All I want is an explanation.

[Trevorum]

"Since matter can be neither created nor destroyed..."

 

I'm no physicist, but my understanding is that matter is constantly being created and destroyed.

 

Is that what E = mC2 is all about?

[Cubmaster Mike]

MY goodness, what a place to wade in for my first post. I will try not to be so longwinded in the future.

 

Duty to God- it's part of the Principle, it's part of the Oath, it's in the Pledge of Allegiance. Don't agree with it? Fine, accept the policy and play nice, or leave. It's as simple at that.

 

Look, I work for a public utility and I don't always agree with my boss or the publically elected Board of Directors. Sometimes I don't agree that what they decide is in the public's best interest. I speak my mind but afterwards they will act according to their own priorities. I don't quit my job because they didn't agree with me. I accept that there is a difference, move on and carry out my responsibilities in accordance with their decision. And rest assured, If I do not feel that I can carry out my responsibilities ethically or morally, then I will quit.

 

It's a non-religious example, but the results are the same. Cannot live with the religious aspect of the program? Then if your beliefs are that important to you then you should leave.

 

Our charter org is a public school. With a lesbian principal. When I joined the pack last year (and became cubmaster 3 months later) I was told by our then committee chair, outgoing charter org rep and cubmaster that we don't have a good relationship with the school given our principal's orientation and the public facility use aspect and that we should just lay low and be quiet. What utter poppycock. One of the first things I did was meet with our principal in full uniform to introduce myself and explain that we were a service organization that builds good citizens and that we were there to help when they need us. Next I went to the President of the School Parent Faculty Club and told them that we needed a new Charter Org Rep and by the way, here was the job description where they agree to uphold the BSA Religious Principle. When they asked what that Religious Principle was, I printed it out also and gave it to them.

 

The end result? Six months later, our old Committee Chair and Charter Org Rep quit the Pack. So did three families. However, our uniformed (and TRAINED) adult leadership increased from 2 to 10 and our boy membership DOUBLED. We actually have boys now joining our pack from other schools (instead of the pack at their own school).

 

Why the sudden interest from our families? Because we tossed out the old program of liberal interpretation and went back to a basics program. You know those "tired old outdated concepts:"

 

Citizenship

Service and Helping Others

Personal Growth

Family Undertanding

Respecting Others

Fun, Fun, Fun

and of course, Spiritual Growth.

 

Why does our program work? I believe because of these basic core values. BSA National is not "out-of touch or outdated."The BSA national policies have not changed because this is what people want. When I meet with new parents and hand out to them the 10 Purposes of Cub Scouting, I don't qualify or downplay any of them. I tell them that this is what we are and this is what we strive for. We don't recruit boys, we recruit families. And believe me, parents are HAPPY tht we embrace those values.

 

I can't say I've ever met a true aethiest. Here's my story: Two months ago I had a boat accident while duck hunting and capsized 1 mile from shore in 48 degree water. Life jackets were in the boat but not on our bodies (STUPID!!) and after trying to flip the boat with no luck, we shed as much of our gear as possible and swam for a nearby floating blind 20 yards away against a hard current and rolling seas. No one saw the accident and our emergency gear went down with the boat. Air temperature was less than fifty and raining hard on us. Soaked to the skin and with only wet weather gear, we huddled and shared body warth for 6-1/2 hours before our families called the Coast Guard who found us late that night. There were four of us in that boat, three humans and a hunting dog. The humans survived, the dog did not. My two friends with me that evening were both self-sworn aethiests. And they were also the first to say out loud that the reason we didnt't drown was that "someone was looking out for us." That someone was God. They still profess that they are aethiests but neither of them will deny that they were praying that night in the water. It's not worth arguing the religious point with them. I guess the old Army adage "there are no aethiests in foxholes" is true.

 

Note: the survival skills I practiced in that floating blind were learned in the Boy Scouts!

[packsaddle]

Welcome to the forum. I won't comment on the water safety aspect of your post, you summed it up nicely.

As for the judgement that there are no atheists, or that atheism is quickly abandoned during adversity, I wonder if such a mercurial attitude toward faith would fool a deity, especially an omniscient one.

Alternatively, perhaps the deception you suggest is that faith is always there but sometimes 'masked' by an outward claim of atheism, but only during the good times.

I think this is an interesting twist on the policy. If such faith is always there for everyone, even if it is behind a facade, then BSA is ejecting persons on a truly superficial basis. But then, who could know for sure?

[Torveaux]

The Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy (otherwise called Law of Conservation of Mass) states that matter can be created nor destroyed.

 

What you see is simply mass changing form.

 

I am no physicist either, but this is a basic scientific law taught even at the HS and Middle-school levels.

 

I think a good scientist would take a page out of Newton's book. He was a religious man, but he also understood that science could not really explain the supernatural, nor could it disprove it. Better to focus on what we can know, than to waste energy trying to suggest that anything in science disproves God.

[packsaddle]

Torveaux, enough already, you're killin' me man! Take a look at this site:

http://www.schoolscience.co.uk/content/4/physics/particles/particlesmodel4b.html

Yes, Newtonian physics has the conservation law. The E=mc**2 law is actually the formula predicting the amount of energy that is yielded from the conversion of matter to energy. Relativity. Uranium. Plutonium. Atomic weapons. Nuclear power. Electricity. Basic physics...a few chapters into the book.

It depends on your perspective. Conversion of your mass into energy and your subsequent dissipation into space would constitute destruction by many accounts. I suppose, however, that someone might consider that a conversion.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

[Prairie_Scouter]

Not that we need to discuss the laws of conservation of energy, but the basic laws of physics relate to the amount of matter in the universe, and that's what they're talking about. When they say that matter can be neither created nor destroyed, they are talking about the constant amount of matter in the universe. Einstein's equation relates to the conversion of matter to energy and back.

 

Relating to the posters comments on the thought that BSA policy has not changed, etc., I would respectfully disagree. The interpretation of Scout philosophy as originally discussed by Baden-Powell created an all-inclusive world where everyone was welcome. The interpretation by BSA is substantially removed from this, and is not only different from the interpretation used by Scouting Worldwide, but also differs from the original policies enacted by U.S. Scouting early in the previous century. The public denunciation of gays in Scouting is much more recent, and its roots seem to be open to some debate.

[Trevorum]

totally irrelevant but interesting sidebar: Newton didn't know about so-called virtual particles, which are constantly arriving in our universe and immediately departing. Google "virtual particles" for lots of interesting reading.

[Torveaux]

Two things: A scientific law is a proven entity. A theory is just that, a theory, even when a genius thinks of it.

 

The theory of relativity does not subtract from my premise that the universe could not exist without a supernatural power (God) because its very creation would violate the known laws of physics. (hence the term SUPERnatural).

[Trevorum]

A friend said,

 

"Theories explain facts lots of facts, considered together and thats what science is about. The sun disappears below the horizon in the evening. Thats a fact. Then it reappears the next morning on the opposite horizon. That, too, is a fact. To say that these facts are caused by the rotation of the earth on its axis is a theory. The problem is that some well-intentioned people do not understand that in science, a theory is not a hunch. Its not some kind of half-baked, unproven guess. Put another way, theories dont aspire to become facts when they grow up. In science, its theory that brings order and stability to the whole unruly collection of facts."

[Prairie_Scouter]

To Torveaux...

Your comment is sort of a chicken and egg argument, I think. The laws of physics operate within the domain of the known universe. Since there was no universe at the time of creation, there was no domain for the physical laws to exist in, therefore, no laws of physics because there was nothing to apply them to.

 

Now, having said that, you're entering into an area that scientists have debated for years and years, and this is, can science allow for the existence of a God, or does everthing, by definition have to have a scientifically proven answer? You have people who believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible, ie, the world was created in the space of a few days, literally, several thousand years ago, and requires the intervention of a Supreme Being. There are those who take the opposing view that the earth evolved as part of the creation of the universe out of a Big Bang, and is the result of entirely natural processes. You have creationism on one hand, evolution on the other. Many proponents of either view find no room for the views of the other.

 

Personally, I think the truth, if there is such a thing, is someplace in the middle. Perhaps, a God who set the wheels in motion and is content to let the wheels spin as they will, and intervenes every once in awhile, just to keep things interesting.

 

I also think that folks who believe in the Biblical creation of the universe story also have to believe in what I call the "God as the greatest practical joker of all time" theory. That is, the world was created in a few days, but then God dummied up evidence to make it look like it took billions of years. But, that's just me :-)

[Trevorum]

"Perhaps, a God who set the wheels in motion and is content to let the wheels spin as they will ..."

 

Interestingly, that is the God that Newton believed in.

[Rooster7]

God dummied up evidence to make it look like it took billions of years. But, that's just me.

 

Did God dummied up evidence to make it look like it took billions of years or did man feel compelled to dummy up the evidence himself? Thats not meant to imply that scientists who back evolution are conspiring to hide the truth. Rather, it is meant to say, I believe many scientists believe what they believe first, and then find the evidence to support it. Now, one might argue - evidence is evidenceit matters not what a scientist believed before his search. However, I argue that these scientists are compelled to view all evidence with a slant that they cannot suppress. This is not unlike how many scientists would describe people of faith. The only difference is people of faith realize that they have one.

 

[Hunt]

"Did God dummied up evidence to make it look like it took billions of years or did man feel compelled to dummy up the evidence himself?"

 

Believe it or not, there are some fundamentalist Christians who believe that God created the Earth with "apparent age," i.e., with fossils already in place. I guess this is a last-ditch effort to preserve the idea that the Earth was created a few thousand years ago in the face of truly overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It has become more and more obvious to most people that the Earth is millions of years old, and furthermore, that there is lots of evidence--really, overwhelming evidence--of evolution. This is why so many are now turning to the idea of "intelligent design," which is a religious/philosophical viewpoint that can neither be proven nor disproven with scientific evidence. (I happen to believe in it, by the way--although I still don't think it belongs in science class, since it's a religious idea.)

I must confess that I am attracted to the idea that God would pull a joke on us by creating the Earth with dinosaur fossils already in its crust. On the other hand, I am a little disturbed by the idea that God might have created the Earth with apparent age--what if he did it five minutes ago, and all our memories are false?

[Rooster7]

This is why so many are now turning to the idea of "intelligent design," which is a religious/philosophical viewpoint that can neither be proven nor disproved with scientific evidence. (I happen to believe in it, by the way--although I still don't think it belongs in science class, since it's a religious idea.)

 

And why cant it be proven scientifically? Id like to suggest that its this mind-set that most scientists assume, and thus they disqualify themselves as being unbiased observers. It reminds me of an old cartoon two fish swimming around in a large aquarium as they mocked the idea of a supreme being. If in 1491, the Pope declared the world to be round, would you discount Columbus claim in 1492 as a religious idea? My point being regardless of the original sourceno matter who or how a claim comes to light, truth will always be truth. If physical evidence suggests that there is an intelligent designer, it should not be ignored or discounted, simply because it supports the ideas or truths purported by a religious faith. Science claims to be the owner of truth or at least the owner of the known truth because all of its claims can be supported by physical evidence. When science refuses to recognize truths because acknowledging such truths latently validates the existence of Godor a Supreme Beingor the claims of a religious faith then science has failed its chartersomething other than truth is reining supreme. And since truth is the ultimate goal of science, no religious teaching should be summarily dismissed from science class. Examined with a critical eye? Yes. But to instantly dismiss an idea simply because scientists (NOT science) have taken the posture that all religious ideas are counterintuitive to the laws of the physical world, is inane (no offense intended) change that to silly.

 

[Prairie_Scouter]

to Rooster7...

I think that the real difference between people of science and people of faith is that the process of science is one of constant discovery and rediscovery. Laws are constantly being updated, proven, and disproven. People of faith hold onto faith regardless of what contrary evidence is placed in their way until the evidence is so overwhelming that they are forced to let go. How many scientists were killed before the Church would admit that it's teachings on the flat Earth and the solar system were incorrect?

 

I find the whole idea of Biblical literalism to be quite interesting. Biblical scholars can't even agree on who wrote the Bible (although they think the majority was written by 4 authors long after the events); translations are constantly in dispute (some say that Jesus' name was actually Joshua); with all that going on, how can they rely on a word for word literal interpretation?

 

There is plenty of room for middle ground if people would allow, but these days, most people seem to have the attitude that "it's not enough for me to be right, you have to be wrong as well".

 

This finds its way into Scouting as well. The issue of gays in Scouting is about religious belief. No one who is the least bit literate on the subject would claim that gays are any more "dangerous" to youth than anyone else. So, it is merely a matter of religious doctrine being used as policy by BSA. And, since not all religions agree on that, it also sets Scouting against itself by placing some religions "above" others while at the same time claiming to be non-sectarian in their views. Just ain't so. The problem I see with Scouting isn't that they have some religious underpinnings to their beliefs, but that they pick and choose which beliefs to use in order to meet their end goals. I'd like for BSA to get back to the roots of Scouting; a Scouting that was open to all.