DWise1

When I had become an atheist (around the age of 12, I started reading the Bible and very quickly realized that I couldn't believe what I was reading), I toyed for a few minutes with every Christian teenager's wet dream of total hedonism by being an atheist*, but I immediately realized that that was a false concept. So since neither Christianity nor the Bible would be my guide, what would? The answer came to me immediately: Scouting. Every moral precept that I could ever need was embodied in the Oath, Law, Motto, and Slogan. Decades later when I read that Baden-Powell quote, it certainly looked like he was referring to the Ten Commandments as governing by "don't" and hence was demonstrating that the Scout Law is actually superior; am I the only one or did anyone else also see that? BTW, I'm still a big Boy Scout. A 61-year-old Boy Scout. OTOH, I have no use for BSA, Inc. I view BSA as being more an enemy of Scouting than promoting it. BSA does not live nor operate by the Oath and Law and they constantly endanger Scouting by creating discrimination lawsuits and alienating sponsors and donors. I wish that BSA would just go away so that an actual Scouting organization could take its place. { * FOOTNOTE: Having been involved in creation/evolution since 1981 and in contact with fundamentalists since 1970, I have had a lot of dialogues with fundamentalists. One theme that keeps coming up is that if God doesn't exist, then there is no morality and we can do whatever we want. Absolutely ridiculous, but that is what they insist upon most emphatically. A local creationist activist claims to have been an atheist, but he never was. As he describes it in his own writings, as a teenager he accepted evolution and "became an atheist" (HINT: no such decision is necessary) just because of his bubbling hormones. In reality, it was his own religious training that had offered him that legal loophole, not evolution. And in reality, he never was an atheist, since he admitted to me that he prayed to God every night during his "atheism". Using atheism as an excuse to misbehave is a Christian practice, not an atheist one. } Who's "DLW"? Am I to assume that you are talking to me? If so, then where did you get that "L" from? Actually, I figure I must have given up before getting to the part where Lot's daughters raped him, since I would think that I would have remembered that part when I encountered it many years later. And my problem was that I was taking the Bible very seriously indeed. Even though I now don't think that my church required it, I approached the Bible in a biblical literalist manner. And taking that approach, I found that I simply could not believe what I was reading. And since I couldn't believe what I was supposed to (or rather what I thought I was supposed to) in order to be a Christian, then there wasn't any point sticking around, was there? It turned out to be the right decision as has been demonstrated to me countless times over the subsequent five decades, just for the wrong reason. I've read the New Testament since then, twice through. The teachings of Jesus were mostly good, but then it went weird when Paul invented the religion of the Christ. Interesting how the parables in Mark echoed Christianity's origins as a mystery religion. We obviously still have a form of its Outer Temple and I always wonder whether any part of the Inner Temple has been able to survive. I don't understand what you are trying to say there. Could you please be a bit more explicit?

When I had become an atheist (around the age of 12, I started reading the Bible and very quickly realized that I couldn't believe what I was reading), I toyed for a few minutes with every Christian teenager's wet dream of total hedonism by being an atheist*, but I immediately realized that that was a false concept. So since neither Christianity nor the Bible would be my guide, what would? The answer came to me immediately: Scouting. Every moral precept that I could ever need was embodied in the Oath, Law, Motto, and Slogan. Decades later when I read that Baden-Powell quote, it certainly looked like he was referring to the Ten Commandments as governing by "don't" and hence was demonstrating that the Scout Law is actually superior; am I the only one or did anyone else also see that? BTW, I'm still a big Boy Scout. A 61-year-old Boy Scout. OTOH, I have no use for BSA, Inc. I view BSA as being more an enemy of Scouting than promoting it. BSA does not live nor operate by the Oath and Law and they constantly endanger Scouting by creating discrimination lawsuits and alienating sponsors and donors. I wish that BSA would just go away so that an actual Scouting organization could take its place. { * FOOTNOTE: Having been involved in creation/evolution since 1981 and in contact with fundamentalists since 1970, I have had a lot of dialogues with fundamentalists. One theme that keeps coming up is that if God doesn't exist, then there is no morality and we can do whatever we want. Absolutely ridiculous, but that is what they insist upon most emphatically. A local creationist activist claims to have been an atheist, but he never was. As he describes it in his own writings, as a teenager he accepted evolution and "became an atheist" (HINT: no such decision is necessary) just because of his bubbling hormones. In reality, it was his own religious training that had offered him that legal loophole, not evolution. And in reality, he never was an atheist, since he admitted to me that he prayed to God every night during his "atheism". Using atheism as an excuse to misbehave is a Christian practice, not an atheist one. } The footnote was to expand on that gross misconception of Christians about atheists and how Christians are instead projecting their own desires.

I did not respond to the poll. I very rarely respond to polls, since the choices offered almost never reflect my thoughts, opinions, or beliefs. I love Scouting. I truly believe that it is a great program that can prepare a boy for the rest of his life. I especially agree with what Lord Baden-Powell said about the Scout Law, as quoted by Scouting ("Worth Retelling: Baden-Powell on the Scout Law", Scouting, March-April 1991, page 12, quoted from Scouting Digest published by the Boy Scouts of South Africa): When I had become an atheist (around the age of 12, I started reading the Bible and very quickly realized that I couldn't believe what I was reading), I toyed for a few minutes with every Christian teenager's wet dream of total hedonism by being an atheist*, but I immediately realized that that was a false concept. So since neither Christianity nor the Bible would be my guide, what would? The answer came to me immediately: Scouting. Every moral precept that I could ever need was embodied in the Oath, Law, Motto, and Slogan. Decades later when I read that Baden-Powell quote, it certainly looked like he was referring to the Ten Commandments as governing by "don't" and hence was demonstrating that the Scout Law is actually superior; am I the only one or did anyone else also see that? BTW, I'm still a big Boy Scout. A 61-year-old Boy Scout. OTOH, I have no use for BSA, Inc. I view BSA as being more an enemy of Scouting than promoting it. BSA does not live nor operate by the Oath and Law and they constantly endanger Scouting by creating discrimination lawsuits and alienating sponsors and donors. I wish that BSA would just go away so that an actual Scouting organization could take its place. { * FOOTNOTE: Having been involved in creation/evolution since 1981 and in contact with fundamentalists since 1970, I have had a lot of dialogues with fundamentalists. One theme that keeps coming up is that if God doesn't exist, then there is no morality and we can do whatever we want. Absolutely ridiculous, but that is what they insist upon most emphatically. A local creationist activist claims to have been an atheist, but he never was. As he describes it in his own writings, as a teenager he accepted evolution and "became an atheist" (HINT: no such decision is necessary) just because of his bubbling hormones. In reality, it was his own religious training that had offered him that legal loophole, not evolution. And in reality, he never was an atheist, since he admitted to me that he prayed to God every night during his "atheism". Using atheism as an excuse to misbehave is a Christian practice, not an atheist one. }

When I was active in the 1990's, the Scout Shop was selling a reprint of the first Handbook. See if you can't pick up a copy (maybe the Scout Shop could order it for you) and see for yourself what it said about a century ago.

From context, I'm having to assume that you are responding to ThomasJefferson. The government displaying the Ten Commandments is not being tolerant of all religions. It's even very sectarian, because there are three versions of the Ten Commandments: Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish -- there are 11 to 12 different points that are combined differently by the different religions. Since it's Protestants who keep pushing this, three guesses which version they want to have displayed. And by choosing which version to display, then the government would indeed be choosing one religion over the others.

Yes, BSA is and, yes, BSA does. And BSA has. The problem is that BSA refuses to follow its own rules and its own membership criteria. The reason for the lawsuits is because of BSA's actions, as well as their draconian methods for mistreating their victims. Because BSA allows no recourse whatsoever. When James Randall's sons were summarily expelled, he met with the council's SE and tried to resolve the matter. The SE refused all attempts at a resolution, finally telling Randall to sue them. That was BSA ordering the parent of its victims to sue BSA. Which he did. And he won. It was overturned several years later by the state supreme court, but at least the boys were able to participate and advance to their Eagle Review (which is why the state Attorney General pushed the court to rule on the case). Their Scoutmaster praised them as model Scouts and wished more of his boys were like them. BTW, the state supreme court upheld that BSA discriminated, however the law didn't apply to them as a private organization. And the lawsuits and other actions continue because of BSA continued actions. Show me exactly where in officially published BSA policy that it says that. Show me. That is a total falsehood! Because of that gross lie about a rule requiring "belief in a Supreme Being" and because of the outright fraud BSA has practiced by lying to get money from donors and sponsors who have non-discrimination criteria for their recipients and because all the other lies they've been telling the public. I have also seen a film clip from WWII where a Boy Scout recited the Pledge of Allegiance without any reference to "God". Of course, that was because those two words weren't added until 1954. But what makes this statement meaningless is because the word "God" in it has been reduced to meaningless mumbling as pointed out by US Supreme Court Justice Brennan. It's nothing now except "ceremonial deism", lacking any actual religious meaning. More "ceremonial deism". And even BSA's own officially published policy does not identify it as a reference to your particular god, nor to any particular god (consider the Hindu scouts), nor even to any god at all (consider the Buddhist scouts). Sorry, Joe. Not even close. The extreme opposite, actually. So now the situation is still the same, only how the donors and the charities have learned through the lawsuits that BSA does indeed discriminate. So BSA has been losing money from those donors who do not allow discrimination. Why do you think that they voted gay youth in? Because they had suddenly seen the error of their ways? No, because they've been losing money. BSA wants to be able to claim that they don't discriminate anymore, but everyone can plainly see that they still do. Government agencies (including public schools) can no longer charter units, nor directly support BSA. BSA is losing use of public lands. And that is all right and proper for an organization that wants the benefits of being private and "religious". That is BSA's choice. And in all that BSA is losing and will lose, it is all because of what BSA has done and continues to do. They can still turn themselves around and start to actually follow their own rules, but I doubt that they will. You cannot say that anybody is excluding BSA, but rather that BSA is excluding itself*. So what has to be done is to inform all potential COs of what BSA has done and will do, so that they do not get suckered in by BSA's lies and become yet another of its victims. { * FOOTNOTE: Another of BSA's lies that it would tell the public was "We're not excluding atheists and gays; they're excluding themselves." }

Why would anybody want to join the Boy Scouts? Think about it! Why would anybody want to join the Boy Scouts? In particular, why would any adult, especially a parent of a boy, want to join? How's about because they believe in the principles and ideals of Scouting. Because they remember what they had themselves learned as Scouts (or the women vicariously through their brothers) and they want their own sons to learn the same things and to have the same experiences, so they join as well as volunteer leaders. Or because they loved the experience and want to continue in it, giving back to the movement. That last category would include senior Scouts who age out at 18 and stay on in the troop as junior adult leaders. Or men and women whose own sons have aged out and remain active at the district and council level; our district had several such members of the "Goat Patrol". Or men who have no sons who want to continue on -- we have one such who was active in Venture Scouting and also volunteered to help with our troop. The reason for joining Boy Scouts is Scouting! Why else would anyone join? It is really not a good idea for you to always assume that when someone uses the word "God" then it must always mean the same as you would use that word and that it must always mean your own god. It rarely works out that way. You always need to be aware of context to be able to approach the true meaning of anything that's said or written. You should also become familiar with Deism, which didsn't believe in a personal interactive god, but rather in a remote Prime Mover that had gotten the Universe started and then stood back to let it run. One term for this "Creator" was "the God of Nature" or "Nature's God" which had created the Laws of Nature. And certainly, that is the exact wording we find in the Declaration of Independence. You will also find it in Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, in which Paine refuted Christianity, which he considered to be a form of atheism because it denied the true God of Nature in order to worship a man. There's even a conspiracy theory, like "who really wrote Shakespeare?", that Paine had ghost-written the Declaration, since it is so similar to his style. And I'm fairly certain that your sources consider Paine to be an atheist, but his beliefs weren't much different than other Deists', such as Jefferson and several other Founding Fathers. Since you mistakenly find religious significance in the alteration of the Pledge, you should also read A Memorial and Remonstrance by James Madison, in which he described the need to separate government and religion a few years before he drafted the First Amendment. In it, he enumerates and demonstrates the detrimental effects on both government and religion when the two are allowed to co-mingle. And this has come to pass; in Supreme Court Justice Brennan's dissenting opinion in Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984): Where exactly in BSA's officially published policies does it say that atheists cannot be members of BSA? Cite it and quote it! Of course, you may have difficulty doing that, besides for the obvious reason that it does not say it. That other difficulty would be just gaining access to the documents. Back around 1990, copies of BSA's Rules and Regulations and Bylaws were readily available for sale in the Scout Shop. But then BSA suddenly pulled them all off the shelves and restricted access to them on a need-to-know basis. Why? Because they started showing up in court in the hands of the victims of BSA discrimination. And because they clearly showed the courts that BSA was violating its own officially published rules, regulations, bylaws, and policies. Faced with the truth, BSA did what all liars do, which is to try to hide the truth. Let me ask you a question. Both "A Scout is Reverent" and the description of "Duty to God" in the first Handbook require the scout to respect the convictions of others in matters of custom and religion. Obviously, a religious bigot cannot do that. Why then would a religious bigot ever want to join the Boy Scouts? Especially since his beliefs are in direct opposition to the religious principles of BSA and of Scouting. And, yes, I do fully realize that I'm yet again casting pearls before swine. My minister kept warning me about that, but here I go again.

One can hardly hope to dilute an argument that is already rather weak. If you had bothered to review the objections via Google, I would hope that you had read the Princeton philosophy course page at http://www.princeton.edu/~grosen/puc/phi203/Pascal.html. A problem that Hajek's objection brings up is that we don't have much choice over what we believe and don't believe, but rather at best we can only try to believe. As a result, the "four choices" really turn out to be 16. I've been involved with "creation science" since 1981. One of the big problems for "creation science" is that its "scientific" claims are not only blatantly false, but also outrageously so. Since creationists also use "creation science" to proselytize, I could never understand what value there could possibly be in using such unconvincing claims and arguments. A couple decades ago in a Yahoo groups forum, a creationist answered my question. In typical creationist fashion, he presented with full confidence a false claim that had been refuted decades before, in this case the amount of sodium in the ocean. After repeating the same old refutation yet again, I asked him what he thought he could accomplish with such an unconvincing argument as that. His reply was that the only reason that I found it unconvincing was because I was not yet convinced. BTW, the other problem with his claim, that it gave an age for the earth of millions of years and not the 10,000 maximum that his religious beliefs required, he also answered by saying that all he cared about was that it contradicted what science says. So similarly, the only reason why you find unconvincing Pascal's Wager convincing is because you are already convinced of it yourself. You really don't have any clue about what agnostics and atheists think and believe, do you? That is correct! And that is also the basis for agnosticism! The agnostic believes that we cannot know. That is indeed the only honest position to hold. Theists holding the honest agnostic position then believe what they cannot know, which comes under the heading of faith. Atheists holding the honest agnostic position do not believe. So in reality, since a number of theists are agnostic, your statement about what agnostics think and believe is decidedly wrong. Similarly, the position of most atheists is that they do not believe. Most do not go so far as to declare the non-existence of the gods, while some do. So your statement about what atheists think and believe is also decidedly wrong. You should try to learn something before making such statements. Most people have learned that ignorance doesn't work.

Pascal's Wager. It has many problems which followers ignore. And it shows up often as a proselytizing too in their "after-life insurance" argument which is little more than a scam -- I wrote of my experience with it at http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/wager.html. You can read objections to it through Google: pascal's wager objections. To start with, there are far more than 4 options, literally thousands of them. It is not enough to believe that a god exists, but rather you have to believe in the right god. True, some gods don't care, but many gods do very definitely take exception to people not believing in them. That is most certainly true of YHWH and the Christian version of Him upped the stakes very greatly. So out of thousands of gods, you have to choose the right one. But that is not enough, because you also need to choose the right theology. Pascal was Catholic, so even if you choose the Christian god, if you are not Catholic then you have lost the wager. For that matter, Pascal was a member of a small Catholic sect, so just being Catholic may not be enough. And it's false that believing doesn't cost you anything. Religions make non-trivial demands on its followers, including banning certain occupations and loving certain people. Far worse, your religion could forbid you from seeking necessary medical care for yourself or, even worse, for a loved one like your child -- this does often happen. You're paying with your life in so many ways when you join a religion. That religious experience could be good, but it could also be bad. Currently, the majority of children raised in fundamentalist/evangelical/conservative Christian homes are fleeing religion altogether -- estimates range from 65% to 80%. If you were to visit forum sites like ex-christian.net, you would read personal testimonials of what these ex-Christians had experienced growing up. When the "after-life insurance" scam was tried on me in the guise of a car insurance analogy, I responded with the following assessment: So your Pascal's Wager is not a sure thing, but rather ... now how did you put it? Oh yes ... you're screwed.

And I trust that you also could see where the same stories were being told over and over again. Admittedly, I have not made it through the Old Testament, nor at the age of 61 do I feel inclined to (not when I have so much to write about BSA and about network programming). But I did read through the New Testament a couple times through. I have also read thePirke Avoth ("Sayings of the Fathers", part of the Talmudic tradition). I found the teachings of Jesus himself rather good, especially when he agreed with the Pharisees (spirit of the law vs the letter of the law, especially regarding the Golden Rule), but Paul's reinterpretation of Jesus into The Christ was very troubling and, most unfortunately, that is what Christianity is based on.

I certainly cannot think of any negative effects. Positive effects would be far fewer families operating at an unnecessary disadvantage and in danger of being torn apart by anti-same-sex marriage laws. About a year ago I listened to a report on All Things Considered (NPR) in which same-sex families were visiting Washington, DC, to personally lobby their congressmen and senators for support. The most pressing concern for most of the families was that the parents lost all parental rights in a state that didn't recognize or banned same-sex marriages. That meant that if any of their children were to have to go to the emergency room or come to the attention of the authorities, then all their children would be taken away from them and placed in foster care. Societal acceptance of gay marriage means the preservation of families.

From what I gather from the above, no secret regulations were used. I don't see the issue of "supreme being" relevant in the decision. P.S. Anyone else ever gotten this error message? Yes, I'm familiar with the Welsh case. I met Elliott on-line on CompuServe immediately upon joining their Scouting Forum. And the BSA spy there printed out just about every message posted there and turned them in to BSA, whose lawyers then presented a thick stack of those messages in federal court as evidence in the Welsh trial. In fact, the very first message I posted there was included and marked "ATHEIST LEADER" in big red letters. We followed reports of those CompuServe forum members about the proceedings and the actions and statements of BSA officials and of other participants. While that is an accurate account of what had happened, it is also true that BSA frequently invoked its non-existent "rule requiring belief in a Supreme Being" in the Welsh case as well as in all the other cases involving religious discrimination. That included BSA's persistent and well-publicized direct lies to the public about having a rule requiring "belief in a Supreme Being". I would also point out how the Welsh case started as being a prime example of the problems caused by the surface wording of the DRP in absense of any explanation of what officially published BSA policy actually says. In fact, on recruitment night for our pack there was one parent who balked at that wording, so I sat down and explained what it meant according to officially published policy and she found that she could agree with it. Rather, it is when that policy is kept secret from the parents so that all they have to go by is the surface wording that these kinds of problems even arise. How so? Please explain why you think that and what you think is circular about my arguments. I think that I've been very straight-forward in my reasoning and in my presentation. For that matter, I cannot see how officially published BSA policy could be construed to say something different.

All your links to http://www.scouter.com/wiki are broken, which is too bad since I would have wanted to have seen what this forum's Wiki had to say about "higher power". But needless to say, while it may be your own narrow sectarian interpretation that a "higher power" must be a "Supreme Being", reality and the world's religions say otherwise. A "Supreme Being" would be what is referred to as a "personal god", which Wikipedia defines as: That definition alone indicates that a "higher power" need not be a personal god. We also have other examples, such as the Tao, Hinduism's Brahman-Atman (the ultimate reality -- "The personal God is impersonal reality reflected upon the mirror of ignorance and illusion." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman#Brahman_and_Atman), Confuscianism's natural social order, the physical laws of the universe, all of which are higher powers than each individual and none of which are personal gods (aside from a tiny bit of wriggle-room with Brahman, depending on which school). You are bound to your sectarian view of "higher power" because of your own religious tradition. The rest of us are not similiarly bound, except for those whose religious traditions share your sectarian views. As per officially published BSA policy. To paraphrase the idea and purpose behind officially published BSA religious policy: Religious beliefs only imply that to you because you are bound by the sectarian views of your own religious tradition. I am not bound by your sectarian views. As per officially published BSA policy. And while you would not call somebody else's religious tradition "religious" because of your own sectarian views, that does not prevent us from considering our own religious beliefs to be religious. As per officially published BSA policy, that judgement is not yours to make for anyone except yourself and for someone within the same religious tradition. For more information, maybe you should have a chat with a minister from my church, the Unitarian-Universalist Association (UUA). I'd like to know his reaction and response when you tell him that UU beliefs are not religious. Quite honestly, once when I was asked what I believe in, I quite literally responded with, "Truth, justice, and the American way." Corny, but true. And of the American way I particularly value religious liberty and am dedicated to preserving it. No, it is not. I haven't put it up yet. Actually, I had a single page marking "more to come" on my old website, but then that provider suddenly went out of the hosting business and I've been putting my site up elsewhere in my "copious spare time" (engineer parlance -- we have too much work to do to have any spare time).

Peregrinator: I thought I was quite clear on what I meant by being "strongly agnostic". Here it is again (with a key part in bold): Could you please point out what part of that you did not understand or had difficulty with? As I just shared with Merlyn, we atheists repeatedly get subjected to theists (mainly fundamentalist/evangelical/conservative Christians) pontificating to us what atheists think and believe. In the process they only succeed in demonstrating how completely clueless they are and yet they absolutely refuse to hear from us atheists ourselves what we actually do think and believe. Here is a link to a page on the website of the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, religioustolerance.org, entitled, "Agnostic-Atheists. Agnostic-Theists. More definitions. Famous Agnostics.": http://www.religioustolerance.org/agnostic2.htm I just found it today, but you will notice that many of the definitions and quotations offered say the same thing that I had just repeated for you: You can plainly see them saying the same things as I have. I will remind you that I have held and developed my beliefs for many decades and that I have only just today found this webpage that I just quoted from. I would suggest that it is your own definitions and understanding of "atheist" and "agnostic" that need to be re-examined and corrected.

Merlyn: A better explanation would be like the region in the UK our minister told us about called "The Black Spot" by a major church (CoE?). Populated by Unitarians, it has a reputation for being impervious to all their proselytizing efforts. They hate us so much because they cannot convert us. Kind of like with Martin Luther's vicious hatred for the Jews. But a better explanation would be that they are acting in ignorance upon their prejudices which they have learned from their churches. I'm sure that you've been pontificated at by Christians who "know" exactly what atheists think and believe, only the more they pontificate the more obvious it is that they are completely clueless. Even worse, they refuse to stop and listen and learn from actual atheists what actual atheists actually do think and believe. So where do they get their prejudices from? I found it interesting that over the decades some of the same false ideas about atheists would keep appearing. Then one night while browsing through http://ex-christian.net, an ex-Christian sharing his deconversion story remembered what he had been taught by his church about atheists and he even quoted from some Bible verses about those teachings. They were the same false ideas that I had observed appearing over and over again! Unfortunately, when I tried to return to that post the next night to write down the citations, I couldn't find it anymore. So that's it! They're getting some of those false ideas from the Bible! That could also explain why they work so hard to not learn the truth about atheists. I started studying "creation science" over 30 years ago and have been discussing it for almost as long. Now, mind you, we're talking about biblical literalists there, who are almost exclusively fundamentalists. One of the things that I find very disturbing about them is the brinksmanship that they insist on playing with their own faith. Creationists have repeatedly insisted to me emphatically that if there's even one, just one, error in the Bible, then you should throw the entire Bible in the trash and become an atheist. And that's what they teach their kids! And since their claims about the real world are contrary-to-fact and the truth of the Bible depends on them being true, that's a sure recipe of disaster. So how then do they deal with the evidence of the real world? They turn a blind eye to it and invent their own "evidences". I think that's part of what's happening in our "conversations" (ie, they pontificate and then refuse to listen to the truth) with that kind of Christians. They're getting their wrong ideas about atheists from the Bible, but if they learn that those ideas are wrong, then that means that the Bible is wrong about something and that's when it all starts to unravel for them. They have a vested interest in remaining ignorant. And because their prejudices are hateful, they act them out with hatred. Against boogeymen who don't even exist regardless of how many innocent people get trampled.