NJCubScouter

Firstpusk, thank you for the explanation of "intelligent design." I have followed the political/legal adventures of the creationists only casually, and did not know a lot of those details.

And for everybody else, let's keep in mind what this issue is about. It's not really about what we as adults believe, because we are fully capable of studying and examining different ideas and then accepting or rejecting them based on our own knowledge, experience and reasoning skills, and/or our faith (if any.) As intense as the debate may get between believers in evolution (i.e. science) and creationism in this forum, this is not the real battleground. The real battleground is the schools. The issue is that some people want to use public funds and public facilities to teach their religious beliefs regarding the origin of the world and mankind to a captive audience of public school children. They know they can't do it if they call it religion, because (whether some in this forum like it or not) the Supreme Court has interpreted the First Amendment to prohibit the teaching of religious beliefs in public schools, unless it is genuinely a "comparative religion"-type class that presents the facts neutrally rather than promoting any one religion or belief. So they look for scientific names for it. Ten or 15 years ago it was "creation science," which as firstpusk suggests, did not work. Now it is "intelligent design." It is all just a ploy to use my tax money to indoctrinate my children in someone else's religious beliefs.

Rooster says:

The issue is - Is homosexuality a sin?

If "sin" = "an immoral act": No. I'm glad I was able to clear that up. Wow, in one word I was able to resolve the entire issue!

In short, I (or others) don't have to publicly confess our own sins in order to call a sin - sin.

No, but when a whole succession of people make their careers out of calling sin sin, and it then turns out that they have not practiced what they preached, as it were, I think the rest of us have the right to be suspicious of others who make that their business, and I think it does weaken the credibility of the message. If it's not clear who I am talking about, I am talking about Jim Bakker and the church secretary, Jimmy Swaggart and the prostitutes, and "Dr." Laura and the nude photos on the Internet. Now of course there are other professions that seem prone to this sort of thing, like politicians, but the difference is that politicians who are involved in sex scandals generally have not made their careers out of judging the sex lives of others, like Bakker and Swaggart did to a degree, and as "Dr." Laura did (does?) 90 percent of the time she was (is?) on the air. (I don't know if "Dr." Laura is still around, on my talk radio station they replaced her with "the consumer advocate show.")

Furthermore, when we recognize the sins of others, we are not claiming to be judge and jury. We are only acting as witnesses.

I don't buy that for a minute. You are judging what is sin.

There is a huge difference between ritualistic law and moral law (unless you're Jewish).

"Unless you're Jewish" is right, or more precisely, unless you are an Orthodox Jew. I don't think they view the 600+ commandments (i.e. the rules in Genesis and Leviticus other than the "10 commandments") as just "ritualistic." Rooster, to them you are probably an immoral guy because you don't follow all the commandments. (Me too, of course, and it's worse for me because I am Jewish.) Rooster, we just don't live up to their moral standards. How does it feel to be a moral relativist?

Prior to Christ, God gave very specific commandments to his people (Jews) as to how they must approach Him. These laws are the type of which you speak - clothing, eating habits, when a man and woman can be together, etc. Christians know these laws as ritualistic law. Christ was the last priest. He represents us in heaven and enables us to approach God. These rituals are no longer necessary.

Just out of curiosity, in what chapter and verse did Jesus say that?

I'm also interested in that phrase, "the last priest." I know that you are no longer a member of a denomination that has priests, but in those that do, does that mean that a priest gets to change the rules as well?

And doesn't your denomination have its own rituals?

rlculver says:

God does not make anyone homosexual!

How do you know that? You may believe that, but I don't see how you can know that.

I also think that the creationists around here ought to have a meeting and get their stories straight, because I know that at least one person has said that God creates each one of us individually. If that is the case, you have to take the people whose behavior you don't approve of along with everybody else. God created them too, right?

I have previously suggested, with tongue in cheek, that perhaps God made some people gay as a test for the rest of us, to see how we treat the more "unusual" aspects of his creation. As a society, I would say that historically we have failed the test, though in early 21st century America we have probably pulled our collective grade up to a "D."

Compass, in your litany of all the times that you say this guy lied, you are assuming a lot of things that you don't actually know. To "lie" means to say something that is not true with knowledge that it is not true. Not what you should have known -- that implies negligence, but to actually "lie" it must be that you did know. You are making assumptions about what he knew at any given time. You may be right, but you may be wrong.

And in the end, the BSA does not seem to care whether he lied or not. They are more than happy to let him stay as an Assistant Scoutmaster if only he will say, now, that he believes in a higher power. It is almost like they are encouraging him to lie.

Rooster says:

I partially agree with NJ. I agree BSA should NOT accept some goofy excuse for a religion as "belief in God".

I don't know what part of what I said you were agreeing with, but I certainly did not say anything like your second sentence above. I don't agree with it. I think the BSA should accept anything that a person says is a religion or belief in a higher power as a "belief in God." I also think that if a person subscribes to the Scout Oath and Law, and the Declaration of Religious Principles, and otherwise does not wish to discuss their beliefs, the BSA should (and does) take them at their word. They are professing a duty to God, and that a Scout is reverent, and that is enough to indicate belief in a higher power. The BSA should not, and this case confirms that it does not, require more than that. Only in the case of an avowed atheist -- and apparently, one who does not profess a belief after being given a warning -- is terminated. I am fine with all of that.

What I am not fine with is you, Rooster, deciding for anybody else what constitutes "some goofy excuse for a religion." I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the less a particular religion looks and sounds like your own, the better chance it has of you labeling it a "goofy excuse for a religion." It is not surprising. You have already made it clear that you do not respect other peoples' religious beliefs and that you wish the BSA would change that aspect of the explanation for "A Scout is Reverent." With all the discussion lately about how people who don't like a policy can go off and form their own youth organization, perhaps you would be happier in a group that believes that you show reverence by declaring other peoples' beliefs "goofy."

Personally, I would prefer BSA to exclude Pagan religions and the like ("The Force" or some other kind of nonsense).

I'm not at all surprised. However, I suspect that what you would actually prefer goes beyong that. I don't have any proof or anything, but from everything I have seen you say, my suspicion is that what you would really prefer is if only Christians could join the BSA.

So those of you who disagree and can feel good - knowing that BSA will probably continue to accept those kinds of religions.

It's nice that I can agree with the BSA on a controversial issue.

OGE: If it seemed like I was belittling any religion or belief, that certainly was not my intention. I was trying to make the point that, no matter how "different" a belief system may be from one's own, the BSA "accepts" it if involves any sort of higher power. I see now that I made the point a bit too flippantly, given that peoples' strongly-held beliefs were involved. Plus, as I have discussed in another thread, some of my own spiritual beliefs, which do not follow any particular organized religion, turn out to be similar to some of those of the Plains Indians and other Native Americans. And I admire Hinduism because it seems to emphasize spirituality without the "judgmentalism" that is characteristic of the religions that I am more familiar with.

Actually, eisely, most advocates of "gay rights" (meaning non-discrimination against gays), including me, believe it is irrelevant whether homosexuality is caused genetically, or is a choice. They should not be discriminated against, regardless. I suppose that if it were proven to be genetic, those who favor discrimination would find it even more difficult to support their position, because among other things, it would then be clear that God made a certain percentage of the population gay. But the discrimination is still wrong, and incidentally, contrary to the principles of Scouting, either way.

k9, various people have faulted this guy for things he did and did not do before and after his Eagle board of review, but I do not see how you can criticize him for what he did AT the board of review. HE TOLD THEM HE WAS AN ATHEIST! What more do you want? Maybe they didn't ask him to say the Oath and Law. Maybe they did, and that is when he told them he was an atheist. Maybe he declined to say the Oath and Law, or just the particular words that offend him, as he says he did at troop meetings when he was a Scout. We don't know. All we do know is that at some point in the Board of Review, he told them he was an atheist, and that they approved the advancement. Whose fault is that? I don't see how it's his fault.

As for this guy now being "surprised," well, I am surprised he is surprised. The SE told him what he was going to do unless he professed a belief in a higher power, the guy didn't do it, and the SE did what he said he was going to do. Regardless of what you think of what the SE did (and as I have said elsewhere, I don't have a problem with it), the guy knew what was going to happen, and it did.

I also don't see why this is getting so much attention when it is at least the fourth case I have heard of, of someone being denied an advancement or position in Scouting because they announced they were an atheist. The others were Scouts and this guy is (was) a leader, but I don't see what difference that makes.

As I have also said elsewhere, the one thing I do find interesting about this case is the "trustworthiness" issue. It seems that the BSA (or at least this SE) was ready to let this guy stay in his leadership position if only he was willing to fabricate a belief in a higher power. Basically what they said was, you have a week to tell us you believe in "something." Mother Nature is ok. Presumably, Zeus or Vishnu or the Great Spirit of the Plains would have been equally groovy. (Or "The Force", as in Star Wars; some people in the UK have actually registered that as an organized religion over there, and there's no reason to believe the BSA wouldn't accept it here.) Now, does the SE really think that if he said he believed in God, or some acceptable substitute, that he had suddenly acquired this belief in a week, because they asked him to? Or does it seem more likely that the SE didn't care if he lied, as long as he said he believes in "something"? If the latter is true, I find the implications very interesting, and I have very mixed feelings about it.

Well, "blood circle" does drive the point home. (Not literally, one hopes. Yuk yuk.)

Now, as it happened, I had the Cub Scout Leader Book in my car, and now I have it in front of me. On page 29-5 it says:

"Tiger Cubs, Cub Scouts, and Webelos Scouts may earn the right to carry a pocketknife to designated Scouting functions by completing requirements for the Whittling Chip card."

Now, I can tell you, this comes as a surprise to me. Our pack has always told the parents and boys that only Bears and Webelos could earn the Whittlin Chip. (I thought it was spelled without a "g", for "effect", but the book has dispelled that notion as well.) Where that came from, I can't say. Maybe that was true in an older version of the book. Maybe it was an assumption that grew from the fact that the requirements for the Whittlin Chip are only in the Bear book. But I have heard it on numerous occasions, and not just in our pack. Our district Cub Family Camporees almost always have a "Whittlin Chip" tent where the boys can go to hear a knife safety talk, carve a bar of soap and thereby earn part of their Whittlin Chip requirements, the rest to be signed off by the den leader later. The sign on the tent always says "Bears and Webelos only," or at least I am pretty sure it does. So, either the rules have changed, or the longstanding popular conception of the rule is incorrect. Plus, I just looked in the Guide to Safe Scouting and there is one short paragraph about knife safety that does not mention the Whittlin Chip or age limits for knife use. It does refer to both the Wolf and Bear books (plus the Scout Handbook and Fieldbook), but without any specific page references. I would be interested to see what the Wolf book says about knives.

This makes me wonder, what if my pack decides that we still do not want Tigers and Wolves handling knives when we go camping? Are we "adding to the requirements" for the Whittlin Chip? Or can we just say, apart from the Whittlin Chip, that our pack has decided to adopt a safety rule that you have to be at least in Bear year to handle a knife at our campouts. I know of no rule that a pack cannot adopt safety rules that are MORE stringent than those of the BSA -- I suppose the exception would be if you were interfering with the boys completing an advancement requirement, but that is not the case here.

And by the way, the page I refer to above does mention "safety circle" -- but not "blood circle."

Bad idea, if it's true. I'll have to check the Cub Scout Leader Book and see for myself. Some of the Tigers are not even 6 years old when they join! Now, I realize it could be left up to the parents of each boy to determine when he is ready to learn to use a knife, but a reasonable "age" limit does make sense in this case. And Bear seems reasonable to me.

Pack38Scouter, do you really call it the "blood circle"??? I have never heard that before. We call it the "safety circle." I understand that your version is named after what you are trying to avoid, I guess ours is named after what we are trying to achieve.

Gosh, Firstpusk, did you get me confused. A tour permit needed for online training??? Then I read the link and realized that your answer had nothing to do with Sctmom's question. Unless I missed something.

Sctmom, it would be great if YP training were available online. I have no information on it one way or another. However, it seems unlikely to me. Coincidentally, yesterday I attended our council's University of Scouting and one of the sessions I attended was Youth Protection Facilitator Training. Now I can run YP training sessions for people in our pack, or if I really get ambitious I can run some courses for the council. The point is, with this reminder of what the course consists of, I don't see how it could really be delivered online. The video is 1 hour and 9 minutes long, and you are supposed to break twice during the tape for discussion and deal with questions at the end. There is supposed to be a pre-quiz, the facilitator is supposed to give the cards to those who have completed the course, and you collect the evaluations.

I would be curious to see how all that would be handled online. And if YP were done online, are other courses like New Leader Essentials or Leader Specific Training next? I just don't see the BSA moving in this direction. Fast Start is online but that's different because the "regular" Fast Start is just a video you can watch on your own anyway.

Right dan, I think sctmom and I were both talking of the "speed" record. I have not scrolled down the list to see one that might have it beat, but I don't think there has been one, at least in the time I have been in this forum.

If this seems trivial, well in my past Internet life I used to help run an online trivia club. That was before my kids started demanding the use of the computer at night...

This first line is written after the rest of the post. I cannot believe that DeMann's comment has prompted me to write what I have written below, especially the later parts. I can't believe I wrote it at all. But it is what I really think, and it has some relationship to the thread, so here it is.

DeMann says:

If man evolved, then there is no afterlife. Or, if there is, then God is not necessary, for either the here-and-now, or to obtain that afterlife. Evolution excludes the necessity for God, and thus, man does not need him, any where or anytime. To believe in both God and evolution is to attempt to hold both sides of the fence, neither one being sufficient for the holder of those beliefs.

To which I respond: Why? (I was going to say "why?" to each separate sentence, but I realized that would sound too much like every 3-year-old in the world.)

I have not had time to substantively participate in much of the discussion in this thread, but I have been struck by several statements of the type repeated above. "If you believe this, you have to believe that," or "If you don't believe this, you can't believe that." Who says? Your statements may be correct if you believe in the literal truth of every statement in the Bible, but then you're just assuming your conclusion. A common fallacy in debate, but a fallacy nevertheless.

I can assure you that there are many people in the world who believe in both God and evolution. It may not be "God" as you define him (or it), it may not be God as related in the Christian/Jewish Bible at all, but it is God nevertheless. There are many ways to believe in God. There does not have to be an afterlife for there to be a God. We do not have to "need" God for there to be a God. God does not even have to know the planet Earth exists, or to have specifically created this planet, for there to be a God. The Bible and the values contained in it do not need to have been handed down by God, or even have been inspired by God, for there to be a God. (And that's not to say that most of those values are not good values. I actually feel better about humanity, believing that it was people who came up with "Thou shalt not kill," etc., rather than God.)

I have never really talked about my own deep-down personal religious beliefs in this forum, but I guess the above is a hint. I believe that almost everything is possible, but that also means that I don't specifically believe in too many things, other than what I can see. The fact that we are here means that something beyond our ability to comprehend created us, or something that led to something (...) that led to us. That something is God. I also think there is a natural order to the Earth and the living things and other things in, on and around it that has some spiritual nature.

So what does that make me? A believer in Native American religion? A Druid? A Wiccan? A Buddhist? A deist, a la Thomas Jefferson? Or maybe just a guy who's still a confused Jewish kid? (Part of Judaism is that God is incorporeal and amorphous, has not walked on the Earth nor sent any of his relatives to do so, and will not necessarily ever do so. Of course, another part of Judaism consists of direct quotes from God as reported in the Bible, but I reserve the right to question the attribution.) Or maybe parts of all of the above?

Appropros to both this impromptu declaration of belief (?) and the 13-page thread on atheists in Scouting, when I was an older teenager, I thought I was an atheist. I guess I didn't feel too strongly about it, because every week I said the Scout Oath and Law (and led them when I was SPL), and every day in school I said the Pledge, "under God" and all. When I was on campouts, and walking somewhere by myself, I would sometimes feel something spiritual, but I didn't know exactly what it was, so I figured it might be God. I didn't go around telling many people I was an atheist. I remember telling my mother, and her reaction basically was "No, you aren't." Not, "I forbid it," because she knew that would be meaningless, but literally, she didn't think I was really an atheist. I later realized she was right. It is not that I did not believe in God, but that I did not really believe in the Bible, and that I was focusing too much on the inhumanity that has often been perpetrated in the name of religion to see that somewhere, there has to be a God, even if I was not sure what the nature and function of God is. Later, in my 20s I guess, I thought I was an agnostic. I did not know if there was a God. Later still, I realized this wasn't correct either. I believed in something, I just wasn't sure exactly what, and since it had to be an all-powerful thing, it was God, even though it did not have most of the attributes of what other people call God. That's where I am now. I guess.

Now, some might ask, where does that leave my children, and more pointedly in light of some other threads, where does that leave the Declaration of Religious Principles of the BSA, in terms of my son? Simple, it leaves them with my wife, who is a Catholic, and believes all (well, most) of the things Catholics are supposed to believe. I have to say, she does not seem to have done a very good job. My older daughter (20) says she was a Wiccan, but now is not sure what she is. My middle daughter (15) says she is a Wiccan. (I think they had the same friend who was a Wiccan and got them interested in it. I have not seen any potions brewing or broomsticks used as means of transportation; they seem to mainly read about it and trade symbols or something on the Internet.) My son (11), well, we'll see. I don't think he'll be a practicing Catholic, he'll probably be confused like his father, and believe mainly in science. And I don't think that's so bad.

Now, should I hit "Send" on this, or blip it out of existence and chalk it up to a long week at work? Ahh, why not...

Interestingly, when BSA officials first started sending memos and internal policy statements to each other on the "gay issue," as reported in the court decisions in the Dale case, the operative phrase was not simply "avowed homosexual." It was "avowed or known homosexual." By the third or fourth document, the "or known" had been dropped. That seems to indicate that the BSA wanted to limit the exclusion to those who were self-proclaimed gay persons, and not to have to deal with rumors and statements that "everybody in town knows" someone to be gay. One could infer a range of motives for this decision; on one hand, the desire to avoid a "witch hunt" (no offense to Wiccans); on the other hand, a desire to avoid lawsuits and resource-consuming investigations to determine the truth.

I think the BSA explanations of the "gay policy" actually fit well with the exclusion of only "avowed" gays. The policy is explained in terms of "role models." If you accept that homosexuality violates the values of Scouting, then someone who proclaims that he or she is gay cannot be a good role model for these values. Of course, if you do not believe that homosexuality violates the values of Scouting (and I do not), then the whole thing falls apart. But at least there is some relationship between the initial premise and the result, so that if you accept the premise, the result makes a lot of sense, and if you don't, it doesn't.

It is also interesting that the function of "avowed" does not seem to be exactly the same between the gay issue and the atheist issue. The young leader discussed in the 13-page thread told a district Scouter that he was an atheist, and the response was a message from the Scout Executive giving him the opportunity to declare his belief in a higher power, and if not, he's out. The clear implication is that an avowed atheist can become an un-avowed atheist, and become re-eligible for a leadership position. (But only for a limited time, apparently. If he missed the 7-day deadline and then a year from now said he had thought it over and now believes in the Easter Bunny or Dionysius, god of wine and spirits, I am not sure what the result would be.) Compare this with the reaction to James Dale. Based on what I have read, he never actually said anything about his gay orientation to anyone in Scouting. In fact, so far as anyone could prove, he never even said "I am gay." An article appeared in a newspaper about a conference discussing the problems of gay teenagers, I believe, and he was quoted as one of the speakers, and he was also identified as the president of the Rutgers Gay Alliance. (An organization I am familiar with from my days as a reporter and editor for the Rutgers Daily Targum; our office was across the hall from theirs.) Apparently someone in his home district or council (which was one county away from Rutgers) saw the article and inferred (correctly) that he was gay. The Scout Executive then sent a letter terminating Dale's involvement with the BSA. Dale was not asked to un-avow that he was gay. I guess the theory is that once you are gay, you're gay (this may remind some of a very crude saying, which I will not repeat), but that an atheist can become a non-atheist. The latter is true, of course, but it's not something that's likely to occur in 7 days, or on demand.

So those are my thoughts on "avowed."

Yes Sctmom, actually what caught my attention was when I first read that thread 3 hours after it was started, and there were already 41 replies. 42 posts in 3 hours in 1 thread! That has to be some kind of record in and of itself.

As far as "fighting," it is interesting to see the dynamics on the religion issue. I have not had time to post anything there, and every time I try, I find that I want to answer something in an ever-increasing number of posts -- it's probably up to about 50 -- and I end up abandoning what I am writing. I have hope for the weekend though.

When I finally do post, some may be surprised to learn that I, too, have no problem with the BSA policy excluding atheists, as long as it is applied the way the BSA has done in this case and others -- as opposed to the way that some of our posters might wish to see it applied. It is not the same as the gay issue, for reasons that I will eventually explain. And this particular case shows just how, shall we say, liberal, the BSA is acting in applying the no-atheists policy. The Scout Executive is giving this guy a week to make up some belief in something, and then he wouldn't be removed. I think the SE knows full well that this guy will still be an atheist even if he "admits" he believes in Mother Nature, or the Great Spirit of the Mountains, or a generic Creator without a name or gender or specific attributes, or whatever. If it wasn't clear before this that all of those things count with the BSA as a "belief in God," it is clear now. I think that's a good thing.

The SE's stance does raise an issue of how important it is to be Trustworthy, however. As I said, he seems to be inviting this guy to make something up.

I don't really fault this guy. He stood up in his Eagle Board of Review and told the truth. It is the members of the Board of Review who flunked the test, I think.(This message has been edited by NJCubScouter)

There is a clear answer in the Bear book, it should be in the introductory pages right before the first achievement. Basically the answer is, no, you don't count it twice. You count the requirement toward the achievement unless it is not needed for the achievement. It would be "not needed" for one of two reasons, either the boy has already earned that achievement, or the boy is not going to earn that achievement. Almost every achievement has more individual requirements than are necessary to pass the achievement. For example, an achievement may have 6 requirements, and it might say "complete 1 and 2, and any 2 of the remainder." (I forget if it's numbers or letters, but the idea is the same.) So if for example, the boy does 1, 2, 4 and 6, he has completed that particular achievement. None of those requirements will count as electives. But if he then also does 3 in that achievement, it counts as an elective. Similarly, if he only does 2 and 4, he is not going to earn that achievement at all, but 2 and 4 will count as 2 electives. And it's ok to do achievements and electives at the same time, but your son cannot actually receive any arrow points until he earns the Bear badge. The main thing is to make sure your son does enough of the achievements to earn the Bear badge. I think it's 12. At the point where he earns the Bear badge, he may already have done enough electives along the way to earn one or more arrow points, and if not, he can then work on either "leftover" requirements from achievements, or "electives," to do enough electives for an arrow point.

OGE says:

I understand that God can do anything he wishes. And thats the hardest thing about religion, sometimes you just have to suspend human rationality and just "believe"

Well, or you can start your own religion, or your own denomination, or your own sect or movement within a religion, to conform to what you actually do believe. Or you can add books to the Bible or subtract them, or translate them to fit your beliefs, or your political agenda, or whatever. People have been doing that for thousands of years. Why are there so many different Christian churches? Why are there at least four major "movements" within Judaism with many variations and gradations within those movements? Why is there a Catholic and a Protestant version of the same Bible, with different books? I won't try the answer the question. I think some of the implications are obvious, especially for "Biblical literalism." But I'll leave others to draw their own conclusions.

I believe that these discussions of the Bible and its literal truth are important, because there are some in society who would like to force the rest of society to live by a literal reading of the Bible. That is what is behind creationism. Creationists want public school children to be taught that the contents of scrolls passed down from antiquity are more likely, or just as likely, to contain scientific truth as real biological science. Other Biblical literalists (well, probably the same ones) will point to a few passages from the same scrolls, whose exact meaning depends on which translation you believe, to justify hatred of gays. If people would just stick to their books and worship in their own places, I would not care in the slightest whether people regard a book as literal truth, allegory, fiction or anything else. But some of them don't. Some of them try to impose their beliefs on my, my children and my society.

And I feel I have to try, in my own little way, to stop them. Pointing out the inconsistencies and anomalies in the Bible, and the inconsistencies between the Bible and the physical world, is just one way of doing that. I also believe that God can do anything, but the question is, what HAS he done. I don't see God as being constrained by the description of his acts in any particular book.

OK, from the reading the posts I have finally figured out why I was so clueless when DeMann asked me if I was talking about "divine election." I had never heard of it before. I thought maybe it was an election in Florida where none of the voting machines broke down. But now understand, it's a New Testament thing. That's why I had never heard of it.

Littlebille, I probably should have made it clear that I was speaking of my own observations, and not from any statistics. I just made a quick search on the Internet and could not find the answer.

All I know is that in a lifetime of having Jewish relatives, neighbors, friends, co-workers, etc. etc., sometimes in Jewish-majority situations (like the Scout troop I was in as a boy), I would say that less than 10 percent kept Kosher. And by that I meant Kosher 365 days a year, 2 sets of dishes, only eating foods with rabbinical approval, the whole thing. Not just avoiding bread or beer during Passover, not just fasting on Yom Kippur, not just avoiding obvious pork products, shellfish and cheeseburgers. If all of those count as semi-Kosher, obviously the number becomes much larger. I don't think my own family (meaning my parents and brothers) would even count as semi-Kosher, although my parents did follow some "food traditions" handed down to them by their own parents, who were probably only "semi-Kosher" themselves. When we were growing up, we ate bacon and sometimes shrimp. I think we had ham sometimes as well. On the other hand, I never saw a pork chop or a pork roast until I started dating my wife (who is Catholic.) We did not worry about having meat and dairy at the same meal, though one of my grandmothers did sometimes lecture me about cheeseburgers (and also about Christian women, but she obviously was not successful in either case.)

OGE, regarding Genesis 4 (Cain and Able), it is even more baffling than that. It says Eve bore Cain, then she bore Able, then Cain slew Able. It hasn't said anything about any daughters or grandaughters of Adam and Eve, or any spouse or children of Able. So, if the account is complete, at that point it seems that Cain and his parents are the only people in the world. Then, when he is cast out of the land of his parents for killing Able, God puts a mark on him so he won't have to be concerned about anyone killing him. Who are these anyones? Did Adam and Eve actually have other children, and/or Able had children, who are not mentioned, but whose offspring made up a whole population by the time of Cain's adulthood? Or are these anyones unrelated to Adam and Eve, which of course would mean that they were not uniquely the "first people." And then, of course, one of these anyones becomes Cain's wife. Oh, and then after Cain's son is born, Cain is building a city. A city! For who? So far the only people alive who we know by name (or other specific reference) are Adam, Eve, Cain, his wife and his son (Enoch I believe.) Either it's a very small city, or something else is going on.

And another thing, it is my understanding that in the original Hebrew, "adam" meant "the man." (Look at the New International Version of the Bible at www.biblegateway.com.) So did some later translator decide that "the man" had a name, Adam, when the writer meant only "the man," without a name?

To me, all signs point to allegory.

I am always pleasantly surprised when someone explains "how things are" in a particular aspect of Scouting, and the explanation exactly matches how I thought things are. Well, not how they always are in our pack, but how I know they are supposed to be.

The only thing I would note, Bob, is that as of the last time I saw charter paperwork (in March), my council was still using "Executive Officer" as a synonym for the IH. Hopefully they have now made the switch to "Charter Organization Executive," although it is longer and more cumbersome it makes more sense and is more self-explanatory. I have had to explain to several people (including our Cubmaster, more than once) that the Executive Officer is NOT the "CEO" of the pack, but rather is president of the CO. (Actually our CO, a PTO, always has co-presidents. We just pick one to sign the paperwork, though "by the book" it should be the PTO doing the picking according to their own bylaws. It is almost always the co-president who has a son in the pack, and at least one of them almost always does, since the CO is the PTO of the elementary school that the pack recruits Tigers from. As it happens, this year both co-presidents just joined us as Tiger Adult Partners. One of them seemed stunned when I explained her other role in the pack to her. I don't think she even knew that her own organization was the CO.)

I have to wonder though, why don't they eliminate the title "IH" and just have the new "COE." Two titles for the same person is confusing. If the answer is, "tradition," well, I can relate to that.

Rooster, over the months I have been in this forum (and I must have joined right after one of your "disclosure statements" regarding Youngblood, because I seem to have known he was your son from the beginning), it has sometimes seemed to me that on some issues, he is even more conservative than you are. If that is possible.

On the other hand, it is somewhat disappointing that the role of women, or more precisely the lattitude that boys in a unit should have to exclude women, becomes just another ideological issue. The conservatives are more comfortable with the exclusion, the moderates less so if they don't oppose it outright. It would be a better world if this left-right tension did not define everything.

As for my own experience, I have not yet been involved with a Scout troop as an adult. In Cub Scouts it is family camping, so whichever parent shows up with the boy (if not both) is the one that goes. My father, who is still active in the troop I was a member of as a boy, tells me that last summer, NONE of the male leaders or fathers could (or would) take the time to go to summer camp. ALL of adults at camp were women. Presumably the boys did not get a say in this -- I guess the other alternative would have been not to go to summer camp at all.

Rooster, when the Scout Handbook says a Scout respects the beliefs of others, I don't think they are defining "respect" the same way you do. You have mentioned several different definitions, at least one of which I think is correct, but the definition you started out with is much broader (not narrower) than most people define the word.

Specifically, showing "respect" to the beliefs of others does not require that you practice those beliefs. It may mean making "allowances" in some cases, but not all cases. "The needs of the many" and "the needs of the one" need to be kept in balance. (Wink to Star Trek fans.) I think the basic attributes of respect are that you do not make fun of someone who is doing something different, that you do not interfere with what they are doing and that you do not try to change their beliefs. (I realize there might be some debate about that last part, but hopefully not in a Scouting setting.) Rooster, I doubt that you would have a problem with showing respect under that definition.

As for some of your specific examples, dietary restrictions should be fairly easy to accommodate. Others have given examples of how this is done. Obviously you are not required to refrain from eating the pork chop or the hamburger, but if there is a feasible method for providing an alternate meal for the Orthodox Jewish or Hindu Scout, you should do so. Likewise, if you can all eat chicken, great. It's just a matter of being reasonable. (Though I have to tell you, when an Orthodox Jewish Scout is involved, it can't just be any old chicken, it has to be a Kosher chicken. I do not have any statistics on this, but my suspicion would be that the vast majority of Orthodox Jewish Scouts are in units sponsored by their own religious organization and whose membership is overwhelmingly if not exclusively of their own religion. Keeping Kosher is one of the reasons -- it's really really difficult to do so when you are catering (sometimes literally) to some who are and some who aren't as part of the same group. Also keep in mind that most Jews in the U.S. do not keep Kosher -- I line up for the bacon and sausage at my pack's camping trips along with everybody else. As for the 2 or 3 Indian Cub Scouts that have been in our pack, I never noticed whether they were eating the hamburgers and hot dogs or not.)

One other example you gave was the Islamic scout who had to pray seven times a day (though I thought it was five.) I don't really know all of their requirements, but why can't he just find a secluded spot at the campsite, take out his prayer mat and pray? And if you are on a hike, he can do it during meal breaks and rest breaks. And if you have to add an extra break or extend them by a couple of minutes, where's the harm? Obviously, if someone's practice required that they remain stationary for an hour at a time, five times a day, that would be a problem.

By the way, Rooster, I also wanted to comment on this:

If Scouting allowed pagans to become Scouts, would you expect me to respect the belief that trees are deities?

Scouting does. Allow "pagans" to become Scouts, I mean. As you suggest with your tree-as-deity remark, "pagans" do have deities (usually more than one, I think, and I don't think most modern pagans actually worship trees, though I am not an expert), and therefore are not atheists. (I put "pagans" in quotes because some call themselves "Wiccans," some refer to "followers of Earth Religions" and others use the term "Neo-Pagans." I learned all this by plugging the word "pagan" into Yahoo, it's very interesting, at least to me. (I also have a daughter who says she is a Wiccan, but that is a whole other story. Jon Stewart of the "Daily Show" says that if atheists are kids who hate their parents, then Wiccans are teenagers who really hate their parents.)

But whichever branch of "paganism" you are talking about, they seem to all believe in something, and as long as they are willing to say the Scout Oath and Law and pledge to live by them, that is all that Scouting asks

an entirely brand new knot, unrelated "knotologically" to any other knot.

Hmmm, are you suggesting that knots evolve from each other, rather than being separately created? Better watch out.

I guess I haven't been in this thread in awhile. I guess it's too late to discuss this for this year, I know our sale ended Oct. 15. (Our pack share will be over $2,000 for the second year in a row, yay! We had one kid sell over $1,000 which I don't think we ever had before.) But when I went to the Trails End site to look at the tracking system, it doesn't look like the council really has to do much to set it up. It looks like the council is provided with user names and passwords (or the ability to make them) by the company, and all the unit has to do is ask the council. Did you ask?

I never get tired of asking questions of my council office, though I suspect sometimes they get tired of me.