Oh, sure. I mean, it may seem purely perfunctory to say 'Religion didn't stop him' but the only reason to say that is an expectation or perception that it generally would. Which is why publicising incidents like this is a very good thing; it helps to undermine that kind of thinking, which, by establishing religion as a powerful positive moral force, potentially creates situations where people feel compelled to defend its failings 'for the greater good', if you know what I mean. A very dangerous tendency.

None of it's aimed at changing that, either. I don't know where you got the bolded from. If he believed it was true and if he thought his response was appropriate and if he thought that due to his belief, then there is no question that his actions are an example of harm caused by religion. I just don't like daisy-chaining ifs like that.

I disagree completely that the distinction between knowledge and a reasonable conclusion is 'mostly semantics'. I would even say that a handy working definition of 'knowledge' is 'a conclusion by comparison to which all alternative conclusions are unreasonable'.

Given the apparent prevailing attitude in the organisation as a whole, it is not an unreasonable conclusion that the chaplain saw it as his brief in these matters to prevent escalation of complaints of rape and sexual abuse or harrassment. This is why I brought up the hypothetical atheist chaplain.

Again, I do not believe that his faith had no bearing on the subject - in fact (once again) I think it's quite likely. But there exists a reasonable doubt on the question. That's all I've been saying through the entire thread.

We actually only need the first if, but I do not think accepting all three is unwarranted.

Okay. I understand the distinction between a reasonable conclusion and knowledge, what I mean is that it is not important as far as my posts on the subject are concerned; I am using the terms fairly informally. What is important is that I think it is fairly safe to say that this is an example of religion causing harm, and I think you are being too conservative in your trepidation. And it certainly is ridiculous to claim that there is no evidence whatsoever of religion causing harm here and that those of us making that claim are simply making uninformed claims out of prejudice as RLK would have us believe (but I suspect that even he understands that).

No, we need all three. It's entirely possible for him to believe it, but to believe that it is not relevant (since everything is god's will), and to have offered it purely as a means to the end of preventing her from escalating the complaint.

Similarly, he can believe that it is true (but irrelevant), and he can also, for reasons unrelated to his religion, believe that rape is no big deal, that rape is fitting treatment for a woman attempting to supplant "a man's role", that rape is disgusting but that it would be worse for the case to be publicised and thus damage the Army or that rape is disgusting but that it will be impossible to obtain a conviction and thus that the only outcome of escalation will be to further damage the woman's career, etc. There is an entire spectrum, appallingly broad, of notions that could prompt him to say something to discourage her from escalating the issue.

Fair enough. We disagree.

You suspect correctly, and from what I can make out:

...you are not correctly representing RLK's position ITT. He has not said that 'there is no evidence whatsoever of religion causing harm here'; he has said (and I have agreed) that the 'uninformed claims' are regarding certainty of the proposition.

If atheists are jumping the gun by "blaming" this on his religion, I think the theists are jumping the gun in assuming that this chaplin was not doing his job correctly. If his church superiors come out and say, "Yeah, we think his advise was solid and that's what we would expect our chaplins to say" or if the chaplin shows that this is what his training said with respect to the issue that changes things alot. I think alot of religious people won't have any problems with his counseling.

You misunderstand what a 'chaplain' is. It's not an ecclesiastic title as such, it specifically refers to serving a body of people who are not organised as a congregation - the Netherlands armed forces have humanist chaplains. A chaplain in the military will serve with a mandate from the military - and all counselors and other appropriate figures (supervising officers, etc) in the US army, from what I can make out, are subject to the Congressionally-mandated policies covering these matters. So there's no question that he was doing his job - clearly he wasn't.

As to whether the chaplain was accurately reflecting the line his specific denomination holds on the subject, well, sure. Maybe there's some wacky out-there denomination whose official doctrine on rape is "Suck it up - god's will", but if so, I doubt very much that their ministers are eligible for chaplaincy. It's possible they are, and it would be an unthinkable dereliction of duty by whoever's decision that was if so - but I think it's unlikely. If the attitude he took was a result of his faith, I would bet that he is running contrary to whatever his church's official stance is.

So does he have any training... I assume their are some qualifications... but wiki didn't exactly say what.

Wait, so this guy is a minister? It seems like (from wiki and what you said) that he has some official title from a religion and then he has to go through some other hoops in order to be a chaplin?

Well I'd assume so - I don't know of any humanist chaplains serving in the USAF, and even if they were I'd be very surprised to see one trot out that line. My point is only that his actions considered in his role as an Army employee are unambiguously unacceptable - and if his actions considered in his role as an ordained minister are acceptable to members of that faith, no theist here is necessarily bound to do anything more with that than we are - ie, to say that it's repugnant and unacceptable to them.

I would say that if the chaplain did indeed come out and say "Rape's not a big deal," then the vast majority of theists here would simply say that that is not acceptable to them.

I mean, I really hope so, at least.

Fair enough. You were correct in that I really didn't know what chaplin meant, I assumed it was like a priest but for a different sect so most of what I said doesn't really apply. Thanks for the info.

Only the first is necessary because believing something irrationally is itself harm.

RLK had this to say

about this

And there certainly is evidence of it. You do not consider it enough evidence, but I am fairly confident you would agree there is some.

We sometimes have some pointless threads, but this one is really so. No one supports the purported action of the chaplain. There is some controversy over whether we should grant the chaplain the benefit of the doubt, but since none of us are actually involved, it doesn't actually matter whether we do or not.

Finally, there is some controversy over whether the chaplain's purported action is caused by his religious beliefs. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but either way it doesn't matter. It is easy to find examples of individual religious people acting badly because of their immoral religious beliefs, but doing so doesn't say anything particularly interesting about religion. Since other religious people are not defending his behavior, I don't see any interesting point of controversy here.

You are wrong. Finding examples of people acting immorally because of their religious beliefs demonstrates that religion causes harm. That the beliefs themselves are not demonstrably true means they ought to be discarded.

Is there anyone that seriously doesn't believe that religious beliefs don't cause harm? I think even the most fervent defender of religion wouldn't go that far (assuming that they think that beliefs have some kind of causal influence on the world). After all, religious people condemn other religious people's beliefs all the time. I think this is not a live issue.

Unfortunately most people do not think it is much of a problem. They pass it off as overall harmless except for a few extreme cases involving whackos. It is important to continue pointing out the harm that it causes because the more it is pointed out the more people begin to realize that religion is a real and serious problem.

Yeah, I agree that it is good for atheists (and theists) to point out examples of immoral actions caused by religious belief. But since everyone agrees that this is a case of an immoral action that might have caused by religious belief, and there is no controversial conclusion we can derive from this claim, I don't know what the discussion following the OP was about.

Bah? We're talking about his actions. NO DUH his religious beliefs are 'caused by his religion' and if you want to define 'harm' in such a fashion, then be my guest - it becomes a tautology. That doesn't address the matter of his actions.

Yeah, I do. Per the quote I previously offered, he seems to accept the possibility that the chaplain's actions were caused by his religion. The problem is with the immediate certainty that the actions were caused by religious belief. Based on the rest of RLK's posts, I'd imagine he would re-phrase it if you challenged him - 'there is not enough evidence to be certain' - and there isn't. I'm not going to re-hash the numerous alternative possibilities I've outlined ITT.

We seem to disagree fundamentally here and are really just repeating ouselves, so there's probably no point continuing.

Not everyone agrees that it 'might' have been caused by religious belief. Half the forum is convinced beyond persuasion that unquestionably his actions were solely down to his beliefs, regardless of the environment in which he was operating.

You make a fair point though; we're not exactly starved for alternative examples.

Since my name is continuing to appear in this discussion I will try to clarify and explain my point of view.

The question at hand is: Does religion cause immoral action? Such action in the legal complaint is a failure to properly help the women victimized by sexual abuse. The complaint actually represents a pretty standard problem in the analysis of experimental data in the presence of noise.

First the known limits. The data come from a legal complaint filed against the military authorities alleging systemic failure to protect women from sexual abuse. Thus the cases are not random but are biased as follows:

1. The women were all the victims of some form of sexual assault.
2. The women all sought some form of help from members of the military hierarchy.
3. Those members of the hierarchy failed to assist the women in dealing with the assault.

The complaint contains no data on the nature of any event that does not include these three features. That is the nature of a civil complaint, it does not include counterexamples to its premise. If the plaintiff or their attorneys have such evidence, it would be found in discovery.

There is a chaplain included in the complaint and he clearly failed to help the victim of the abuse. But ask this question: If religion had absolutely no effect positive or negative on the immoral behavior, what would you expect the complaint to look like? Well, chaplains are part of the military hierarchy and they are in a position to be consulted by soldiers victimized in a traumatic manner. Thus, if religion had no effect then you would expect to see chaplains in the complaint in the same percentage as they are represented in the group of persons consulted for help after a sexual assault as they are subject to all of the other effects present for non-chaplains as far as we know.

The chaplain failed the women in a sickening manner. I am not defending him.

His specific wording of his response is due to his religious background, but that is not the issue I am discussing.

The complaint contains no useful evidence for or against religion as a factor for immoral behavior in isolation as it stands. If chaplains were 10% of the persons consulted after a sexual assault and were less than 5% of the cases in the complaint (as was the case here), it could be part of evidence that religion helps prevent immoral behavior. If chaplains were 2% of the persons consulted and represented 5% of the cases in the complaint, then it could be part of evidence that religion causes immoral behavior. But in isolation, this complaint tells us nothing.

As an aside, this is a problem in the analysis of experimental data that I have seen repeatedly in my career. Even highly trained scientists will sift through a mound of data and pull out an event that supports some theory they hold. But you have to consider the event within the context of the body of work they surveyed to get an idea of how likely it is that random noise created the effect. Sometimes it is impossible to get them to understand this principle.

In that case, discussing the topic in a rational manner is either impossible or pointless.

It doesn't really matter that much. In this case it is not the chaplain that matters, it is the message the chaplain sent and how others view it.

For a forum usually obsessed with the contents of a message, many times to the complete exclusion of the implied communication - it seems utterly bizarre that one should suddenly disqualify a message as "beyond debate" simply because one can't fully know the chain of thought of the human being that sent it.

Regardless, as this is a person of authority - it is not his personal beliefs that are under scrutiny, but the potential impact of his messages on the people that he has power over.

Or more the point; Whatever the chaplain thinks to himself when he sits in his office alone isn't what we are discussing.