I don't know about oaths specifically for an office.
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Swear Religious Oath Or Get The Boot From Air Force
- Thread starter Revoltingest
- Start date
dust1n
Zindīq
I'm pretty good with a shovel.Ah, jeez, well what good are ya? :sarcastic
Oaths.....tonite I went to a township meeting to protest a special assessment
for improving a road which works just fine for me as is. They started the
meeting with the pledge of allegiance (the one with "under God" in it).
I was the only one in the room who abstained.
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Matthew 5:33-37 talks about not swearing oaths but instead making your Yes mean Yes and your No mean No.
Something like that, I'm not great at scripture, and can't be naffed looking it up. But I've looked at this before.
There seems to be a lot of interpretations (surprise) of what that actually means, though.
Third Commandment and some contextual information about why oath-swearing was something that needed to be discouraged seem to be the main reasons truthful and honest oaths are seen as okay by many Christians.
34 But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is the footstool of His feet, or [a]by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 But let your statement be, ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’; anything beyond these is [b]of evil. - Matthew 5:34-37
12 But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no, that you may not fall under condemnation. - James 5:12
Alceste
Vagabond
And yet they demand that non-theists utter false and dishonest oaths by requiring the bit about God.
Alceste
Vagabond
Thanks, St. Frank. I knew there was something like that in there. Been a while since I read it myself.
You're looking for consistency? Holy crap!!!
I never realised you were such an optimistic young lady!!!
Happily, St Frank actually knows what I was babbling about. This is the verse I was remembering. I think the third commandment is sometimes quoted in relation to this, and since I have been lazy to this point, let me add it here for context...
Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
(errr...don't hold me to this being the third commandment. Commandment numbering confuses me.)
In truth, I suppose this is part of why Bible oaths were held as important. Even a non-believer is effectively choosing to breach a commandment in front of witnesses (inc. God). If the person performing that breach doesn't believe in God, it doesn't change the 'fact' that a commandment has been breached from the point of view of a believer.
(Sorry, I'm playing fast and loose with language here, and am talking more about traditional Christian views)
Alceste
Vagabond
You're looking for consistency? Holy crap!!!
I never realised you were such an optimistic young lady!!!
I know, right?
Those verses are pretty much irrelevant since people ignore them or just twist them to their liking.
For reference, in court I request & get a secular oath to tell the truth....to which I just say "Yes".
Our court system here is lousy with caprice & incompetence, but at least I get that accommodation.
To all you fundy turbine jockeys in F-18s....a nerdy team of heathens, Mormons & Baptists
designed your flight controls. No oaths were taken or needed to do a good job.
Our court system here is lousy with caprice & incompetence, but at least I get that accommodation.
To all you fundy turbine jockeys in F-18s....a nerdy team of heathens, Mormons & Baptists
designed your flight controls. No oaths were taken or needed to do a good job.
Hmmm...I could almost copy your post and claim it as my own. Lessee...
For reference, in court I request & get a secular oath to tell the truth....to which I just say "Yes".
Our court system here is lousy with caprice & incompetence, but at least I get that accommodation.
To all you fundy turbine jockeys in F-18s....a kinda agnostic toolmaker built several important bits of the thing keeping your butt in the sky (my old man was a toolmaker in F/A-18 production in Oz). No oaths were taken or needed to do a good job.
This looks strangely familiar.....hmmmmmm.
Yeah...just struck me as funny, when I read your post, how closely it applied to my Dad, if at a different level of F/A-18 production.
Take is as a compliment. Promise not to rip-off your next best-seller, too...
... Copy-pastas the thing replacing it as B-52's...
Ya, the USAF is highly antisemitic as well, enough for me to discourage my boy from even thinking of joining...
esmith
Veteran Member
Well let's look at in a linguistic sense.
The issue is the final 4 words in the enlistment oath....."So help me God".
Now in actuality the phrase is not implying that one is "swearing an oath to a god", only that one is asking help to fulfill the "oath" to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice". So in actuality if one is asking for help from a god, it all depends on ones definition of a "god". Some think money is their 'god". Yeah, Yeah I know....the term "God" as far as the oath goes refers to a religious God, but if the guy wants to stay in the military, it is not a democracy. I say tough ****.
The issue is the final 4 words in the enlistment oath....."So help me God".
Now in actuality the phrase is not implying that one is "swearing an oath to a god", only that one is asking help to fulfill the "oath" to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice". So in actuality if one is asking for help from a god, it all depends on ones definition of a "god". Some think money is their 'god". Yeah, Yeah I know....the term "God" as far as the oath goes refers to a religious God, but if the guy wants to stay in the military, it is not a democracy. I say tough ****.
Wirey
Fartist
So as long as they're receiving help (and moral guidance) from, say, Allah, you're okay with it, infidel? Or maybe you could ask them to just do their job.