for it with the military... If the same tactics were used by, say, a bunch of revolutionary Marxists, many people would accuse them of plotting a coup. Just saying.
Posted by: Dunc | December 2, 2008 12:15 PM
This suicide prevention PowerPoint was actually sent to MRFF by an airman at Lakenheath who was among the 5,000 or so people who got it in the email sent out to the entire base. He was so completely appalled by it that he contacted MRFF and forwarded us a copy of the file.
There's another, even worse creationism PowerPoint that was found on an Air Force server that MRFF acquired a while back. Ed already has a copy, (since he's one of the few people MRFF trusts with things that, for one reason or another, we don't want to make public right away.) This one actually comes right out and calls atheists "fools," and all sorts of other nice things.
Posted by: Chris Rodda | December 2, 2008 12:16 PM
If Biscotti's talking about the woman who was captured by the guy who shot up the courthouse in Atlanta a few years ago, he neglected to mention that she also shared her crystal meth with the guy, which also helped to calm him down. Sharing tooth-rotting illegal homebrew drugs with a stranger...such a Christian thing to do.
Posted by: Cliff Hendroval | December 2, 2008 12:18 PM
Posted by: Matt Heath | December 2, 2008 12:23 PM
As for the woman who read The PDL to her captor, it was later revealed that she also gave him crystal meth that night. A mind-altering drug cocktail apparently.
Posted by: Lynn | December 2, 2008 12:25 PM
I wonder what Emile Durkheim would have thought about the misuse his conclusions about suicide and religion have received over the years.
I also wonder how these pastors would react to the fact that the original basis for their arguments lay in the work of a secular French Jew who thought of god merely as "society writ large".
On a totally unrelated subject, why does the military like PowerPoint presentations so much? Anybody know?
Posted by: Julian | December 2, 2008 12:40 PM
Out of curiosity, I tried googling military powerpoints for some terms that might bring up similar amusing things (for those who don't know the secret google incantations: "filetype:ppt site:.mil search|terms|go|here"). Didn't find any of interest, but I did find out that the Code of Conduct for Members of the United States Armed Forces (Executive Order 10631) contains the following article:
Clever use of "my" there, since it turns it into a variable instead of a constant. Being an atheist, my God is an empty value so I could say that in all honesty, I suppose, but I would reserve the right to roll my eyes while doing so.
Posted by: jpf | December 2, 2008 1:38 PM
"So, what would happen to a soldier if he stood up in a presentation such as this and told the chaplain: "You're a moron." ?"
As long as he was a Major or higher, nothing. :-)
Posted by: Ian Kennedy | December 2, 2008 2:23 PM
But, according to heddle (on the thread about the idiot who thinks all the popes are fake--but, for the wrong reason) there is no chance of a theocracy.
Posted by: democommie | December 2, 2008 2:27 PM
Julian - the military loves PowerPoint because it is fairly easy to use presentation software, and comes with the military's standard choice for office software. Besides, the only thing MORE boring than an hour-long briefing with several dozen poorly-designed slides is an hour-long briefing with nothing to stare at but the presenter himself.
Prior to having computers, projectors, and PowerPoint easily available, we frequently used hand-written "slides" on butcher-block paper propped up on an easel. Even when people overuse the graphics and animations, or put their entire speech in small print on the slide, PowerPoint is an improvement over that.
WScott, I think it has gotten worse...but each unit varies quite a bit. I was in one unit where the 1SG and CSM were both preachers in their off time, and the Company and Battalion commanders both church officials. The Chaplain was nearly the only officer I DIDN'T feel was trying to proselytize. Even in the military, the god-botherers seem to flock together - and then egg each other on into foolishness like this slideshow.
Posted by: BobApril | December 2, 2008 2:54 PM
jpf: The Code of Conduct was approved in 1955, about the same time we were sticking Under God into the pledge and plastering In God We Trust on our money to show we weren't godless commies.
Posted by: WScott | December 2, 2008 2:54 PM
I do remember one division commander who made it clear all his senior officers were expected to attend church service. His argument was that soldiers need to believe their leaders are ethical men, and since many Americans equate morality with religion, that means they need to believe that you're religious. I disagreed (fortunately, I wasn't nearly senior enough to bother with), but at least he wasn't openly pushing a specific denomination.
Posted by: WScott | December 2, 2008 3:05 PM
Would making attendance at such an event mandatory constitute an illegal order?
Posted by: alias Ernest Major | December 2, 2008 3:26 PM
Weird, because capitalism is much closer to Darwinian evolution (other than special cases like ant colonies) than socialism / communism were. Shermer even wrote a whole book about the analogies between evolutionary ecosystems and economic markets, since they are both special cases of complex adaptive systems.
Posted by: MZ | December 2, 2008 5:03 PM
WScott, I left the AF after 8 years in 2002, bit I still work on an air base. I still have never seen anything remotely like these recent stories. They're terrible and I really hope servicemen and women are filing IG complaints and contacting congress critters if the IG fails to act.
Posted by: SeanH | December 2, 2008 5:30 PM
Well, since the Bible itself actually comes out and calls atheists "fools," that's not too surprising.
Posted by: noncarborundum | December 2, 2008 6:03 PM
Disgusting yet unsurprising. Hmmm, let's ponder this a moment.
Soldiers are taught their life is a disposable commodity to be used by the government for any cause it wishes whether just or unjust. Then soldiers are put in the battlefield where they experience horrific things. To keep them calm they are given propanalol (a beta blocker helpful in diminishing the severity of panic attacks) and told such things as that the dead bodies of children they see are just collateral damage. Due to social pressures soldiers then try to "keep it together" by hiding the evidence of their PTSD.
They are dealing with a giant conflict - how does one train soldiers to believe that the enemies' lives are without value and also that stopping them is worth dying for yet retain a sense that their own lives have value?
I wonder if the actual point of the military religious agenda is to reduce suicides by further demonizing the enemy to reduce feelings of horror and guilt in soldiers. There are a lot of historical precedents for this. If they can convince soldiers that "God" wants them to go out and kill brown people they can at least partially shift the feelings of guilt and horror away from themselves.
Posted by: Kylyssa Shay | December 2, 2008 8:01 PM
This is just organized religion getting back to its roots, isn't it?
If I remember correctly, it's generally accepted that organized religion came into existence (and thrived) because it gave members of a tribe/city/state/etc. reason to fight to the death for their, uh, supernatural or supernaturally-selected leader.
And naturally, a leader with warriors willing to die for him (because it's noble & good, and they will be well-rewarded after death) will pretty easily conquer a leader that just has normal risk-aware soldiers. Hooray for religion.
The spirit of "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" is more of the same useful brain-washing, still frequently employed in spite of occasional dissent.
If you don't want your soldiers committing suicide, they need to be either spoonfed some false hope (which will fail them in moments of clarity and encounters with reality) or they need to be honestly shown that the incredible violence they are committing upon others and themselves (mental & physical) is achieving a goal they believe in profoundly and which is clearly worth the horrific price.
That's tricky though, isn't it... can't we just tell them Saddam was behind 9/11, now he's about to nuke us, and this is what God wants you to do?
Posted by: Rob W | December 3, 2008 7:23 AM
I find this kind of thing very disturbing in the military. I didn't experience this during my tenure as a tanker, but I can't say that I would have cared when I was in. Look, I think some of you are over analyzing the soldier; maybe a subset of soldiers really do think about the sorts of things you want them to think about, but most don't. We don't (didn't, though once a tanker always a tanker) think of ourselves as disposable and we don't fight for higher causes or for individual leaders. No one yelled 'George Bush' before going into battle and it certainly wasn't because of the Lts or Capts that we fought. The psychology of soldiering is you fight the other guy for your unit to win. You fight because the guy next to you is important to you and you don't want him to die. The other guy is inconsequential in that decision making process. Its possible that the sorts of psychologies you want to address exist in the officer corp (I wouldn't know having only been a grunt), but the enlisted man just doesn't see the world the way you think they should.
Posted by: Scott Reese | December 3, 2008 9:25 AM
What Matt Heath said. These
names have to be Poe tip-offs.
Posted by: Capt. Heathen Pancake | December 3, 2008 9:38 AM
Josh,
The Ohio National Guard had an issue not long ago...
http://humaniststudies.org/enews/?id=297&article=0
I urge everyone to go to http://militaryreligiousfreedom.org/ and give a donation so they can keep up this important work on the behalf of all Americans and the separation of church and state.
Posted by: Sherry | December 3, 2008 1:43 PM
Commenting on a Fundamoronic nutjob, Coriolis said:
Now there's a surprise.
Posted by: BaldApe | December 5, 2008 8:13 AM