Peregrinator

the 118^th anniversary of the release from Reading Jail of gay icon Oscar Wilde, who spent 2 years there for sex with teenagers, or as he so artfully put it "feasting with panthers." 

Oscar Wilde was jailed because of his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas (thanks to an ill-advised libel suit he brought against Douglas's father), whom he met when the latter was 20-21. Wilde was in his late 30s at the time.

And while Wilde does seem to be something of a "gay icon," it really is astonishing considering he converted to Catholicism at the end of his life.

lose members now (Like Scouts Canada) and secure the future.

You don't really believe that Scouts Canada is securing the future, do you?

Now, I am not so naive to think that the gay issue or the co-ed issue is what is causing the decline of Scouts Canada all by itself, other Canadian scouting associations are also facing a decline in numbers, but Scouts Canada is 1/3 the size it was in 1990 and just over 1/4 the size it was in 1965 (its peak year).

BadWolf suggested a 70% membership drop. The answer is yes but how....from the numbers at its peak or from membership numbers today

Assuming that the peak year for the BSA was 1970, membership has already dropped almost 48%.

Membership would have to drop 43% from its current number to fall to 30% of the 1970 membership (a 70% drop from 1970). At the current rate of decline that would take about 8-9 years.

Oh, I totally believe that what is termed "gender dysphoria" or "gender identity disorder" exists. But I disagree that treating someone as something he (or she) isn't is a good course of action.

I was just reading today that only 1/3 of millennials identify with the term. How will modern psychiatry treat them in their generation dysphoria?

The town neighboring mine has a scout cabin. Not owned by scouts any more and people can rent it for parties and such.

Yes, but then one has just added a different 5th postulate, the pythg thm.

Right

Interestingly, the fact that the surface of a sphere is non-Euclidean is why we can't just use the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate the distance between two points on Earth, given the latitude and longitude of each. Of course we can get a good approximation if the points aren't too far apart.

In Euclidean geometry, we take it as truth that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is 180. Under Einstein's Theory of Relativity, the interior angle of a triangle composed of three rays of light do not, in general, add up to 180 due to gravity.

Let's take something simpler. The sum of the interior angles of a triangle drawn on the surface of a sphere (a "spherical triangle") won't necessarily be 180 degrees. It can be as much as 540 degrees. As an experiment you can take a ball and draw a triangle on it.

Whoops, sorry, didn't mean to jump on the bandwagon 

And...I suspect that the Pythagorean Theorem is still just as valid today as it was in the time of Pythagoras

Yes, but the Pythagorean Theorem holds in Euclidean geometry, not non-Euclidean. In fact, if one takes the first four Euclidean axioms and assumes the Pythagorean Theorem, one can derive the Fifth Postulate.

I don't agree.

 

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." - Blaise Pascal

FYI, Pascal didn't actually write that. "Religious conviction" is a mistranslation of the French "par un faux principe de conscience" ("by a false principle of conscience").

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17776/did-pascal-write-men-never-do-evil-so-completely-and-cheerfully-as-when-they-d

The idea that Pascal was some kind of foe of religious belief is ... comical.

Rome didn't have a concept of homosexuality as we have it today, ie a loving relationship of equals between two people of the same sex. Instead it  was all about an expression of what they saw as masculinity. A man was allowed and indeed encouraged to have sex with younger men in order to show his dominance over them, specifically taking the dominant role. It was not about an expression of love but an expression of strength.

Nero, according to Suetonius, entered into two homosexual unions, once playing the part of the husband, the other time the part of the wife.

This is not that different to the whole Sodom and Gomorrah issue. There are an awful lot of theologians that will tell you that this was not about homosexuality but actually about gang rape.

And that is why we refer to gang rape as "sodomy" even to this day.

One day heterosexuals are going to realize that homosexuals are just people.  The "gay agenda" is getting up in the morning, taking a shower, getting dressed, and going to work.  Gay/Lesbian/Bi-Sexual Scouters only want to help young men and women grow into fine citizens.  

What is preventing them from doing so outside of the BSA? One would think that an association like the BPSA would be a haven for such people.

As others have mentioned, it is a result of Pauls teachings which were not always consistent withcthe teachings of James and Peter. Why Pauls theology became the "accepted truth" instead of that of the other apostles is mostly a result of Paul teaching to gentiles which grew his following much greater. Some believe Pauls teachings were the will of Gd, others believe Paul was no more than any other human with fall8vle interpretations at the time. Not all apostles agreed all the time, the fact one (and not an original 12) is elevated to a level above others (due to some believing his own vision) makes some question his authority.

I don't think that James' and Peter's teaching on homosexuality is inconsistent with that of Paul. Unless you're making an argument from silence?

Even tiny San Marino has a WOSM/WAGGGS member association, even though its membership is less than 300:

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

Russia has many scouting and guiding associations. The WOSM/WAGGGS members aren't even the largest if the numbers on Wikipedia are to be believed.

Stosh et al

 

A question fo you, and this is a genuine question, something that I have never quite figured out.

 

In the books of the law in the Bible there are all kinds of strange laws that we no longer follow. The most well known being no consumption of shell fish, or pork or wearing of mixed fibers. There's plenty more where they came from too.

 

The majoirty of these laws are ignored by the overwhelming majority of Christians.

 

Why is it that the law against homosexuality is one that you feel needs to be followed when so many of the other laws have been dropped?

Because unlike, say, the dietary laws, it was never explicitly abrogated and in fact is restated in the letters of St. Paul.

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.

Yes, thank you, I should have been more precise. It can't be proven that the universe has a beginning in time.

No, but they do depend on making a special exception for gods, which is hardly different from just assuming they exist.

Um, no.

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.

TAHAWK, look around and you can see plenty of examples of the grotesque things we've bred. I have never understood why we do that but the phenotypic plasticity of species is quite amazing for many organisms.

That's true but in this case, at least initially, the scientists weren't selecting for physical attributes but only for tameness and friendliness to humans. For some reason those traits seem to go hand-in-hand with other attributes of domesticated animals (e.g., droopy ears).

It's not that I don't understand what people mean by "evolution" it's just that 1 a species might adapt to a change in it's environment but scientists don't say that's a new species.

True. The domestic dog has been classified variously as Canis canis, Canis domesticus, and Canis familiaris. But nowadays (and for the last 20 years), it's been classified as Canis lupus familiaris, a subspecies of the wolf Canis lupus.

And the successful Russian program to breed a domesticated fox shows that extreme selective pressure can produce "evolutionary" results in a species in just a few generations.

If you think you had a larval stage then I worry about your scientific literacy

When I was still in the larval stage I listened to my mentors

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