Merlyn_LeRoy

7 hours ago, Eagledad said:

I have consistently said in our discussions over the years that pragmatically, morality can only come from God because it never changes. 

Which is nonsense.  Gods never show up to state what these morals are, it's always only humans.  Christianity has changed drastically over centuries.  Different Christian sects don't agree on what is moral even though they supposedly all worship the same god.

7 hours ago, Eagledad said:

All humans are born innately immoral. The difference between atheists and theists is atheists can claim any behavior as moral, while theist are held accountable to one morality from God.

And since gods can have any morals, theists can claim any behavior as moral, too.

7 hours ago, Eagledad said:

Atheist say slavery is immoral today, but they could say the opposite tomorrow and wouldn't be wrong because they are only accountable to ambitious emotional fickle man (the guy with the biggest stick, remember?). Theist are accountable to only one morality.

And theists could say slavery is moral today too, because it's really only their opinion of what is and isn't moral; they only claim they know what their god wants, like the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845.

23 hours ago, SSScout said:

That's your defensive assumption !

SSScout, theists (mostly Christians in the US) are constantly using that exact argument to claim atheists are innately immoral, as people like Eagledad has.  I will not interpret it any other way.

5 hours ago, fred johnson said:

I feel like I'm dealing with Donald Trump.  Someone who needs to pick a fight and bring people down to lift his position.  

Typical BSA member insulting an atheist for not being humble when insulted.

1 hour ago, fred johnson said:

The challenge is that these are not necessarily universals. 

Neither are religious tenets, of course, but plenty of people pretend they are, which is simply not dealing with reality.

4 hours ago, SSScout said:

My comment never implied such.  I am pointing out that EVERYONE gets some behavior/cultural preference/moral training from their upbringing, which , as they grow up, either accept or reject .

And it's always, always, always religion that gets the credit.

8 hours ago, fred johnson said:

This is NOT about BSA.  This is about your using this blog for a personal agenda outside BSA and being willing to bring everyone down with you.  

When people who belong to an organization that denegrates atheists like the BSA, and denegrate the morals of atheists, I'll respond.  If you don't like that, that's your problem.

1 hour ago, SSScout said:

#1:  Even logic can get things wrong.

I agree, but since religions have axioms that cannot even be questioned, they are even worse at trying to settle moral questions.

1 hour ago, SSScout said:

#2:  Jesus didn't, but he wanted folks to treat their slaves well, slavery being a social norm back then.

And I guess he and/or god wasn't omnipotent, at least back then.  Hey, the Qin Dynasty outlawed slavery over 200 years before Jesus showed up, so why couldn't he tell people not to own slaves?  It's possible to not own slaves even if the government allows it, so why didn't he tell people that?

1 hour ago, SSScout said:

#3:  Yep. UK Scouting is now more inclusive, but the Scout Promise there still includes a sentence about Duty to God

No, there's more than one promise, and there's one that omits any gods:

https://members.scouts.org.uk/documents/AdultSupport/Promise/FS322016.pdf

And B-P supposedly composed the  “Outlander's Promise”.

1 hour ago, SSScout said:

Now Merlyn, you know what I meant. Somewhere in your dim past, you were given some moral teachings, some religious teaching (even that religion is wrong or unteneble). You accepted or rejected it, by your own experience and/or reasoning. 

I'm pointing out that you are just doing "my religion says X, therefor anyone who believes X got it from my religion".

31 minutes ago, SSScout said:

1)  Faith is not based on logic.

That's a good reason to not use faith-based assumptions to decide morals.

31 minutes ago, SSScout said:

3) Not all "Christians" follow Christ, as evidenced by Merlyn's example of the Southern Baptist Convention.

What?  When did Jesus condemn slavery?

33 minutes ago, SSScout said:

If it is time to be Drafted into military service, a "higher authority " and social history is needed to claim Conscientious Objector status.

Wrong.  See Welsh v. United States (1970) and Seeger v. United States (1965).  The law was written as if a "higher authority" was required, but the supreme court ruled that CO status could not be exclusive to only god-believers, or only to people who belonged to a religion that taught pacifism.  By the way, the plaintiff (Elliott Welsh) was also the father of Mark Welsh in Welsh v. Boy Scouts of America (1993)

39 minutes ago, SSScout said:

The fact that the Scout Promise (similar in every country if not identical) has remained the same for a hundred years means something.

The UK explicitly allows atheists now.  WOSM still hasn't said anything about that, as far as I've heard.

39 minutes ago, SSScout said:

Every person is left with some religious teachings from their upbringing.  Even Merlyn. 

This is the same old lie that "if my religion teaches X, anyone who also says X got it from my religion".

1 hour ago, vol_scouter said:

As far back as we have been able to document human groups, there is evidence of religious practices.

Yep, and they don't agree on even basic questions.  And when religious tenets on morality conflict, either one side admits their god is wrong (or doesn't exist), or both sides dig in and insist their view is the only correct one.  This is not useful in deciding morals.

1 hour ago, vol_scouter said:

All atheists today have been raised in a climate where there have been thousands of years of religious traditions. No atheist exists in a vacuum where they were not exposed to moral values derived from religious traditions.

And all religions today have been exposed to new and conflicting moral values, which is why religions like the SBC used to support slavery but now don't.  Society changed them.

1 hour ago, vol_scouter said:

You cannot make a cogent claim that atheists have moral values that have not originated in religious traditions because they have all been exposed to religious moral values.

And vice-versa.  Christianity definitely supported slavery for centuries, until it was changed due to societal pressure.  But I was replying to this statement of yours:

"Like you, I do not believe that atheists would have a moral code without religions that define right and wrong. "

Right there, you're saying atheists would not have a moral code, period, without religions that define right and wrong, which is a very different claim.

1 hour ago, vol_scouter said:

So unless you want to take a lot of young children and drop them on an uninhabited jungle island and see what their moral system is 20 years later, there is no group of people who were not exposed to religion derived morals.

Drop them with a bible and tell them it holds all absolute morals that they all must follow and see if they contradict the bible and decide that slavery is wrong.

1 hour ago, fred johnson said:

Where is there anything at all scouting related in this discussion. 

I think the BSA's decades-long disparagement of atheists both by word and deed contributes to the slurs against atheists in this forum.  You know, like when scouts write things like "Merlyn ... You're the Stalin of the web era", as if I'm equivalent to a mass murderer.

Oh, that was you who wrote that.

17 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

Ah, I see what you are saying, the 10 Commandments were written by the finger of, well unicorns. Hmm, OK

Merlyn, I'm curious, do feel you present an intellectual point of view? 

What, like your nonsense replies?  I give back what replies deserve.

PS: what you have are humans claiming their god wrote the ten commandments.  It's still humans all the way up.

53 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

How do you know it's bad?

Go ahead and argue that it's good.

54 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

Or course God does, read the Bible. It's hasn't changed.

So slavery is moral?  You can buy slaves from other countries and leave them as property to your children?

54 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

Religion is made by man. Man lets emotion rule and changes religion. But we only know that because God doesn't change. 

But you're getting that from religion.  Humans wrote the bible.

55 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

No elves in Bible. You can go check right now. Or tomorrow if you like because it doesn't change.

I see you didn't understand my comment.  There ARE unicorns in the bible, and false animal husbandry.

32 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

How did you know slavery is bad?

Go right ahead and argue that it's good.

33 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

Is there not one good act by man?  How would you know? How could the hideously flawed man even conceive right from wrong without a perfect timeless measuring stick. Knowing right from wrong is proof of God because only God is timeless and perfect. How else would even the atheist know slavery is wrong.

This is just silly.  Morals are opinions.  Gods have nothing to do with it.

34 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

"Worthless" is an emotional adjective. An opinion without base or definition. Emotion is the flawed mans moral response to life. Emotion is fickle and measured only in the moment. What felt good yesterday feels bad today.

That's why religions keep changing what is moral or immoral.  Christianity said slavery was fine for centuries.

35 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

Because God's morality is timeless and consistent, even an emotional atheist can know right from wrong.  

How did the SBC change then?  They didn't claim their god showed up and corrected them.

And your assertion is no different than saying "elves" give people their morality.  It's just baseless assertions.

7 minutes ago, fred johnson said:

Stop with the Christianity bashing.  You may not value it, but many of us do.  

Stop with the history lessons.  They are incomplete and just bashing others.  It's just the latest populist form of hate speech.  

I'm not saying only Christianity is worthless in deciding morals, ALL religions are like that.  They are based on assertions that try to be unquestionable.

And oh dear, "hate speech", when I'm replying to assertions that atheists can only be moral due to religion.

11 hours ago, Eagledad said:

Merlyn, we’ve discussed this before, remember? God is perfect, it’s man that messes up . That’s why He sent us a Savior.

Even granting that, it still makes religions useless for deciding moral questions.  Christianity literally had centuries to call slavery immoral, yet failed to do so.  Aquinas was OK with slavery and plenty of popes endorsed it and some owned slaves themselves.

11 hours ago, Eagledad said:

But, how do you know your fossils weren’t slaves?

All of them?  There are over 30 examples.  Whataboutism doesn't wave away how worthless religion is for determining morality, it only shows that you're trying to deflect the issue.

1 hour ago, vol_scouter said:

Like you, I do not believe that atheists would have a moral code without religions that define right and wrong. The natural order would be for the strongest to dominate the weaker ones.

A group of atheists that cooperate would outlast your imaginary brute-force society.  There are human fossils that predate the oldest religions on earth that show they were either handicapped or elderly, and lived long past where they would otherwise die without help from other humans.

Religions are terrible at morals; the Southern Bapist Convention was founded in 1845 expressly to defend slavery, and they finally officially apologised for it -- in 1995.  If a sect as large as the SBC in a religion as large and old as Christianity can't even get a basic moral question like slavery right, I don't consider them useful in deciding moral questions.

On 6/14/2018 at 3:35 PM, Eagledad said:

The BSA program has one set of directives that most other organizations don’t have in building respect for the differences of each member of the patrol, the Scout Oath and Law. The Oath and Law not only don’t conflict with the teachings of most religions, they enhance them. Even bring clarity.  

Except the BSA doesn't follow them with regard to atheists, nor (judging by past comments) does Eagledad.

We went through this 14 years ago:

And 13 years ago:

And 10 years ago:

And probably more.

17 hours ago, NJCubScouter said:

Was that in the Dale case?  Regardless of whether it was that case or a different one... I will try to put this gently... what the BSA's attorneys evidently told the Supreme Court in the Dale case - as reflected in the majority opinion, which I have read several times - does not serve as what I would call a role model for trustworthiness.  So it wouldn't surprise me if they said that too.

It was my understanding that the BSA parted ways with both public schools and the military as CO's not necessarily because it was a religious organization that was discriminating, but because it was was an organization that was discriminating on the basis of religion.  (The Supreme Court has stated that discrimination against atheists is discrimination on the basis of religion.)  A public school or military unit being a CO meant that the government was discriminating on the basis of religion.  I could be wrong, but that was my understanding. 

The BSA has said in various court cases that they are a religious organization, but they didn't use that wording in Dale -- that was pretty much just whether the BSA was a private club or a public accommodation (which by itself would probably cut them off of public school chartering, since I doubt public schools could own & operate a private club).

And the BSA didn't part with public schools and the military until the ACLU threatened to sue, which was 5 years after Dale.  And yes, that was totally due to the BSA's discrimination against atheists.

On 5/18/2018 at 9:47 AM, Eagle1993 said:

There is roughly 60M youth in scouting age in USA.  All scouting combine probably has 4M youth?  I would be more interested in seeing why 56M youth are not in scouting vs worry about the 0.03M in Trails Life or few thousand in all of the other various scouting organizations.  

Well, about a quarter of 13-18 year olds are prohibited from joining the BSA, for a start:

https://www.barna.com/research/atheism-doubles-among-generation-z/

1 hour ago, gblotter said:

But if morally straight is entirely dependent on personal faith and individual interpretation, does the term mean anything at all?

If it changes depending on what god(s) you believe exist, does the term mean anything at all?

Finally a bit of a separate note. Someone asked if any of the 50+ United Way and the corporate sponsors came back after we added LGBTQ leaders and members. I couldn't find much info and wonder if anyone else knows. If not, I think it would be appropriate to ask these groups if they restarted giving and if not why they didn't.

As far as the UW (and probably most of the corporate sponsors), they still have a policy against giving to organizations that discriminate on the basis of religion and/or creed.

...

Just a couple of months ago, I ran into an old friend. We talked about the BSA and he had no idea of the recent policy changes. He still dismissed it as a bigoted organization.

So do I, and I know of all the recent policy changes.

...

The irony being that it's the SAME ORGANIZATION it was in both instances, only the membership policy changed. The program has not changed to make the youth any less patriotic. Parts of society demanded that the organization change to meet their view of the world.

I don't agree it's the same organization.  An organization that excluded Jews (as many US clubs did decades ago) is different from the same organization once it stops excluding Jews.  Excluding people is teaching by demonstration.

I've been fine, how's by you?

...

Democrat activists will be motivated to withdraw funds and bring suit against the organization

On what possible grounds?