Scouts oath "is religious discrimination"

[packsaddle]

Trevorum, thanks for expanding on that. A critical view (mine, at least) finds great difficulty in separating some of the acknowledged myths from things people claim to believe in some of the popular religions.

In another thread I had a little fun tickling the tail of the dragon by declaring Satan to be a myth (for myth, he certainly is). I could as well have thrown in Hell, or Heaven for that matter.

But following Calico's and your lead, if a person applied and professed a belief in Santa Claus, I'd say he qualifies under the DRP. And when I put my suit on, he'd be able to affirm it!

H'mm gotta start work on that creed thing.

Edited part:

The 10 Articles of Faith:

1. Don't pout.

2. Don't cry.

3. Watch out.

4. I'll give you your reasoning.

5. I have a list of all people.

6. You will be separated into good and bad.

7. I can see you no matter where you are.

8. I know everything you do.

9. So be good for goodness sake.

10. I'm coming back periodically.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

[Hiromi]

Packsaddle,

 

 

Main Entry:

reverence

Pronunciation:

\ˈrev-rən(t)s, ˈre-və-; ˈre-vərn(t)s\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin reverentia, from reverent-, reverens respectful, reverent

Date:

14th century

1: honor or respect felt or shown: DEFERENCE; especially : profound adoring awed respect2: a gesture of respect (as a bow)3: the state of being revered4: one held in reverence used as a title for a clergyman

 

It seems to me that reverence has as an implication a respectful and mannered response to a powerful reality that puts our human existence into a context with the scale and immensity of the universe. It is the proper response to someone who believes in the biggest deal in their life, i.e. God.

 

Treating other peoples beliefs in a creator as silly or stupid or worthy of ridicule is not scout-like no matter how you cut it.

 

While this is a theoretical discussion, it plays very loose with the idea of sincerity. Believers take many of their moral and ethical queues from the tenants of their belief in the reality of a creator and the truth of his revealed message.

 

Equating belief to Santa Clause is not respectful and I think may stoop to being unkind and discourteous. Im sure that this wasnt your intent. And I personally can take it. But having a discussion that derides others beliefs isnt very tactful to say the least.

 

Pappy

 

(This message has been edited by Pappy)

[packsaddle]

I long ago gave up the dream of being 'Attorney General'...that tact thing, you know.

You evidently have a really low opinion of Santa Claus by the way. But if someone else finds Santa Claus to be an object of reverence, what harm is there in that?

Or, if you want to discuss the difference between a myth and some particular article of faith, that would be good too. I'm all ears (or 'eyes' in the case of this forum).

[Gold Winger]

"Equating belief to Santa Clause is not respectful and I think may stoop to being unkind and discourteous."

 

Why? I've had personal proof that Santa Claus exists. On the other hand, all we have for the rest are two thousand year old stories.

 

[Hiromi]

Hello fellas,

 

I don't want to reiterate my former thoughts on this subject posted on various threads throughout this site, but why should a boy listen to anything anybody says if authority stems from the biggest baddest adult in the room?

 

If authority is not derived from God, then our founding documents are just colorful nonsense and we are merely renegades and rebels of the British Empire.

 

If what you are saying is correct, then Jesus was either a liar, totally mad, or both. Unless of course, you play the card that says that someone put words in his mouth he never uttered. Then it is a conspiracy of the Dan Brown DaVinci Code pedigree. Either way- it boils down to a really unsavory view of mankind and a lower view of the universe.

 

By your trivializing of belief what do you offer the scout in its stead? If you put the Judeo Christian religion on the par of Wickans and the tooth fairy, then you are arguing for relativism that undermines not only Boy Scouting, but the underpinnings of our civilization.

 

Why should man be good to his neighbor? Why should a scout follow the laws? What does honor mean? What good is a good deed in an indifferent universe?

 

Willful atheism in not benign. It is insidious because what it negates is what is best and true. When a man says that their is no creator because he has seen is no proof, but he has been made aware of revealed truth, he has seen the majesty of nature and witnessed the unimaginable perfection of life and the order and design of existence;; when he negates all this he has sinned not only against the living God, but against his own senses and his own intelligence.

 

When God has been asked to leave the building, and you scrape his commandments off the wall, and you disregard the beatitudes and the Lords Prayer and all the rest, and you banish his Son to the potters field of myth, what are you going to do when your son says, why shouldnt I torture that cat?- it's fun. Or Why can't I fool around with that 5th grade girl, she likes it -who am I hurting? Or Why can't I murder Jews and Blacks and Illegals, they seem to be the cause of all the wars and who is keeping my people down for so long. Or Why cant I do drugs- it isnt hurting anybody and even if it were, why should I care? or Why should I treat my neighbor well, what good did he ever do me?

 

The philosophy of Nice has pervaded the secularized Public and Private schools as a replacement for the idea of a supernatural reality that has been revealed to us hundreds of times over millennia. Being Nice for Nice sake is a weak and worthless philosophy and it is very unappealing and ineffectual to boys and men in particular.

 

Boys want structure. They want to know who is in charge. They want to be told what the guidelines are. And if it isnt going to be God, it will be something that he will elevate to the level of a false God. This is proved out in history time ands time again.

 

If Reverence and duty to God are not informing Scouting- then something else will be there to replace them. In their stead we will see Hitler Youth, Gang bangers, Skin Heads, Or the legions of aimless neglected boys who arent being properly formed by mentors with the gonads to tell them the truth.

 

We should discriminate against Atheists because they are not in possession of the honest doubt of an agnostic. They have been formed, and they are not usually respectful of the reverence paid to a supernatural being. This can and I think most assuredly will undermine the formation of our boys. Surely our boys get enough of this non-sense in school and in the general culture that seems at best indifferent to religious sentiment and at worst trying to sell and promote sin and vice at every turn.

 

 

Pappy

(This message has been edited by Pappy)

[Gold Winger]

"If what you are saying is correct, then Jesus was either a liar, totally mad, or both."

 

He may well have been. People call Oral Roberts a liar and they say the same about Joseph Smith.

 

All we have are the testimonies of some of Jesus' followers, who may well be trying to protect the memory of their leader, a Greek (we all know what they say about Greeks), and a tent maker who suffered from heat stroke.

[Trevorum]

Speaking of totally mad...

 

BLOOD & THUNDER PROPHET: "And the bezan shall be huge and black, and the eyes thereof red with the blood of living creatures, and the whore of Babylon shall ride forth on a three-headed serpent, and throughout the lands, there'll be a great rubbing of parts. Yeeah ..."

 

FALSE PROPHET: "...For the demon shall bear a nine-bladed sword. Nine-bladed! Not two or five or seven, but nine, which he will wield on all wretched sinners, sinners just like you, sir, there, and the horns shall be on the head, with which he will ... "

 

BORING PROPHET: "There shall, in that time, be rumours of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things wi-- with the sort of raffia work base that has an attachment. At this time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight o'clock. Yea, it is written in the book of Cyril that, in that time, shall the third one ... "

 

[Gold Winger]

Hey! He said, "rubbing of parts" and "whore." Why didn't he get moderated?

[le Voyageur]

 

 

I posit that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are the principal deities of two powerful cargo cults. Just because they lack the awe factor of the current alphas, they are none the less gods.

 

Consider, is a child's imagination of his/her gods (Santa Claus) any less then that of an adult who believes in Pearly Gates and streets of gold; that, or he'll get his own personal planet in the next life for perpetual procreation to seed another universe?

 

As I see it, any time we imagine, or define our god, then that god will always be smaller then our imagination.

 

However, a universal truth is that all gods die. Jehovah, and Jesus in time will go the same way as Anu,or Tuatha-De-Danann...because all civilizations die, and the new that rises from the ashes always leaves the old gods behind.

[Trevorum]

LV,

Old gods never die, they are just forgotten.

 

I like to imagine that somewhere, Loki is cheating at cards with Baal while El and Ra just laugh and shake their heads. Zeus sits and watches the mist, patiently waiting for Jehovah to arrive.

[Hiromi]

 

"A scout is reverent. He is reverent toward God. He is faithful to his religious duties and respects the convictions of others in matters of custom and religion."

 

It is better to go through life looking up to things that we love and respect, because they are better than ourselves, than to go through life looking down upon ideas and people as inferior to ourselves.

 

This is a statement of two extremes, and almost every one's outlook lies somewhere between them. When we go through life with the habit of respect for wise ideas and good people, we do it because we feel the value of the wise ideas that make good people strong and reliable. It is not that we want to curry favor with these people, or that we want them to think well of us, so much as it is that we lov the effect of strength and happiness that an upright spirit brings with it, and we long to get possession of their secret for ourselves. If we are earnest and persistent in this matter, we shall find out that such strong people are much the same as we are, except for the fact that they have done more work in conquering their selfish tendencies, and so have acquired a greater power in the service of what is good.

 

Men of all religions believe that God is good and the source of all good in human life, an that we are all free to receive goodness from Him just in proportion as we conquer evil and obey His laws. When, therefore, we reverence the good in other people and try our best to live up to it ourselves, we are reverencing God, for obedience is the first point of reverence.

 

In the same way, although it may be expressed somewhat differently, men of all religions believe that God is the All-true and wise, as well as the All-good, and that all the pure truth in human minds comes from Him. When, therefore, we have respect for the truth and a love for seeing things just as they are in His sight, we are respecting and revering His own Spirit. And when, seeing the truth, and giving up our own prejudices for the sake of it, we work with all our might to carry it out in obedience to His laws, we are living what is called a spiritual life, because "God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in Truth."

 

Men who love what is the right can always work together in useful ways and do good work, without regard to the particular and detailed opinions which they associate with their own religion; and it seems unreasonable to expect every one to have the same ideas or opinions about such matters. Men of all the different Christian sects and churches, and of all the other forms of religious belief, may differ from one another honestly in matters of opinion, and yet work together in a common spirit of obedience to God and His law. In the old days, it was considered right to try and force your beliefs on other people by threats and persecutions; but, as people have learned, through their own mistakes, to respect the sincere and honest convictions of those who differ from them, this mutual respect has become more and more an essential part of most religions, and the old ideas of domineering intolerance have very much diminished. It has been found out that religion flourishes most where intolerance does not exist at all.

 

Loyalty to that form of religion from which we receive the most help to keep us straight is an important duty under the scout law, and it is a violation of that law to try and proselytize, or draw off any one from his own church or peculiar form of religious observance. There is room for all honest and sincere religious beliefs in the Boy Scout Organization, and it is recommended that troops be formed in connection with churches, as well as other organizations, under the direction of the parish priest or minister, with such spiritual advisers and under such conditions as they may provide.

 

There is no room in the Boy Scout Organization, however, for the spirit of intolerance which does not recognize the right of every man to his own convictions in matters of religion, and therefore we should exercise the greatest care and consideration in not doing or saying anything which might hurt the feelings of other people in matters which to them are sacred.

 

When we go through life looking out for things that are better than we are, and act from their influence as fast as we recognize and appreciate their goodness and beauty, we ourselves are constantly growing toward that good, as we bravely put away the weak and evil things that become more clear to us by contrast; when, on the other hand, we are absorbed by a sense of our own superiority, or, in other words, "suffer the swelled head," we shut out from our minds the possibility of reverence and form the habit of contempt in its place. As has been said before, there is nothing more belittling and destructive in the world than the habit of contempt; when much indulged in, it ends by acting like a boomerang, and the scoffer finds himself ultimately discouraged and forlorn. For contempt, like other an d more obvious vices, ends by losing all its attractions and finally turning on itself.

 

Reverence toward God and everything that is good corresponds, in a way, to courtesy toward all people whom God has placed within our reach. It was said in the chapter on " A Scout is Courteous" that true courtesy brings with it a cheerful happiness that combines with the dignity of service. We may say in the same way that reverence brings with it a deep and lasting joy associated with appreciation and gratitude for all the great and lovely things of life."

 

From The Scout Law in Practice

by Arthur A. Carey, copyright 1915, by Little Brown and Company, Boston MA

 

Submitted by Pappy

 

 

 

[packsaddle]

"There is no room in the Boy Scout Organization, however, for the spirit of intolerance which does not recognize the right of every man to his own convictions in matters of religion, and therefore we should exercise the greatest care and consideration in not doing or saying anything which might hurt the feelings of other people in matters which to them are sacred."

How is this different from political correctness?

Prior to that: "Being Nice for Nice sake is a weak and worthless philosophy and it is very unappealing and ineffectual to boys and men in particular."

I'm not sure why that would, in particular, apply to men and boys as opposed to some other gender (not that I agree with it, by the way). Please explain.

Trevorum, where is Saturn or Janus in your vision?

[DanKroh]

Pappy wrote: "By your trivializing of belief what do you offer the scout in its stead? If you put the Judeo Christian religion on the par of Wickans and the tooth fairy, then you are arguing for relativism that undermines not only Boy Scouting, but the underpinnings of our civilization."

 

First of all, it's Wiccan, not Wickan...

 

And second, what was that about "Treating other peoples beliefs in a creator as silly or stupid or worthy of ridicule is not scout-like no matter how you cut it."?

 

Way to trivialize my beliefs, dude. Or does that famous courtesy toward others' beliefs only apply to the Judeo-Christian beliefs? All others need not apply?

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Hey Pappy, I'll show you just as much respect as you show atheists and "Wickans" -- no less, and certainly no more. At the moment, that amount appears to be zero.

[Trevorum]

Maybe Pappy is Rooster, reincarnated as a papist.