NJCubScouter

Well, in this case I think they are micromanaging in one sense, but taking a hands-off attitude in another sense. It would have been better if they just left it to each Scoutmaster to determine whether a Scout has shown Scout Spirit. But since it appears that they aren't, I think they need to provide guidance to Scoutmasters about how to react or deal with certain answers they might hear from the Scouts. They should have done so years ago, but it is especially important now that the number of Scoutmasters asking about "Duty to God" is going to increase from whatever it is now to 100 percent. (At least in theory. I suspect there are going to SM's who decide that if National wants to know something, National can ask.)

That's my council. I suspect that I spoke with the Rahway unit. (This was several years ago.) I did not know about the Hopatcong unit, that would have been the logical one to call first given the geography of the situation. As for Middlesex County, a few of the northwestern towns were already in PPC to begin with, I am not sure whether the neighboring towns ended up in our council or in Monmouth council.

And just to be clear, in my last post I am not talking about the hypothetical Scoutmaster who is trying to push his religious beliefs on his Scouts. My guess is that that Scoutmaster has already been asking this question, or some related question (like "Do you believe in God?), for years anyway. It's the Scoutmaster who does not want to ask this question, never thought about asking this question, is not comfortable about asking this question, that I'm concerned about. He doesn't really care what the Scout believes, but he is now (potentially) being placed in the middle of a situation he wants no part of, and what he does next may have serious ramifications for the Scout.

When asked what? I thought the requirement is going to be to discuss with your SM how you do your duty to God. Regardless of whether he believes that a belief in God is perfectly compatible with evolution or that the two are mutually exclusive, I don't see how evolution is going to come up. But this does relate to a concern that I do have about this new requirement, which nobody has really responded to, which is: The SM and Scout are conferring, and Scout says he doesn't believe in God, or doesn't "really" believe in God, or isn't sure what people mean by "God", or doesn't know if he believes, or isn't sure, or isn't certain, or sometimes does and sometimes doesn't, or doesn't care one way or the other, or any of probably 10 more of these that I could come up with, and the question in each separate case is, okay, Scoutmaster, what are you supposed to do now? And is the BSA going to give Scoutmasters some guidance about how to answer that question, in each of these scenarios? That's what I want to know. Evolution is not the issue here.

Well, as you know, generally the moderators do not "allow" or "not allow" anything in particular to be discussed in any particular thread, or in the forum in general. About 99 percent of the time we simply stand by and watch (and participate) as the discussions wander and meander and leap wherever they happen to go. We try to keep the discussions on somewhere near a Scoutlike level, we respond to flag reports, we move threads from one forum section to another when they need to be moved, and we hunt down and destroy unauthorized advertising. (That last one is MUCH easier with the new software by the way, with the running column of the most recent posts.) And, very occasionally, close a thread, or edit or delete a post, or some other "strong" action to protect the forum. But you will notice that nowhere on this list have I mentioned anything about keeping threads on-topic. With one exception that I can recall from a few months ago, we do not do that, and I don't recall previous moderators doing so either. The one exception was when someone said from the beginning that they wanted to discuss a very narrow topic in Issues and Politics, and the moderators tried to keep the topic limited to that. That one experiment aside, I am not even sure it is a good idea to try to keep things on-topic, because it has "Resistance is Futile" written all over it. (Somewhere in a state I've never been to, Packsaddle gets out of class and decides it's time to sign on and check the latest posts, and he doesn't even know why yet.) Which leaves us with the question of whether it's even worth trying to keep a discussion of the new advancement requirements (due out the end of next week I believe) on-topic, or maybe decide from the beginning to have one discussion that will remain limited, and another one (in Issues and Politics) that can run wild like this one did. But even THAT discussion probably should not take place in this thread, or even this sub-forum. Maybe if I have time over the weekend I will write a blog post about it, since we apparently now have the ability to start our own blogs in the forum.

When my son was in Cub Scouts (and I was a DL and then ACM), every den seemed to decide on its own meeting frequency. The Webelos dens usually met twice a month to work on the skill awards for the Webelos and Arrow of Light badges. The younger dens usually met once a month and sometimes even less, but I don't (and didn't) see how you do the program or keep the interest of the kids that way. (And I understand that since that time (more than 10 years ago), more of an emphasis is put on working on advancement at den meetings rather than at home, so once a month or less would be even worse now.) On the other hand, 3 or 4 den meetings a month plus the pack meeting might be a little too much. Two den meetings plus the pack meeting, and maybe one other weekend den activity (such as visiting something or maybe a day hike for Webelos) seems like a good balance.

So in order to earn both Sea Scout awards and Venturing awards, from now on a youth member would have to be registered in both a Ship and a Crew, is that correct? I have never actually "seen" a Sea Scout. I know there is at least one Ship in Northern New Jersey because I got in touch with them when my mother was trying to give away a small boat after my father passed away. As I recall, they didn't want it. I have also seen one adult wearing a "Sea Scout knot", as I recall it was not actually a "knot" but was a trident.

Are you talking about den meetings? Pack meetings are still generally once a month, right?

It has indeed. I think it has moved along to the point where everybody who wants to make their point has done so, and the inevitable personal sniping has begun. I guarantee all who are reading this that the chances of anyone changing their mind about evolution as a result of this thread are very slim. As for the new Boy Scout requirements, it is my understand that at their meeting next week, the BSA is going to announce several changes in the requirements, including the one involving Duty to God. My suggestion would be that when that happens, we can try again discussing it under Advancement or Open Discussion, without all of this that has consumed 20 pages - very little of which has to do with the new requirement. (No guarantee that it won't be moved again to Issues and Politics though. In order to do that, there would have to be an agreement from the beginning that the thread would stay limited to the narrow topic of advancement, including whether the requirement(s) is/are a good idea or not.)

I thought this was implied by the circumstances, but the "reason" was that someone accidentally clicked on the wrong thing, which made the sub-forum password-protected, and did not notice it until someone(s) pointed it out, at which time the error was corrected.

Well Stosh, you discovered the truth. It's actually all a big conspiracy against you, personally. Happy now?

I am not aware that any Eagle candidate has done that. What is your source for that statement?

And you got an answer... which is that nobody who has (so far) tried to give you an answer knows the answer, but I have asked the people who (presumably) do. I also have given you an educated guess that your post most likely had nothing to do with it.

And in a sense, with the new forum software, we are all newbies, or somewhere in that vicinity. As I said, inquiries are being made.

Ok, ok, I get it now. I must have missed Packsaddle's post (#6, second paragraph) before I made mine. Stosh and Moosetracker are indeed talking about two different things. Moosetracker is talking about a thread that was locked by Packsaddle, a few weeks ago if I recall correctly. Stosh is talking about a sub-forum, which as Pack said is "Forum Support and Announcements," which has somehow become password-protected. Pack, the reason Stosh thought it might have something to do with him is that he is listed as the last person who posted in what is now the password-protected sub-forum. Stosh, I am sure it has nothing to do with you. For whatever it's worth, I can't get into that sub-forum either. Inquiries are being made.

That's incorrect. Many people believe evolution is fully compatible with religion. See for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution Of course, evolution is also compatible with atheism, agnosticism, beliefs in higher powers without a religion, etc.

To my knowledge, "locking" a thread means no further posts can be made in it. People can still read the posts that were made before the thread was locked. The thread that Moosetracker is talking about was locked, by Packsaddle? It does not necessarily have anything to do with the last post in the thread. Is anyone finding that my explanation of locked threads is NOT correct? In other words, is anyone NOT able to READ posts in a locked thread? Conversely, does anyone find that they ARE able to POST in a locked thread? As for what Packsaddle is referring to, I will have to check that out.

Well, yes. And if a young man regularly promises to help other people at all times, and does so, I'm not sure how much difference it makes whether he actually believes in God or not.

Seems to me it is pretty arrogant to assume either one.

LeCastor, I appreciate the work of persons such as yourself who serve as Roundtable Commissioners, but if the BSA has new rules (including "clarified" rules) that they expect unit Scouters to know about and follow, roundtables are not an adequate method of communication. Nor is relying on a "unit commissioner", a position that in my district exists mostly in theory. It's not a question of UC's doing their jobs; mostly they don't even exist.

No. There's nothing wrong with prohibiting bad conduct one step at a time. In my entire Scouting life I have never heard of this "singing" stuff except for reading about it in this forum. I would not tolerate it.

And even before you get to that, how are these changes going to be EFFECTIVELY communicated to "the field"? Is the average walking-around Scoutmaster or troop advancement chair even going to know that the BSA decided to come out with a new 2015 version of the G2A? Does he/she even know that a new version came out in 2013? Not counting people who actively participant in this or another online Scouting forum, how many Scouters in this country read Bryan's blog? How many even know it exists? I'm guessing it's a small percentage. We in this forum know these things but I do not think we are representative of the average Scouter.

Oh boy. I will have comments on a few of these as time goes on, but I think number 9 "rings the bell" in our troop. We have an "older Scout" present in EVERY Board of Review: Star or above for T-2-1 BOR's and Life or above for Life. And usually it is someone who is about 15 or above. Now, this says, no youth "OBSERVERS." The older Scout in our BOR's is, at least in theory, a participant in the BOR. They can ask questions, although they seldom actually do. If a question turns into a discussion among the board members and the candidate, the older Scout is treated as a board member, though again their participation is generally minimal. However, I have a feeling that this new rule means no youth present other than the candidate, regardless of whether the "older Scout" is regarded as an "observer", "participant" or whatever else. If my feeling is correct, it would be kind of a shame. In some cases having another Scout there makes the candidate a little less nervous - and we have an occasional Scout who gets VERY nervous for BOR's, even though there is no reason to. I think it also gives a 16 or 17 Scout a little glimpse of what things are like from the adult side of the table, which I personally think is a good thing. But just to be clear, I did not come up with any of this. It was the practice in our troop before I became a committee member. Added note: It's also interesting how far the pendulum has swung on this subject: When I aged out as a youth in the mid-70's, I believe ALL BOR's for T-2-1 (then called Progress Reviews I believe) were conducted by "older Scouts." (One of the 1972-73 changes.) Now there can't even be an older Scout in the room? It will be interesting to find out why, if there is an explanation given.

Well, my mother (who is otherwise a rational, logical person) thinks that, no, humanity has not walked on the moon. It was all set up in the tv studio and Walter Kronkite was in on it. She and my father (who, I am pretty sure, did believe man was walking on the moon) did nevertheless allow my brother and I to stay up way past our bedtimes on that July day in 1969 to watch the first moon walk. (I am not sure of her opinions about horses; my father took us for a few riding lessons, but my mother didn't join us.) But, meandering back to your question, yes, we went from being an essentially horse-powered society to walking on the moon in the span of a lifetime. (And not just theoretically; both of my grandmothers' actual lifetimes.) And now the computing power equivalent to the roomfuls of machines that allowed men to go to the moon, walk on it and return safely to Earth is basically compressed into whatever you're writing your posts on. We did that, us people. Our species is great, except when it is being ridiculously stupid. (After I wrote this next part, I realized that some people might think I was making light of their religious beliefs. I'm not. I'm just giving my view of things. But if you think you might be offended by someone suggesting that a book that you hold sacred might be otherwise, please stop reading now and go read about uniforms or the patrol method or advancement or something - although I realize those topics can sometimes ignite a religious fervor of their own.) (Just giving you more time to stop reading.) Okay, so... Packsaddle mentioned the part of the Bible about how God created us in His image. (Or "our" image, in the translation I am most familiar with.) That is one of the passages in the Bible that convinced me, over a course of some years, that the Bible could only have been written by mankind. God made us in His image? Only our species could be that egotistical. And not far from that passage in the Book of Genesis is the one about how God gave Man "dominion" over all the beasts of the Earth, fishes in the sea, birds in the sky, etc. Pretty convenient if you ask me. And as always in these discussions, Packsaddle mentioned monkeys. I have always believed in evolution as a scientific fact, but the obviousness of that conclusion was really brought home to me the first time in my adult life that I went to a zoo and watched chimpanzees. If you observe what a chimpanzee looks like and how it behaves, and do NOT think that we and they share a common ancestor, I would say that you just aren't looking. Do we also share a common ancestor with the amoeba? I have to just go along with the scientists on that one. (My wife actually doesn't believe it, or at least she didn't the last time we talked about it.) But when it comes to some of the beings on this planet that bear a greater resemblance to us, I know what I see with my own eyes.

I did not take the right courses in college to discuss that intelligently. Can I ask why you ask the question?