Merlyn_LeRoy Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 Unless they don't: http://www.dontsaythepledge.com And if public schools try to punish them, the Freedom From Religion Foundation makes them stop. https://ffrf.org/faq/state-church/item/14030-pledge-of-allegiance https://ffrf.org/legal/other-legal-successes/item/19878-ffrf-stops-school-from-forcing-students-to-recite-pledge-of-allegiance-november-20-2013 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick_in_CA Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 ...and yet youth say the pledge of allegiance every day. I usually drop the "under God" part, as I always believed it is a violation of separation of church and state (especially in public school settings). I know several parents that teach their children to do the same thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krampus Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 Then we should have the Athiests work on Christmas Day since it means nothing to them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qwazse Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 "let boys be atheists" in the sense that they will be required to recite a god-oath and proselytized to become Christians, and can't be adult leaders.Attempted to be proselytizerd ... No different than any other expense of precious resources on the spiritually indolent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merlyn_LeRoy Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 Then we should have the Athiests work on Christmas Day since it means nothing to them. Plenty do, but they usually get overtime pay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NJCubScouter Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 (edited) Unless they don't: http://www.dontsaythepledge.com And if public schools try to punish them, the Freedom From Religion Foundation makes them stop. https://ffrf.org/faq/state-church/item/14030-pledge-of-allegiance https://ffrf.org/legal/other-legal-successes/item/19878-ffrf-stops-school-from-forcing-students-to-recite-pledge-of-allegiance-november-20-2013 One might argue that it is the Barnette case that makes them stop, but whatever. Interestingly, in every opening ceremony in my troop we say the Pledge of Allegiance in addition to the Scout Oath. (Scout Law is usually said during closing.) The subject of what would happen if someone did not want to say any of these things has never come up. It's certainly possible that there might be a Scout or two (in the past, present or future) that goes silent just for the word "God" and nobody would notice. (In fact, it is possible that I may have done that for awhile when I was in high school and I thought I was an atheist, but that was a long time ago.) If anyone noticed a Scout doing that in our troop, I am not sure what would happen. I suspect it would be nothing. In our troop. We have had the question of religious belief come up in an EBOR, but that was from the district representative, not someone in our troop. (It turned out to be fine, a Scout left the "religious reference" line blank on his Eagle application, but he actually did have a "religious reference" letter (from his father.) The district guy just got a little agitated about something he didn't need to get agitated about.) Edited March 31, 2016 by NJCubScouter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NJCubScouter Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 Apparently, the UUA considers this to allow atheists into their BSA units: http://thehumanist.com/commentary/boy-scouts-unitarian-universalists-agreement-mean-humanists [Peter Morales, the president of the UUA, in reply to the Unitarian Universalist Humanist Association] ... I believe that UU congregations that choose to host scouting units have an opportunity to model what an inclusive and welcoming unit can look like—including those who do not believe in God. ... We have heard from many UU Scouts and Scouting families who don’t believe in God that they were accepted despite BSA national policies. ... I don't think that's at all apparent from the quotations from the UUA president, especially if you read those lines in context with the entire paragraph. He is saying that the "enforcement" of the "belief in God" policy is inconsistent, which is something that we all know anyway. I think he is also suggesting that the UUA might "push the envelope" a little to try to get the policy changed from within. But I don't think he is saying that atheists are allowed in UUA-chartered BSA units. He clearly knows that this is not the UUA's decision, and I think that is "apparent" from the entire paragraph. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stosh Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 One cannot legislate morality nor loyalty. Individuals cannot be forced into community. There are and have been individuals who seek personal gain from other communities they have no intention of ever being a participant in as long as they get what they want for themselves. What they gain at the expense of others is totally irrelevant to anyone other than themselves. An atheist working religious holidays for over-time pay is just a perk to be taken advantage of. If they were truly sincere in their beliefs, they would turn down the over-time and work it as just another day, which they claim is the case in the first place. It's call self-gain hypocrisy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krampus Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 The subject of what would happen if someone did not want to say any of these things has never come up. It's certainly possible that there might be a Scout or two (in the past, present or future) that goes silent just for the word "God" and nobody would notice. I've actually had this conversation with our non-Christian (Hindu, Buddhist) Scouts during the SMCs to see how they feel and how they treat this issue. Nearly to a Scout they said they didn't care about saying the word "God" in the Oath or Pledge. They say the word because, as they put it, to them it is just a "word" like any other. To them the are pledging their honor which means the same thing to them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merlyn_LeRoy Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 An atheist working religious holidays for over-time pay is just a perk to be taken advantage of. If they were truly sincere in their beliefs, they would turn down the over-time and work it as just another day, which they claim is the case in the first place. It's call self-gain hypocrisy. Stosh, it's obvious over many years that you have no idea what an atheist would think or do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NJCubScouter Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 An atheist working religious holidays for over-time pay is just a perk to be taken advantage of. If they were truly sincere in their beliefs, they would turn down the over-time and work it as just another day, which they claim is the case in the first place. It's call self-gain hypocrisy. I don't think that makes any sense. Christmas is a legal holiday. If you work in a field where there is work to be done on Christmas or any other legal holiday, and the law or company policy says you get paid overtime on legal holidays, you get what you are entitled to. It has nothing to do with beliefs and it is not hypocritical. Just wondering, would you say the same about a person who is Jewish? (Christmas has no religious significance for me either, but since my wife is Catholic, for me it is a "family holiday" as well as a legal holiday.) Or Muslim? Or Hindu? (Notice I didn't say the B-word, we don't need yet another tangent in this thread.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NJCubScouter Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 I've actually had this conversation with our non-Christian (Hindu, Buddhist) Scouts during the SMCs to see how they feel and how they treat this issue. Nearly to a Scout they said they didn't care about saying the word "God" in the Oath or Pledge. They say the word because, as they put it, to them it is just a "word" like any other. To them the are pledging their honor which means the same thing to them. Well, as I understand it, Hindus do believe in God (although they probably use a non-English word instead of "God", just as Muslims and many Jewish people do), it's just that they believe in more than one God. As I said in my post a few minutes ago, I don't feel any need to get into the 100th discussion in this forum of where Buddhists fit into the Duty to God requirement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stosh Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 As Christian I don't expect to get paid extra on a Jewish holiday. I don't expect to get paid extra on a Hindu holiday, As an atheist, why would I expect to get paid extra on any religious holiday? Keep it in mind that when I was in the ministry, I worked ALL Christian holidays and didn't get paid extra for any of them. Why would I expect overtime pay for working Christmas? It just boils down to how one wishes to justify their ethical stance. If one doesn't have any ethical stance on the issue, just take the money and don't ask questions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SSScout Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 *sigh* I worked in a hospital for a while. We divied up the holidays easily. The overt Christians worked Hanukah and Passover, the Jews worked Christmas and Easter, we all worked thru Ramadan when called upon. It was understood. As for the Scout Promise (I wish it was not called an Oath, because we are not "swearing" BY anything) and the lovely poem called the Pledge of Allegiance, well, here goes: Many faiths view " swearing by" anything (a so called judicial oath ) contrary to their scripture . See Mathew 5:33 etc. as an example . One either tells the truth as they know it or they don't, and be done with it. The old Cub Scout Promise was named that because it was/is a promise and we want our youth to realize the importance of Keeping One's Word, yes? The Boy Scout Promise (or Oath , as noted in older Scout literature) is , I think, so named as to make it sound more important. In court, for instance, a lie is a lie, regardless of what one said before giving that testimony. So: many faiths view the Scout Oath as what it really is, a promise given to behave in a certain way and to do certain things. "On my honor". Among them, doing one's "duty to God"... The Pledge of Allegiance, is viewed by some faiths as, first, an unnecessary Loyalty Oath, and secondly, as being too close to Idolatry, and thirdly a possible breech of the separation of State and Religion. Again, it matters not what one says before, but what one does that defines one's patriotism. Why not pledge allegiance to the Constitution and Declaration of Independence? They are more representative of our nation than a colorful piece of cloth. In fact, that is what our armed forces are asked to do, promise to "protect and defend" see http://www.history.army.mil/html/faq/oaths.html So promising to be loyal to a piece of cloth, no matter how lovely and what it represents (US of A?) may be idolatrist. So the requirement for a Scout to "know" the PoA is fine, but the idea of requiring the recitation of it , ceremonially, may not be for some. I will refer folks to the Supreme Court's rulings on this in the schools for a better elucidation than I can give.Duty to God should be first, yes? And what does that mean? It is , as has been stated many times here in, and perhaps better than I, that God is ultimately defined by the individual, therefore one's DUTY to same must also be individually defined. Agreement with a particular faith will certainly help the individual define that duty. Even B-P had trouble with folks that thought his Scouts were inherently Christian , and THEIR type of Christian, not some other type! Look what happened with that! So if a Scout decides that his Duty to God is to NOT believe in Him, how are we to debate that? Each faith (Jain, Buddhist, Hindu, Jesuit, Methodist, Jew, Muslim,,,,,) has different view of this "elephant" (see the Indostan wonderfully evocative story of the blind men and the elephant) we call God. The Amish ( and I frankly have never heard of an Amish Scout) ask that one "show what a man does with his hands that I may know his heart". Is that not what we are concerned with here? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merlyn_LeRoy Posted March 31, 2016 Share Posted March 31, 2016 As Christian I don't expect to get paid extra on a Jewish holiday. I don't expect to get paid extra on a Hindu holiday, As an atheist, why would I expect to get paid extra on any religious holiday? Keep it in mind that when I was in the ministry, I worked ALL Christian holidays and didn't get paid extra for any of them. Why would I expect overtime pay for working Christmas? It just boils down to how one wishes to justify their ethical stance. If one doesn't have any ethical stance on the issue, just take the money and don't ask questions. So, you're saying all non-Christians who get paid extra for working on xmas are unethical. By the way, I consider being paid to dole out "religion" unethical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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