Friday, January 7, 2011

Torture Designer Approves Army Spirituality Test


As the noisome Christian Fundamentalist mindset and meme spreads its tentacles it is inevitable its initial forays will be into military enclaves, with their captive audiences. We had seen this four years ago at the Air Force Academy when nonbeliever cadets were forced to do a “Heathen’s Run” – and get banged over the head as they ran a gauntlet.

Then we had the Marine Corps allowing Biblical citations to be inscribed on rifle sights.

Then we had the Pentagon and its cross symbol:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/06/pssstpentagon-lose-cross-symbol.html


Now we have an Army "spirituality test".

The ostensible reason for developing this idiotic (and unconstitutional) test is the very high number of suicides the past 4-5 years, especially from those returning from one or more tours in Afghanistan. The Army believes the underlying reason for most of these suicides is a "spiritual deficit"(sic) or lack of belief in "ultimate purpose"(sic,sic), which contributes to a lack of personal, moral or "spiritual resiliency"(sic,sic and sic).

The Army states and believes that it can accomplish its goal of lowering suicide rates by teaching its service members how to be psychologically resilient and resist "catastrophizing" traumatic events. Defense Department documents obtained by the activist website Truthout.org states that the $125 million "holistic fitness program" known as "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness",, unveiled in late 2009 is aimed at reducing the number of suicides and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) cases. According to Army Chief of Staff George Casey, this CSF is the Army's "third highest priority."

CSF is comprised of the Soldier Fitness Tracker and Global Assessment Tool, which measures soldiers' "resilience" in five core areas: emotional, physical, family, social and spiritual. Soldiers complete an online survey made up of more than 100 questions, and if the results fall into a red area, they are required to participate in remedial courses in a classroom or online setting to strengthen their resilience in the disciplines in which they received low scores. The test is administered every two years. More than 800,000 Army soldiers have taken it thus far.

However for the thousands of "Foxhole Atheists" like 27-year-old Sgt. Justin Griffith, the spiritual component of the test contains questions written predominantly for soldiers who believe in God or another deity, meaning nonbelievers are guaranteed to score poorly and will be forced to participate in exercises that use religious imagery to "train" soldiers up to a satisfactory level of spirituality.

Griffith, based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, took the test last month and after completing the spiritual portion of the exam (which required him to respond to statements such as, "I am a spiritual person, my life has lasting meaning, I believe that in some way my life is closely connected to all humanity and all the world, ") he was found to be spiritually unfit because he responded by choosing the "not like me at all" box.

The auto-feedback drivel dispatched back to Griffith read:

"You may lack a sense of meaning and purpose in your life. At times, it is hard for you to make sense of what is happening to you and others around you. You may not feel connected to something larger than yourself. You may question your beliefs, principles and values. There are things to do to provide more meaning and purpose in your life. Improving your spiritual fitness should be an important goal."

Naturally, Griffith reported being "deeply offended" by this fulsome bollocks and bullshit.

How many ways is this crap wrong-headed? Well, dozens! But let's stick to a few as I don't wish to consume an entire book in writing this blog.

First, it is unconstitutional! Yes, you read that correctly, and any Army nitwits that disagree I suggest quickly pick up a copy of the Constitution and read under Article VI (last part)"

"But no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or Public Trust under the United States."

Some may argue here that this specious test isn't religious and isn't required for any office, just the soldiers are required to take it. But the very act or command of making soldiers take it (with possible punitive consequences) discloses it is applied to the office of "soldier" or continuing to remain in the employ of the United States as such!

Further to this point, soldiers told Truthout they feared they would be disciplined by their superior officers if they didn't act on the recommendations they received after taking the exam. In fact, nowhere on the test does it state that such training is voluntary.

Also, the questions to do with "purpose" while not overtly religious in the sense that "God" or "Jesus" are specifically referred to, are certainly covertly religious since purpose assumes teleology and teleology automatically assumes a purposive force behind the events in the cosmos. Indeed, Cornum's attempts to replace the word "religious" with "spiritual" as a way to avoid a lawsuit was not lost on one civil rights organization.

Last week, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) sent a missive to Secretary of the Army John McHugh and General Casey, the Army's chief of staff, demanding that the Army immediately cease and desist administering the "spiritual" portion of the CSF test. (Full disclosure: MRFF founder and President, Mikey Weinstein, is a member of Truthout's board of advisers.). The letter read in part:

"The purpose of the [spiritual component of the test] though couched in general and vague language, is to strengthen a solder's religious conviction. Soldiers who hold deep religious convictions routinely pass the spirituality component of this test while atheists and non-theists do not. The Army cannot avoid the conclusion that this test is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion by simply substituting the word 'spiritual' for 'religious.'"

Second, there isn't any proof or evidence of any "spiritual" dimension anywhere in the cosmos, so a test dignifying it with a putative reality basis is unacceptable. While I do agree that people are allowed to frame their experiences using this word (such as my dear Eckist sister-in-law, Krimhilde, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/05/conversation-with-eckanckar-adept.html

I do not agree that their language freedom is to be interpreted as indicating an actual, valid, and objectively real spiritual realm exists. This is a separate claim (from any personal experiences) which has to be proven as it is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence to support them. We don't accept them by mere word of mouth, or casual writ.

Thus, the words of Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, a nurtritionist and urologist who directs the CSF program, that: "The spiritual strength domain is not related to religiosity, at least not in terms of how we measure it" - is meaningless because no such entity as "spiritual strength" exists and hence ab initio cannot be measured. Also, since an ultimate purpose is interwoven into it, it is certainly related to religiosity even if she and her cohort can't recognize it.

Third, and firmly reinforcing the second point, is that we have learned (from the Truthout documents) this test was designed by a psychologist who inspired CIA's torture program. CSF is based entirely on the work of Dr. Martin Seligman, a member of the Defense Health Board, a federal advisory committee to the secretary of defense, and chairman of the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center, who the Army calls "Dr. Happy."

Seligman is the author of "Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment." And, of course, I've warned many times before how "positive pscyhology" keeps the nation insensitive and dumbed down as regards national problems and correcting them while also representing a dynamic that is not positive for atheists!

Two factors drive this: 1) a brain architecture that favors an optimism dynamic and “hope” even when reality testifies to the contrary, and 2) a pernicious culture of “positivity” that reinforces this brain defect, recently highlighted by Barbara Ehrenreich.[1] As Ehrenreich notes, American mass culture is saturated by a saccharine “cult of positivity,” with children brainwashed from an early age that they can do anything, and adults brainwashed to believe if they just work hard and long enough they’ll become super millionaires like Donald Trump. That no one has slain the insipid “Horatio Alger” myth up to now is really a testament to America’s individualist hubris and false optimism.

What has this to do with atheism? Mainly that a culture of positivity will perceive the atheist as an agent of irreversible depression, pessimism and negativity! After all, what could be more of a downer than the notion that all the fun ends once one’s physical being expires? When you’re dead, you’re dead, and there’ll be no reruns or afterlives. Factor into this the brain’s natural tendency and drive for optimism at any cost, and you have a ready-made cultural and biological axis to deny and thwart atheism! Clearly, Seligman's book and his spirituality test plays directly into this - by exploiting the human brain's optimistic central wiring. Thus, any who deviate will be looked on suspiciously.


The Penn Resiliency Program, upon which the Army's CSF is based, "teaches cognitive-behavioral and social problem-solving skills and is based in part on cognitive-behavioral theories of depression by Aaron Beck, Albert Ellis" and Seligman.

Despite his "happy" reputation, Seligman is best known for developing the theory of "Learned Helplessness" at the University of Pennsylvania more than four decades ago. As psychologist and torture expert Dr. Jeffrey Kaye noted in a report published in Truthout last year, Seligman and psychologist Dr. Steven Maier developed the concept of Learned Helplessness after they "exposed dogs to a situation where they were faced with inescapable electrical shocks."

The question for the Foxhole atheist, as well as the ordinary one, is how much can an advocate and designer of a torture program be trusted to know anything about "spirituality" - assuming such a thing even exists?

Thankfully, Mikey Weinstein and his Freedom From Religion Foundation are now representing 200 soldiers and they're as dedicated to getting this disgusting spirituality test eliminated, as they earlier were in getting rid of the biblical quote rifle sights and the Air Force Academy's outrageous "Heathen's Run".

More power to you, Mikey! Would that the other Mikey had as much insight into true freedom and constitutional issues! For interested readers, a video about this spiritual test perfidy can be found here:


[1] Barbara Ehrenreich: “Pathologies of Hope” in Harpers, Feb., 2007.

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