Merlyn_LeRoy

http://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2012/04/25/scout-promise-overhall-for-athiests-and-republicans/ REFERENCES to God and the Queen could be removed from the Scout Promise, the organisations Scottish leader has revealed. Graham Haddock, who is the Scouts chief commissioner in Scotland, said the group was taking a hard look at the oath in order to make them more inclusive. Atheists and republicans could be given their own version of the pledge, which currently urges members to do [their] duty to God and to the Queen. Mr Haddock, who works as a paediatrician at Glasgows Royal Hospital for Sick Children, admitted that a significant minority felt the movement was not inclusive enough. He said: As an organisation, we could do better at being inclusive. It is important that we have the maturity and courage to look at these things. If the conclusion is to maintain the status quo then we have at least reflected on the debate. If we maintain God and the Queen bits of the promise, that will upset some people, and if we decide to remove them from the promise, which would clearly be a fundamental step, then well upset a whole pile of other people. Its not exactly a win-win situation but never the less we do have a responsibility to reflect. If 90% of members say we should extend the option of an alternative promise that expresses statehood in a different way, then fine, but we have to bear in mind that the Queen is our patron. Mr Haddock also revealed that Tricia Marwick, the MSP for Mid Fife and Glenrothes, had raised the issue of the promise with him following a complaint from a constituent. But Scout bosses in London insisted there was no plans to change the oath, which is taken by the organisations 525,000 members, and would not say wheter it was under review. But Mr Haddock said the pledge was being looked at on a national level, and a result was expected next summer. He said: We are currently in the throes of a review. The first stage is complete, and the issue for next summer is pretty much the oath, what we call the promise. Its being considered at the current time. Currently all members swear On my honour, I promise that I will do my best to do my duty to God and to the Queen to help other people and to keep the Scout Law. However foreign nationals are allowed to swear allegiance to the county in which I am now living and non-Christians can change God to be appropriate for their religion. The revelation will raise hopes of a more adaptable oath, with an opt-out for those who disagree with monarchism or who have no religious feeling. Last week the National Secular Society wrote to the UKs chief Scout, adventurer Bear Grylls, to ask him to back a more inclusive version of the oath. They said many children form atheist families are discriminated against. The Scout movement started in 1907 by Robert Baden-Powell and had more than 41,000 members in Scotland and a worldwide membership of 31 million.

My mother was a den mother when I was a cub scout (circa 1966 or so) and we were atheists.

Beavah writes: Nobody in the BSA would say that atheists are "all bad" or not moral or any such thing, Wrong; some certainly do. [Darrel Lambert's district committee chairman Glen] Schmidt began to expound on why an atheist can't be a good citizen. I was later told that he said, "If an atheist found a wallet on the ground, he or she would pick it up, plunder the money, and throw the wallet back down."

howarthe writes: A complete person must develop physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Boy Scouts of America supports a boy's development in each of these areas, and they do so in the most inclusive way possible. No, the "most inclusive way possible" would include boys the BSA currently excludes. You can't just say it's the most inclusive when it plainly is not, that's ridiculous.

SeattlePioneer writes: > Sorry. What does that comment mean? Well, you managed to lump all secularists into what "the secularists" want (which includes people like e.g. Reverend Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State) which apparently includes hoping religion disappears altogether (a strange wish for a UCC Reverend), so I was wondering how you lump all Jews together.

SeattlePioneer writes: The secularists want to exclude religion from the public square and confine it to the narrowest and most cramped area possible until, they hope, it disappears altogether. Now tell me what "The Jews" want.

Beavah writes: Yah, I think this is exactly correct, eh? We've tried and failed and are trying and still failing to get Merlyn to understand his own point here. I am certain that he will never understand it, because the only way to make his case against the BSA is to make our position simplistic, so that he can think himself wise by attacking it for being simplistic. Nope, I just have this weird attitude that words mean things, and that "requirements" really are required, and not suggestions. To bring up an old thread, if yeh were just to read the letter of the law, a teenage girl who takes a suggestive picture of herself and sexts it to her boyfriend is engaged in the felony production and distribution of child pornography. But despite some cases of unusually zealous prosecutors, the way most people would handle it is in a more low-key fashion, talkin' to the kid, and/or to the parents. People who aren't idiots would also repeal such a stupid law, since its application is obviously at the whim of whoever is in power at the time. It's a tremendously bad idea to allow bad laws to exist. It's similar with the BSA and membership issues, eh? Our real position is nuanced, and subject to the sort of discretion that SeattlePioneer describes. Nobody is really runnin' around throwin' atheists out the first time they declare they no longer believe in God. Well, you should start by having the BSA change their requirements; as they are now, and as the BSA describes them, there's no "grace period" or anything. In those rare cases where adult atheists want to use a young lad to proselytize, and so undermine our desire in the program to teach something about duty to country and more than country. I've never heard of this happening; I think you're just lying now, Beavah. By the way, you never did clear up this question of mine: We also see it when school officials condone bullying of kids prayin' by the flagpole (the root of one of the first school shootings) Which school shooting was that?

The founders knew about slavery and supported it with things like the 3/5 compromise. I never knew of a single public school that followed the BSA's "no atheist" policy, or even knew about it.

If it's important, why can't people agree on what it even means? How could public school charters ignore it for decades?

That just begs the question why the BSA has metaphysical requirements in the first place.

perdidochas, I would not join the BSA, but some atheists would. But that's beside the point I was making. Your definition of "atheist" doesn't matter; what matters is how the national BSA interprets their own requirements. What they have said excludes both atheists and agnostics, not just strong atheists.

Beavah writes: We also see it when school officials condone bullying of kids prayin' by the flagpole (the root of one of the first school shootings) Which school shooting was that? perdidochas writes: My reading on the subject says that Buddhists are nontheists, rather than atheists. My definition of atheist is very strict (i.e. equivalent to strong atheist). Atheist means that that person absolutely believes that there is no god or gods. What matters is how the BSA interprets it, and they've stated on their legal website that neither atheists nor agnostics can join.

I didn't "assume" you didn't know, I said I suspected you didn't know. There IS a difference between those two statements. You do appear to know the difference. This was not at all apparent from your earlier statement, as I've seen people put forth the incorrect "you're not an atheist, you're an agnostic" false dichotomy dozens of times.

SaintCad writes: One young scout told me he was an atheist and after talking to him it was clear he was agnostic (but he had no clue what the difference was). I suspect YOU don't know the difference, since it's possible (and common) to be both an atheist and agnostic. I am. You can also be a Christian and an agnostic. Or some other kind of theist and an agnostic. A theist is someone who believes one (or more) gods exist. An atheist is someone who is not a theist. If you say that young scout is not an atheist, what god(s) does he believe in? The only criterion to be an atheist is to not believe in any gods, so if he doesn't meet that requirement, he must believe in at least one. Which one(s)?

fred8033 writes: I know plenty of atheists and gay scouters inside scouting who focus on program and not on the politics. I also know plenty of people who choose not to be in scouting because of the politics. It's the ones who choose not to be involved and then daily throw gernades at those trying to do something good that's hurtful. You realize the atheists don't meet the BSA's membership requirements, and have to lie to be members, don't you? I prefer honesty. sherminator505 writes: At the risk of making this an "all about Merlyn" thread, I'd respect him more if he had something constructive to offer. I and a number of other people on various sides of the issue have advocated a local option, where the chartering organization decides whether to exclude atheists and/or gays.

Your insurance co. can certainly charge you higher premiums if you don't brush your teeth. As for driving on public roads, there are dozens of less-safe things that can get you a ticket, like having a headlight out, or, yes, not using your seatbelt. I prefer having fewer idiots on the road.

If you force me to wear my seatbelt what else is next? Forcing you to not exceed a set blood-alcohol content when you drive; both seatbelts and limits on BAC mean you are less likely to lose control of your car, which protects other people. Yah, as da article indicates, the objections aren't about contraception, eh? They're about religious freedom. I haven't seen anything stating that Jehovah's Witnesses can refuse to pay for insurance coverage of blood transfusions. If this was REALLY about religious freedom, transfusions, vaccinations, transplants, and a host of other medical procedures would also have religious exemptions for all kinds of religious groups. Any sane insurance company would give away contraception for free, since that's a ton cheaper than the alternatives (assuming the insurance company would have to cover those costs).

Time to take a political quiz: http://www.supervillainornewt.com

I liked it back in Preston Brooks' time when they beat each other with canes.

jblake47 writes: Proof is the scientific evidence that certain issues can be tested and given exactly the same circumstances will produce the same results. If I can drop a pencil and it always falls to the floor and you try it and it produces the same results it's called the Law of Gravity. It's provable by repeatable testing. Wrong. It's still a theory. Nothing is "proved" in science. In fact, there are aspects of gravity that aren't settled, like whether gravity is quantized. However, if it cannot be proven with evidence, then it stays a theory. We believe there is a "link" between apes and man, however, there is no scientific evidence that says we evolved from them. There's a HUGE amount of evidence that says we did. In fact, humans ARE apes. The evidence connecting the two is not there. Just because two things appear to be similar does not mean they are. It goes way beyond appearance. Now if I drop a pencil and it does not fall to the floor, there can be a very good reason for it. Scientific, too. If I'm on the international space station, the scientific laws that apply on earth do not apply elsewhere, WHAAAT? Sorry, an orbiting space station is obeying the same laws as someone on the ground. By the way, modern medicine is based on scientific results, quackery is not. So is relativity and evolution. Do you know what kinds of experiments have been done for each?

Theories are speculative scientific guesses. We're pretty sure, but we can't prove it. "Theory" is as good as it gets in science. There are no proofs; proofs are for formal systems like mathematics. Gravity is a theory. Evolution is a theory (although to confuse things, "evolution" is also used to describe observations, like speciation). Relativity is a theory, and it conforms well to observations like gravity bending light and time dilation. Someday they may be proven, but until then one has to assume a varying degree of "faith" as to their reliability. No, they will NEVER be proven, because there's no proof in science. Theories are models that make predictions. Until such time as they are proven, they remain in the realm of myth, i.e. traditional story of acceptance Relativity isn't on the same plane as goat entrails. Are you saying there's no difference between modern medicine and witch doctors? Between telecommunications and telepathy? How do you distinguish between things that work vs. quackery and fraud?

You can be 100% skeptical of the works of others, and do them yourself. It's common to reproduce experiments in science classes and have the students do them. Not unless yeh have infinite time and resources. So pick a few. You'll find science works. I also seem to remember as a science student that my results quite frequently didn't come out all that well, a fact that many a lab writeup had to try to explain. I think the answer is, you just don't understand science. Why didn't you just make up an answer and get a few friends to agree, and call that "science"? That's what you've been advocating.

These observations and inventions depend on BELIEVING the work and discoveries of others, and then using them to discover other things. No. You can be 100% skeptical of the works of others, and do them yourself. It's common to reproduce experiments in science classes and have the students do them. If I do not believe what my teacher tells me, I best be ready to prove something else. Nonsense. You can simply say you don't believe it. You don't have to come up with an alternative. Depending on the teacher, a good student is one who keeps (politely) asking "why?" In my experience, the good teacher is always ready to at least attempt the answer, or join in the debate. Or have the student do the actual experiments and write up the observations. That can be even better. Same in Faith. Faith has no right or wrong answers. People don't agree on the most basic questions, like how many gods exist, or whether polygamy is permitted.

So, suppose that in 100 years, we travel beyound our own galaxy with GPS sattelites that tell us that depsite all previous thought, the solar system actually revolves around our earth...it just trurns out we didn't have the proper equipment and instruments to figure it out. You'd have to throw out all physics since Newton, and explain how such a wrong explanation managed to make trillions of accurate predictions, and why the solar system revolves around the earth, and how the other stars can go faster than light, and why they don't go straight. You may as well suppose that we also find out the earth is flat and supported by 4 elephants on the back of a giant turtle.

Science would, eventually, come to the same conclusions. Religion would not. An interestin' hypothesis. That's only because of your bizarre definition of "science," which means nothing more than some people agree on something, including that the earth is flat. One of the requirements is reproducibility. This holds even if civilization collapses and is rebuilt -- scientific results will still be reproducible. The earth is round and if you use a scientific methodology, you'll find it IS round, because observations will be consistent with a round earth and inconsistent with a flat earth. You won't sometimes find out it's flat. But if you just look for people agreeing on something, the earth is flat, sometimes.