This is a program the military is using to prevent suicide -

[Are_grits_groceries]

"A New Approach To Suicide Prevention: Developing Purpose-Driven Airmen," by Rev. Rick Warren

Here at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), we get countless complaints about religiously-based mental health and counseling programs, which, over the past few years, have been systematically replacing proven psychological and medical approaches to a multitude of issues faced by military personnel. I've seen so many truly insane, not to mention blatantly unconstitutional, ways that the military is playing with the mental well being of our troops since I began working for MRFF that I really didn't think it was possible for me to be surprised by anything anymore. Then I was sent a PowerPoint presentation by an airman at RAF Lakenheath, the largest U.S. Air Force base in England. On the MRFF scale of classifying by various expletives the egregiousness level of things that are reported to us -- "holy crap," "holy shit," and "holy f..." -- this one, promoting creationism as a means of preventing suicide among our military personnel, was definitely a "holy f..."

In March 2008, this presentation, titled "A New Approach To Suicide Prevention: Developing Purpose-Driven Airmen," was shown at a commander's call that was mandatory for an estimated 1,000 of Lakenheath's Air Force personnel, and sent out by email to the entire base of over 5,000 the following day. As the use of the phrase "Purpose-Driven" in its title implies, also incorporated into this presentation is the wisdom of presidential candidate inquisitor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, a book that, second only to the Bible itself, is the most heavily promoted religious book in the military.

Following a slide stating, "Dr. Rick Warren's book, The Purpose Driven Life, provides a powerful model for Suicide Prevention, developing leaders, and making troops combat ready and effective," the author of the presentation, Air Force chaplain Capt. Christian Biscotti, brings up Charles Darwin for the first time in defining what he calls "3 Levels of Purpose."


The entire power point presentation can be seen here: http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/powerpoint/Lakenheath.ppt.htm

There are more slides from it in the article.

They would have to court martial me if they tried to make me use it.

[YOY]

1. Wow...amazing how the "good Reverent" just got inside the head of Washington.

Pretty f***ing pathetic.

The AF is totally fundie infiltrated. Not surprising that they see the least direct face-to-face confrontation of all the military.

[Avalux]

2. LOL - "if you love god, you'll love man and yourself".

I can't quit laughing.....

[HowHasItComeToThis]

3. THESE PEOPLE ARE SO SICK

:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

[sui generis]

4. oh good fucking grief. Absence of purpose is not the cause.

And, until we're willing to pay to house and feed and care for people who are suicidal, we have no right to interfere with someone's desire to commit suicide.

Most people who are going to commit suicide will succeed whether it's legal or not, and the rest will benefit greatly from some combination of counsel, medication and personal growth.

If you want soldiers to stop killing themselves, stop putting them into unjust wars, stop making collateral damage acceptable, or stop making humans into soldiers and expecting they'll stay that way.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. Rick Warren???!!! OMIGAWD!!! This is disgusting.

[EFerrari]

6. 5 soildiers attempt suicide every day:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Every day, five U.S. soldiers try to kill themselves. Before the Iraq war began, that figure was less than one suicide attempt a day.

The dramatic increase is revealed in new U.S. Army figures, which show 2,100 soldiers tried to commit suicide in 2007.

"Suicide attempts are rising and have risen over the last five years," said Col. Elspeth Cameron-Ritchie, an Army psychiatrist.

Concern over the rate of suicide attempts prompted Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, to introduce legislation Thursday to improve the military's suicide-prevention programs.

"Our troops and their families are under unprecedented levels of stress due to the pace and frequency of more than five years of deployments," Webb said in a written statement.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/01/military.suicides/index.html

Suicide rate for vets is twice that of non-vets:

The problem of suicide among veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has recently been in the news, with the Department of Veteran Affairs promising to beef up its mental health services in response. Veterans of previous conflicts continue to have problems as well, and the VA has estimated that a total of 5000 suicides among veterans can be expected this year.

However, CBS News has now completed a five-month study of death records for 2004-05 which shows that the actual figures are "much higher" than those reported by the VA. Across the total US veteran population of 25 million, CBS found that suicide rates were more than twice as high as for non-veterans (according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide accounted for 32,439 deaths in 2004).

CBS spoke to the families of several veterans who killed themselves after returning from Iraq. "The war didn't end for him when he came home," said the mother of one soldier. "I think he was being tormented and tortured by his experiences."

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) told CBS, "That's a lot of young men and women who've gone to fight for us who've come home and found themselves that lost."

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Report_predicts_veteran_suicide_rate_100_1113.html

[Deep13]

7. What a pack of lies.

Washington may have been religious in a nebulous sort of way, but he was not someone who lived by religious principles.

I don't know enough about Marx to know whether he was a philanthopist or not. A better, though less emotionally loaded, choice would be Dale Carnegie. By "man" I assume the writer means "other people."

Darwinism is a mechanical understanding of how life got to be whaere it is. It has nothing to do with ethics or ones subjective purpose. If he wants an example of a truly selfish human ethic, one needs look no further than the present occupants of the White House.

And a religious purpose is inherently egocentric because it focuses on ones own relationship with god and ones own supernatural salvation. I have to wonder how many suicides would be avoided if the victims did not believe something better was waiting for them after death. What is more, the particular doctrines of religion are invartiably in-group selfish and out-group hating.