AZMike

I think we all need a thread like this about once a year, that meanders around about religious and tangential issues and lets us all vent and blow off steam. Have we run our course?

Not to defend Merlyn or anything, but it can't be proven philosophically that the universe actually has a beginning. There might be overwhelming scientific evidence that it does, but that is not the same thing.

 

Of course that is distinct from the question of whether or not God exists. The Prime Mover and First Cause arguments don't depend on the universe having a beginning.

This is true. St. Thomas Aquinas believed the universe was eternal, but was created - at a point before the existence of the universe causally, but not temporally.

Uh, no.  Like I said, "I don't know" is a perfectly valid answer.  Saying "I don't know, therefor some magical being did it" isn't, unless you have some evidence that a magical being did it.

 

 

 

No, I'm not.  I'm saying the fossil record, DNA, etc is evidence for evolution.  I also say that the motions of the planets is evidence that gravity is at work, and not angels moving them.  Neither of these say anything about the non-existence of gods, but some people try to shoehorn in their god into them by saying they don't believe those explanations -- but that doesn't allow anyone to conclude a god exists.

 

But if I say the laws of physics explain the motions of planets, I'm not "using" that as proof that gods aren't moving the planets around.  Same goes for human evolution.

 

 

All scientific hypotheses that I've heard of just use laws of physics and chemistry, no magic involved; and like I said, "I don't know" is a valid answer.

 

And atheists can believe in the supernatural and/or magic -- all they must lack is a belief in the existence of gods.  I don't believe in the supernatural or magic.

Sure. Atheists can hold all sorts of screwy beliefs, like the non-existence of God. I just hold one less screwy belief than the atheists do...

Some scientific hypotheses just accept views that veer towards magic, without trying to posit a reason, or trying to invoke any known laws of physics or chemistry, Merlyn.  The Copenhagen Interpretation insists that all potencies exist until the particle is actualized by measurement. The equations don't tell us how a particle’s properties "solidify" at that moment of measurement, or how reality picks which form to take. But the calculations work, so we use them.

"I don't know" is always a valid answer, but we should make sure that methodological bias doesn't rule out reasonable alternatives, as many atheists do. It can't be argued that belief in God isn't reasonable, as about 96% of Americans (presumably including many people who hold reasonable beliefs in all other spheres of existence) do consider a belief in God to be reasonable. Hard to argue that your 4% subculture represents the only "reasonable" views. 

Of course I know that, but that's quite different from magical beings that created humans in a puff of smoke, particularly when there's evidence of human evolution.

And how did those first constituents of life "evolve," Merlyn.?

To avoid accepting that many atheists and agnostics do, in fact, believe in the supernatural, you've changed the definition from "supernatural" to "magic" now, I've noticed. 

Darwin has gotten a bad rap as a racist, as he was opposed to slavery. Some of his followers, however, took his ideas and ran with them into some pretty racist territory - such as his cousin Sir Francis Galton, who invented the pseudoscience of Eugenics, and whose ideas had a greater influence on Hitler and the Progressive Movement than Darwin ever did, and led to the American fad for laws against racial intermarriage, and for the forced sterilization of more than 60,000 Americans who were designated as "moral and mental defectives."

 

It's not well known, (and certainly not well-taught) in the educational system that William Jennings Bryan testified in the "Scopes Monkey Trial" because he saw the likelihood that Darwin's theories, as they were being interpreted (well, misinterpreted) by the German military and the Progressive movement in America would lead to increased militarization in Germany (he was correct) and increasingly racist policies against African-Americans and the rural poor, who were usually the target of eugenics laws in the U.S., whose proponents cited Darwinism (not religion) as a rationale for their policies (again, he was correct in this instance.) Bryan was not as big a Bible literalist as those whose only knowledge of the Scopes Trial came from watching "Inherit the Wind" believe (as his actual testimony showed), and was actually a Democrat who would be considered a classical liberal - he fought for the enfranchisement of African-Americans and women, opposed Big Banking, opposed colonialism, opposed "dark money" in political campaigns, and as a pacifist, opposed America's entry into WWI (a politically unpopular stance that led L. Frank Baum to satirize him by basing The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz upon Bryan.)

 

If you actually read the textbook that John Scopes was charged with teaching (A Civic Biology Presented in Problems, 1914, by George Hunter) , it's a piece of racist claptrap, full of Eugenics nonsense. It ordered the "five races of men" into an evolutionary tree, with "the Ethiopian or Negro type" at the lower end of evolution and "the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America’ at the very top. The textbook claimed that crime and immorality are inherited through families, and that "‘these families have become parasitic on society. … If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race." Frankly, I'm glad that Scopes was charged with teaching from that textbook!

 

Again, I agree with you, Packsaddle, that Darwin shouldn't be blamed for the interpretation that others made of his theories. But those interpretations did give support to some of the most horrid episodes of American and European history.

'Race' in the sense used by Darwin refers to a subpopulation that has identifiable phenotypic differences that do not necessarily qualify for 'species-level' designation. In taxonomy the nomenclatural term of 'variety' or 'form' is sometimes used. In the distant past (Darwin's time) the term 'race' was also used in taxonomy. In sub-disciplines of organismal biology, terms like 'associations' or other terms borrowed from human sociology are also sometimes applied but they have almost none of the meaning as used in sociology. In Darwin's case, the 'races' he referred to applied to all organisms. You are making the assumption that it was directed specifically at the illusory concept we apply to humans and although he was aware of that and may well have reflected the prejudices of his time, you are misinterpreting its use in that particular example.

His first use of the term 'race' in the book, for example, is worded: "the several races, for instance, of the cabbage", which as we know today includes cabbage, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, and broccoli, all the same species. Later in the book he refers to "the hereditary varieties or races of our domestic animals and plants", none of which has the human connotation in mind. Darwin was fervently opposed to slavery and this caused great trouble for him at times. I think that in your desire to find fault you're finding it when it doesn't exist, at least in this case. 

 

Edit: Peregrinator, in many ways I'm still larval, lol.

Darwin has gotten a bad rap as a racist, as he was opposed to slavery. Some of his followers, however, took his ideas and ran with them into some pretty racist territory - such as his cousin Sir Francis Galton, who invented the pseudoscience of Eugenics, and whose ideas had a greater influence on Hitler and the Progressive Movement than Darwin ever did, and led to the American fad for laws against racial intermarriage, and for the forced sterilization of more than 60,000 Americans who were designated as "moral and mental defectives."

It's not well known, (and certainly not well-taught) in the educational system that William Jennings Bryan testified in the "Scopes Monkey Trial" because he saw the likelihood that Darwin's theories, as they were being interpreted (well, misinterpreted) by the German military and the Progressive movement in America would lead to increased militarization in Germany (he was correct) and increasingly acist policies against African-Americans and the rural poor, who were usually the target of eugenics laws in the U.S., whose proponents cited Darwinism (not religion) as a rationale for their policies (again, he was correct in this instance.) Bryan was not as big a Bible literalist as those whose only knowledge of the Scopes Trial came from watching "Inherit the Wind" believe (as his actual testimony showed), and was actually a Democrat who would be considered a classical liberal - he fought for the enfranchisement of African-Americans and women, opposed Big Banking, opposed colonialism, opposed "dark money" in political campaigns, and as a pacifist, opposed America's entry into WWI (a politically unpopular stance that led L. Frank Baum to satirize him by basing The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz upon Bryan.)

Again, I agree with you, Packsaddle, that Darwin shouldn't be blamed for the interpretation that others made of his theories. But those interpretations did give support to some of the most horrid episodes of American and European history.

No, that would be the total lack of reasons to think supernatural things exist.  Evolution isn't any more proof of the non-existence of gods than orbital mechanics, though either one might look that way if you think gods must be responsible for species or planetary movement.

Many cosmologists believe that quite a number of supernatural things exist, Merlyn - whole universes (billions and billions of them, as Carl Sagan might have said) that are outside nature, per the Multiverse Theories. These universes that exist outside our own universe cannot in any way be observed, examined, tested, only inferred on the basis of theories that only some regard as valid. (Gosh...sounds a little like religion.)

One could argue (and I have heard atheists try to do so) that such supernatural universes should still be included under the concept of "_the_universe" and cannot be considered supernatural, even though the concept clearly fits the first definition Merriam Webster gives us for "supernatural": "of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe." 

Of course, that same claim of potential existence in a wider view of reality can be made for God, Heaven, Hell, and all the angels and saints: under the same argument, they could also be considered not as "supernatural," just another part of the wider nature that would have to be redefined as "all things that be."

Actually April 23 is the feast day of St. George.

Yeah, I was a day late. Noticed that after I posted. Still worth commemorating, though.

About those frogs: in case anyone wanted to know, they're not mutations at all and this is fairly well understood.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribeiroia_ondatrae

And this is just the tip of a much larger topic area involving parasite ecology.

 

Yes, wikipedia...for the primary literature go to the citations.

 

Edit: The earth IS flat. As evidence I invite any of you to merely get a map of the world and unfold or unroll it onto a table. See? Flat.

Ref S.I. Hayakawa, IMO.

Now, since you haven't answered my question about e. coli evolution, do you think schools can teach the earth is round, even though this contradicts some people's religious beliefs?  If yes, why should your beliefs be treated any differently?

Which religion has taught that the earth is flat?

Moosetracker, I do live in that belt and there are many legislators who regularly try to change the science standards (only for biology) to require faith-based ideas to be taught alongside science. Thus far they have failed, largely due to the monumental embarrassment they suffered in the Dover, Pa decision. I once attended one of the legislative meetings in which one of these individuals asked, "What IS science anyway?" and another noted that as far as he was concerned the Bible was all the textbook anyone needed. This was a committee specifically chosen to provide oversight over the quality of educational standards for the state. 

Not a single other committee member could answer the first question for the guy. There was, in attendance, at least 12 professional scientists. We were not allowed to speak.

Welcome to the South.

Daaaaaang.

I have to admit, though - I find it peculiar that so many people want to make belief or disbelief in evolution a litmus test for scientific literacy. 

Why?

A man can believe that Eve was literally formed from Adam's rib and that the serpent convinced her, etc.... And what difference would it make to me? 

There are any number of other non-scientific, or anti-scientific shibboleths that are held by many quite respected people (*cough*RobertKennedyJr*cough*) that are held up as examples or admired, and those non-scientific beliefs can have a far bigger impact on my life, health, and safety than a belief or disbelief in some form of evolution. Some of those are even taught in our school systems.

Anti-Vaxxers....a belief held by both those of the left and right, although in West L.A., Santa Monica, Marin County, and Beverly Hills, it is largely those of the politically "progressive" upper class. You can probably thank them for the kids who contracted measles at Disneyland. ("“We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it’s connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it.†- Barack Obama, 2008, long past the point when he should have known better.) Under Obama's watch, the FDA ordered a change from multi-dose to single-dose influenza vaccines because they contained less thimerosal -- the preservative that anti-vaccine activists wrongly believed causes autism. According to Scott Gottlieb, a former deputy commissioner in the FDA, this last minute switch was partially to blame for the vaccine shortages which occurred later that year.

Anti-Frackers, although fracking can safely remove us from dependence on middle eastern oil.

Anti-nuclear power plant people, although they can save thousands of black lung cases.

Anti-genetically modified crops people, although they could save millions of lives in the third world - despite what supposed "Science Guy" Bill Nye has claimed (although he has said he has change his mind, after being berated by real scientists...)

All the believers in homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic, naturopathic medicine, crystal healing, aura alignment, and other forms of hokum healing. While it's true that one won't find many creationism museums in the Bay Area, you can sure find a lot of such quack health parlors. And while an American may have the right to drink some some rotting fungus that looks like something you scraped off the bottom of your shoe if he wants to, under Obamacare, you and I as taxpayers have to pay for it, at least in states that recognize such jiggery-pokery - thank you, Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat, Iowa, and President Barack Obama.

While every Republican political candidate has gotten the question "Do you believe in evolution?" I would like to hear Hillary and whatever other Democrats who decide to run be asked if they believe that funding those kind of frauds is effective. Given that the science was settled for years before Roe v. Wade that human life begins at conception (as every obstetrics and gynecology textbook stated), I would have like to hear Obama pressed on when he believes life begins, instead of allowing him to duck out of it with a grin and a "that's above my paygrade" joke. Heck, I'd like to hear them be asked if they agree withe the ridiculous nutritional advice that Obama donor Gwyneth Paltrow puts out, or if they agree that genetically modified foods must have a special label?

Any of those issues has greater real-world consequences than a belief in evolution. So, why do you all think it is treated with such greater importance than it deserves? 

Sorry, but Wikipedia is not the source of all truth in this world.  People can put whatever junk they want on that site and call it the truth.  

 

So, I'm, incorrect because "many people believe evolution is compatible with religion" as documented by Wikipedia, makes it acceptable?  Does one really believe a statement like that can be taken as fact?

 

Sorry, but one has to come up with a more convincing point than that to convince me because there are "many people who believe man has never walked on the moon", too.  It was all staged.  

 

I will concede that there are a lot of people who believe man has walked on the surface of the moon even though I have only been told so and watched what I considered unaltered video of the event.  It doesn't mean I'm right though.

 

Sorry, I'm just not going to buy into evolution or evolution as somehow torqued into being compatible with a religion of some sort.  I am one of the many who for 2,000 years believe that Socrates and his anti-religious disciples just haven't come up with a convincing argument against religion, which the vast majority of people actually do believe in.  It always reminds me of the idea that if everyone in the world is crazy and you're the only sane one, you might want to rethink your premise.

I'd agree with you about the lack of a good argument against religion (by which I'm guessing you mean a belief in God, and the duty to worship Him). I should also add that the trad Catholic viewpoint holds that while evolution can be accepted as a finding of science by the faithful (heck, we owe the science of genetics to a priest, after all), it is not acceptable to believe that the human soul evolved and was not a creation of God, or that there was not an event where the first man and the first woman were imbued with a unique human soul. When that occurred, or what form of human that was or what they looked like, can be interesting to debate but has no real impact on our morality or our salvation. 

Catholic doctrine does not require a belief or disbelief in evolution, of course. One is welcome to believe in a literal reading of Genesis, and if the account of Adam and Eve were literally true, it would also have no effect one way or another on my salvation.

Pardon me for responding to the original topic:

 

A few recent Eagle candidates have pushed their reverence to NO GOD as satisfying their 'Duty to God' requirement.

Say what now? That makes no sense whatsoever.

A slower molecular clock worked well to harmonize genetic and archaeological estimates for dates of key events in human evolution, such as migrations out of Africa and around the rest of the world¹. But calculations using the slow clock gave nonsensical results when extended further back in time — positing, for example, that the most recent common ancestor of apes and monkeys could have encountered dinosaurs. Reluctant to abandon the older numbers completely, many researchers have started hedging their bets in papers, presenting multiple dates for evolutionary events depending on whether mutation is assumed to be fast, slow or somewhere in between.

Gives one hope for Alley Oop, doesn't it?

No, evolution is a change in allele frequencies over time.  It doesn't refer to religions at all (or "truth", for that matter).

No, but certainly some have argued that natural selection not only eliminates the need for religion, but can be applied to a wide range of issues which Darwin would probably have scoffed at.  

From the traditional Catholic viewpoint (which, with the Orthodox, comprises about 2/3 of all the Christians in the world, so it's not an outlier position), natural selection is one of the many natural processes by the natural world is shaped, just as volcanism, tectonic plate dynamics, atomic degradation, and so forth are. In Genesis, God is referred to as both the maker and shaper of creation, and the Hebrew word for "shaped" is used in connection with much of the creation narrative. It seems likely, and has traditionally been taught, that these natural processes were set in motion by God. God intervenes and decisively "creates" at key moments in history - with the creation of the universe, with the creation of life, and with the creation of the human soul - all moments when God is said to have "breathed" these things into existence ("pneuma," the breath, is also associated with the spirit or soul in ancient philosophy.)  All three events are ones for which we don't have good explanations, if we solely use the lens of science.

Since early in Church history, natural selection has been offered as an explanation for how species change and how the number of species have increased over creation, as St. Augustine proposed. He also wrote that the account of creation in Genesis is true, and also metaphorical or lyrical in its descriptions, probably took much longer than the days described literally in Genesis (The Hebrew word used, YOM or "day" can also mean an era) and that if the facts as revealed by our senses (i.e., empirically, through our sciences) conflicts with the Biblical account, then we are probably wrong in our scriptural interpretation. Biblical literalism, as applied to the Old Testament, is a fairly recent theological belief that arose largely during the Reformation.

That being said, the state of scientific understanding of exactly how natural selection has worked over time is kind of chaotic at this point - the timeline on the rate of change in the genome is still quite controversial, and may throw off some of our estimates on the dates of events way, way off:

In the past six years, more-direct measurements using ‘next-generation’ DNA sequencing have come up with quite different estimates. A number of studies have compared entire genomes of parents and their children — and calculated a mutation rate that consistently comes to about half that of the last-common-ancestor method.

A slower molecular clock worked well to harmonize genetic and archaeological estimates for dates of key events in human evolution, such as migrations out of Africa and around the rest of the world¹. But calculations using the slow clock gave nonsensical results when extended further back in time — positing, for example, that the most recent common ancestor of apes and monkeys could have encountered dinosaurs. Reluctant to abandon the older numbers completely, many researchers have started hedging their bets in papers, presenting multiple dates for evolutionary events depending on whether mutation is assumed to be fast, slow or somewhere in between.

Last year, population geneticist David Reich of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and his colleagues compared the genome of a 45,000-year-old human from Siberia with genomes of modern humans and came up with the lower mutation rate². Yet just before the Leipzig meeting, which Reich co-organized with Kay Prüfer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, his team published a preprint article³ that calculated an intermediate mutation rate by looking at differences between paired stretches of chromosomes in modern individuals (which, like two separate individuals’ DNA, must ultimately trace back to a common ancestor). Reich is at a loss to explain the discrepancy. “The fact that the clock is so uncertain is very problematic for us,†he says. “It means that the dates we get out of genetics are really quite embarrassingly bad and uncertain.†(http://www.nature.com/news/dna-mutation-clock-proves-tough-to-set-1.17079)

Whether evolution is a smooth and relatively continuous event (phyletic gradualism) or comparatively rare and rapid period of branching speciation (the punctuated equilibria theory of Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldridge) is up for grabs in evolutionary biology, and the latter theory would be supported by the genomic change problems. As I believe in directed evolution (as a majority of the American population does, per Gallup), neither is really a problem for me.

I am not sure that is accurate. Catholics (and Orthodox) view the books that Protestants call "apocrypha" (well, at least some of them) as canonical. Sentinel listed them above. And any well-formed Catholic will tell you that prayer for the dead can be justified from 2 Machabees 12.

Jesus also referenced and quoted from the deuterocanonical texts, of which He was obviously aware. As the Old Testament was included in the canonical Christian Bible (after much discussion and debate - some early schools of Christianity (the Marcionites) insisted it should not be, and that the God of the Israelites was not the God of the Christians), one of the keenest arguments for the inclusion of the OT texts was that they prefigured, prophesied, and were referenced by Christ and the apostles. For those reasons alone, it makes sense to include the deuterocanonical texts.

Today is the feast day of St. George, the patron saint of the Scouting movement.

Lord Baden Powell wrote a rhyme to honor the day:

My warmest good wishes I am sending to you

And hoping that the winter is through
You will start out afresh to follow the lead
Of our Patron Saint George and his spirited steed;
Not only to tackle what ever may befall,
But also successfully to win through it all
And then may you have an enjoyable spell
Of hiking, and jolly good camping as well.

Stamp honoring 50th anniversary of the Boy Scouts in Greece:

Did you miss the whole who-ha about the pizza joint in Indiana? Not to take a turn down another road.. But, people defending them and cake bakers were stating they weren't discriminating against the gays, but they were Christian pizzerias & bakeries and so it was a Christian pizza and/or a Christian cake that couldn't attend an event that went against their religion.. Ok this came from defenders of this new Indiana bill.. I know Hobby Lobby supreme court verdict has them stating corporations are religious.. I don't know if the Supreme court would back the cakes & pizzas coming from these religious businesses can also be religious and that a pizza/cake can have a "duty to god" which incorporates the pizza/cake not attending a gay wedding.

 

Any way back on track..

 

 

If this is in reference to the Scientology troops, I would say perhaps they are open to the community and so are not strictly a Scientology troop, but I do not think a church would sponsor a BSA troop if members of their church defiantly were banned from being BSA members due to their religious beliefs. 

Corporations had legal status as persons long before the Hobby Lobby decision. It's why the New York Times Corporation can assert its First Amendment rights to Freedom of Press, just as Hobby Lobby can assert its First Amendment rghts to Freedom of Religion, and why the BSA can assert its First Amendment rights to Freedom of Assembly. 

I don't think the Indiana Pizza case resulted in any legal action, so SCOTUS won't be involved. It was based on a hypothetical ("would you serve pizza to a gay wedding?") asked by a reporter, they answered they have and do serve pizza to gay people, but wouldn't cater to a gay wedding. 

The whole question was pretty stupid, as any gay couple that served fast food pizza at a wedding aren't worthy of the name.

We just watched that Scientology documentary the other night and there was a reference to the BSA troops they sponsored.

Don't stick your arm

Out too far

It may go home

In another car.

Burma Shave!

Oh boy! I think that is the first double post for the new forums. Nice to see there's still a little fallability in the software, lol.

As for my old church, if black people had observed what I observed back then, the split might have happened a lot sooner...for different reasons of course. I'm willing to accept the possibility that there was church-to-church variation and mine might have been more than a standard deviation away from the mean...if you know what I mean.

 I think the fault lay not in the software but in me. I hit the quote button instead of the edit button. It's like the old tombstone said:

Here lies the body 

of Jonathan Blake.

Hit the gas

Instead of the brake.

double post, sorry.

Packsaddle - No idea. I presume I'm at about a median of intelligence, so some scouters will be better than me, some worse. We'll probably muddle through as we always do.

I think most people involved in Scouting want to give a boy every chance he can, so I don't think this will suddenly cause a new Inquisition or anything. Faith is a big part of most people's lives, but it's become kind of a taboo to bring it up in polite face-to-face conversation (other than on the Internet, of course, where we obsess over it.) We are happier discussing the latest diet fad or sports scores or a celebrity breakup than mentioning religion, which is (or should be) a bigger part of most people's lives than all that. I don't have a problem with discussing it in an SMC, as long as it is done in a civil and respectful manner and we avoid proselytizing for a particular denomination in a setting where it is inappropriate (as in Scouting). I don't think it is necessary to avoid discussing an important part of life to avoid discussing faith out of fear of inadvertently "outing" a potential Eagle Scout as an atheist.  

I hope that by the time a scouter reaches adulthood, he should know how to have a simple discussion about spiritual matters with a boy without getting into denominational issues or being offensive. Maybe I'm an optimist, but I don't see it as a big problem.

I've had a few scouts mention some doubts or sticking points they have about God in relaxed settings around a campfire, but they were usually the kind of issues that kids come up with (like "If God created everything, who created God?" or "If God can do anything, can He make a rock so big He can't pick it up?) I usually just mention that those are problems a lot of people have discussed over the centuries, bring up some reasons why I personally don't think they are insurmountable, and leave it at that. Most have never heard those responses before and didn't even think that anyone else had thought about them, and they seemed to satisfy them. I dealt with them in a way that would be appropriate for any denomination, and emphasized that they were my personal opinion. I've never heard any scout every bring up sectarian issues (with one exception, if you could call it that, which kind of required an answer.)

Yeah, the Presbyterians in America are cratering. 34,000 Black churches that were in fellowship with PCUSA just broke ties off with them over their recent changes in doctrine. Like many denominations, they will probably find a social niche based on their new beliefs, but I doubt they will ever have the numbers they once had. Just my opinion.

It gets more complicated once we get into the theological weeds. Not every adherent of a religious faith necessarily believes in God (about 1% don't), and about 1 out of 5 atheists do believe in God or some kind of universal spirit. That seems more than a little counter-intuitive, but it is what it is. The same rate of belief shows up in atheists in both the Pew and GIS surveys.

For what it's worth, about 1 in 5 atheists also believe in some kind of an afterlife:

One of the possibilities is that atheism has many denominations, just as theism does, and because a boy may be flirting with atheism, or what he thinks it is, he may not have the same conception of "atheism" that members of the "New Atheism" movement typically have - a methodological bias towards materialism and naturalism that denies any supernatural (or hypermundane, or whatever you want to call it) component to reality, that is often linked to a somewhat antagonistic outlook toward organized religion.

In fact, however, we also find that a substantial minority (a little over a quarter) of self-identified atheists find religion "very," "somewhat," or "not too" important in their lives, so they are probably not all miniature Christopher Hitchens (although they could mean that it is important because they consider it to have a negative impact on their lives, but given the other stats cited above, that's less likely):

If atheism is defined as most atheists insist it should be - a simple lack of faith in a god or gods - it can still include beliefs in all kinds of supernatural concepts, including karma, pantheism, reincarnation, and so forth. These are beliefs which many faiths that are accepted within the BSA hold, so if a scout announces that he thinks he may be an atheist in a board, it might be worth (for his own sake) asking him to describe some of his beliefs, in manner consistent with respect and his personal dignity.

It's also a pretty common finding that the boy who is questioning his faith today (and who among us hasn't?) is probably - actually, statistically likely - to develop a stronger faith as he enters adulthood. If we avoid the error of static analysis and look at both the rates of people entering and people leaving belief systems, atheists have the lowest retention rate (assuming we define no belief in God, or a belief there is no good - there's a semantic issue there - as a "faith"). Only 30% of kids raised as atheists still define themselves as such in adulthood. So I'm not sure if pushing a boy out of scouts who is simply raising questions or some doubts about God (especially given the poor state of catechesis in many denominations) is such a good thing.  The psychological studies of atheists that have been done tend to point towards a loss of faith (if there was a previous religious upbringing) during adolescence. I would give some credence to the idea that for many, that won't be a lifelong turning away from religion.

I was glancing through a copy of Ernest Borgnine's autobiography {"Ernie") that was in a relative's house and saw this:

"One of the other activities that helped me become a man and reinforced the notion of teamwork was joining the Boy Scouts. I almost missed the boat on that one because - i kid you not - they couldn't find a shirt that fit me. I only had a shirt that looked like a Boy Scout shirt, something my mother found and dyed. So I put my insignias on that and they let me get by with it...I had thick fingers and I had a hard time making knots. Eventually, though, I got the hang of it. Score one for determination, another valuable life lesson.

"I did pretty well in scouting. I was just one merit badge short of becoming an Eagle Scout. More than anything in my formative years, scouting taught me how to be a man - self sufficient and observant. I used to pay very close attention to what the scout leaders told us about the stars, about nature, about survival. I learned how to make a fire by rubbing sticks together. I learned how to cook food in the wild and how to make a crude lean-to as a shelter. After a year or so I became the Assistant Scoutmaster of the troop at St. Anne's Church. It was wonderful. I'd take the new kids on twenty-mile hikes and share everything I'd been taught."

Borgnine credits the Scouts with getting him interested in acting, after he performed as a giant baby in a Scout Circus and got a lot of positive comments about his acting skills. Later, in the Navy, he credited the Scouts with teaching him the knot-tying skills that helped him do well. 

Sounds like the Boy Scouts were good for Ernie!

You are also probably Politically Correct if you feel judges can't be adult leaders in the BSA because you might be prejudiced against gays when on the bench, but feel that atheist judges could not be prejudiced against religious defendants, or that gay judges could not be prejudiced against boy scout leaders who are plaintiffs. If you feel that need to presume that a sitting judge is an infant who cannot separate his personal life from his views on the law, then you are "politically correct."

http://nypost.com/2015/02/16/blacklisting-boy-scouts/