Support for nuclear weapons

  • Thread starter Thread starter Brendan_64
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I worked for one of the big three commercial builders of nuclear power plants for a couple of years. They freely admit that there were serious problems in the early decades of nuclear power. The irony is that once those problems were worked out, no one was interested anymore. That’s understandable, but self-defeating. Here are some facts and you can verify them yourself easily enough:
  • The need for electrical energy is increasing at an unparalleled rate. Electrical power is the “new oil.”
  • The economies that will be most successful in the next 20 years will be those with the strongest power grids. The country that is most in tune with this is China. The US and the EU are not poised to keep up.
  • All sources of electrical energy will be needed to meet future demand and ensure economic success. Solar, wind and geothermal are all promising. But pure physics shows that they cannot meet demand on their own. Fossil fuel generation will still be needed. And only nuclear power has the ability to fully meet projected demands.
  • Nuclear is now a very safe means of power generation. I could go on for paragraphs about why that is, but there isn’t space or time to do it. Suffice it to say there have been huge advances in regulation and technology. Even Russia has gotten its act together, believe it or not. The places to worry about are N. Korea and Iran. People think the real threat from them is nuclear weapons. As big a threat is that they don’t have modern nuclear safety technology and they don’t participate in international nuclear safety programs. They are where Russia was back in the Chernobyl days.
  • Storage is no longer an unsolvable problem. The entire output of nuclear waste for one person’s electrical usage for a lifetime would literally fit in a soda can. There is an underground storage facility in the northeast US that is way underground in solid rock. It could hold all we could generate for decades.
 
Last edited:
undead_rat said:
I find it incredible to see that some Catholics (or any person holding Christian values) would say that it is still necessary for the USA to possess even a single nuclear weapon. Our country should stand down and dismantle every one of its nukes. Yes, the USA might forfeit its self-appointed role as “policeman of the world.” So what? We have no biblical mandate to play that role.

Nuclear weapons are mankind’s ultimate creation of violence
Click to expand...
I agree with this. And more and more countries are developing nuclear weapons. What would happen if even one nuclear bomb were detonated near a city? Untold thousands and perhaps millions of innocent people would die, whereas others would be enfeebled for life by the radioactive poisons.
 
NickyMaz said:
Simply put, Curtis Lemay was right when he said “peace is our profession”, I work for the greatest peacekeeping force in the world.
Click to expand...
jfz178 said:
I was in the Navy. THAT is the greatest peacekeeping force in the world!
Click to expand...
I have a difficult time believing that the US armed forces are promoting peace. Consider the number of wars and conflicts in which the US armed forces have been involved:
the Vietnam War, the Iraq war, the war in Afghanistan, US troops in Haiti, Invasion of Panama, Invasion of Grenada, Lebanese civil war, war in south Zaire, the war against Libya, Somali war, American intervention in Syria giving weapons to the rebels, the Yemeni civil war, BTW, did the US have permission from the Syrian government to bomb areas in Syria?
The US dropped eight million tons of bombs over Vietnam. Children were killed and I see pictures of children running and screaming as they are being burned to death by the napalm bombs dropped by the US armed forces. I don’t see how that promoted peace.
 
Brendan thanks for this question which is a good one.

My opinion is based on what we see in Genesis as YHWH’s reason for sending the Deluge, and that reason is mankind’s unremitting propensity towards violence. I see nuclear weapons as man’s unltimate expression of violence.
Then there is Psalm 9:15-16 which says;

The nations have fallen into the pit that they dug,
they are caught by the feet in the snare they set themselves.
YHWH has made Himself known, has given judgment;
He has trapped the wicked in the work of their own hands.

If it were not for mankind’s deployment of nukes, we would not find ourselves about to be subjected to the judgment by fire of Isaiah 66:15-16.

Therefore mankind’s deployment of nuclear weapons is the offense. This act constitutes a gross violation of YHWH’s primary commandments: to love our Creator and to love our neighbor. If we loved YHWH as we should we would trust in HIm for our future and would not have felt it necessary to build these enormously destructive devices. And likewise if we had loved our neighbors.

Given that our nation will not choose the right course of action here, the only thing left for us is to do what you have stated: pray and do the practices of devotion.
 
AlNg said:
I see pictures of children running and screaming as they are being burned to death by the napalm bombs dropped by the US armed forces.
Click to expand...
Nit-picking here, but if you’re referring to the famous picture of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, that napalm was dropped by a South Vietnamese Air Force pilot, not by the U.S. armed forces.

D
 
AlNg said:
I have a difficult time believing that the US armed forces are promoting peace.
Click to expand...
Which nation do you think is the most influential at promoting peace around the world?
 
The US getting rid of nukes actually makes that scenario much more likely.
 
The US military is set up to do what it’s told and 99% of the time, that is exactly what it does. We should be thankful for that. There are a lot of countries where the military have become an unelected political force.

All of what you describe is more the responsibility of the elected leaders who gave direction to the military at that time. Who the elected leaders were was the responsibility of the electorate, who either elected them, or failed to elect better leaders.

People on this site have suggested that military people should refuse to take part in actions that other people feel are wrong. This would lead to those military people risking being court martialed and sent to prison. But I don’t see people suggesting that they should refuse to pay the taxes that fund all those supposed atrocities. So either you put skin in the game or you don’t.

I think it is hypocritical for someone to suggest that military people, who have already put themselves on the line for the rest of us, put themselves in legal jeopardy when the person making that suggestion is not willing to do so themselves.
 
DaveBj said:
Nit-picking here, but if you’re referring to the famous picture of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, that napalm was dropped by a South Vietnamese Air Force pilot, not by the U.S. armed forces.
Click to expand...
True, but of course the South Vietnamese Air Force was being supplied with weapons from the USA. And that one example is not the only case because altogether 388,000 tons of napalm were dropped in Vietnam during 1963 -1973 period – more than ten times the amount of napalm used in Korea.
 
Last edited:
I think your suggestions would make more sense if you included better uses for nuclear materials.
 
That’s a laugh. In earlier times the Vatican started a lot of the wars, most notably the Crusades. The Vatican’s attempts to promote peace have been ineffective at best and counter productive at worst.

In modern times, they signed the Reichskonkordat with the Nazis, essentially capitulating to, and legitimizing them, for a “guarantee” of protection for Catholics in Germany. The Nazis, of course, promptly violated the treaty. The Vatican refused to denounce the Nazis even though Roosevelt urged it to. Many Catholics fought for the Nazis, with no consequences even suggested by the Vatican.

They appeased the Axis powers throughout the war, worrying more about the damage to the institutional and material church than the principles of the Church. They forced Jews to convert, offering them life as a Catholic rather than death as Jews. They could have just told the Nazis they converted, but no. Yes some Catholic clergy helped the right side during WWII, but it does not seem they were directed by the Vatican.

Name two conflicts since WWII where the Vatican was instrumental in keeping the peace. I can think of only one. They talk a good show, but their actions speak louder. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect the Vatican to be a peacekeeper. But to suggest it is is ludicrous.
 
Last edited:
jfz178 said:
That’s a laugh. In earlier times the Vatican started a lot of the wars, most notably the Crusades.
Click to expand...
I was thinking of more recent times such as after the year 2000. I thought that the Vatican had come out against the use of the atomic bomb?
 
“Atomic bomb” is an out of date term that was never technically correct in the first place. Pope Francis was the first pope to make a statement that condemned nuclear weapons unqualifiedly. He did it in a public speech, not an official Church document. So it is not Church policy.

The Pope can make statements on moral and spiritual issues and morally, nukes are bad. I hope everyone agrees with that. But on a geopolitical level, they are necessary. That is not the Pope’s field of authority.
 
Last edited:
jfz178 said:
“Atomic bomb” is an out of date term that was never technically correct in the first place. Pope Francis was the first pope to make a statement that condemned nuclear weapons unqualifiedly. He did it in a public speech, not an official Church document. So it is not Church policy.
Click to expand...
I thought that Gaudium et Spes, “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,” Second Vatican Council, condemned their use when it declared: “Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation”
“What can be said, too, about those governments which count on nuclear arms as a means of ensuring the security of their countries? … that nuclear weapons have any place in a civilized society, is not only baneful but also completely fallacious. In a nuclear war there would be no victors, only victims.” Pope Benedict XVI, 2007
“The very existence of nuclear weapons has always posed grave moral questions… The Church has always been clear in its teaching about the vital necessity for eventual total nuclear disarmament. Our judgement is that, by decommissioning its nuclear weapons, the UK now has a unique opportunity to offer the international community an approach to security and legitimate self-defense without the unconscionable threat of nuclear destruction.” Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, November 2006
“We cannot justify the continuation of a permanent nuclear deterrence policy, given the loss of human, financial and material resources in time of scarcity of funds for health, education and social services around the world and in the face of current threats to human security, such as poverty, climate change, terrorism and transnational crimes.” Archbishop Dominique Mamberti’s Address at UN General Assembly in New York, 2013
 
The U.S. could, I suppose, unilaterally eliminate all of its nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

That would eliminate our nuclear deterrent, and make nuclear war (and non-nuclear war) much more likely. It would also enable Russia and China to divide the world between them. More likely though, is that they would go to war with each other for world hegemony. I don’t think eliminating the U.S. deterrent would result in peace, but more war.

And if we did eliminate all our nuclear weapons, what would we do with them? Sell them on Amazon?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top