ThomasJefferson

BSA has changed policies, programs, uniforms, handbooks, requirements, badges, and many other things over the last 102 years. My question is simple: Do you approve or disapprove of BSA? My goal is to attempt an approval rating here on scouter.com of BSA. BSA is defined as the national corporation known as Boy Scouts of America which currently has a monopoly on use of the term Boy Scouts in the United States.

That is debated amongst historians. If you are Jewish, you may use the word "holocaust" to refer specifically to a Jewish historical event, and you may view the people who were Jewish being put to death as uniquely tied to that event. Therefore, if you hold that viewpoint, and if you were not Jewish, you were not part of the holocaust. You were just killed by Nazis in an organized fashion tertiary to it. Broader definitions include approximately two to three million Soviet POWs, two million ethnic Poles, up to 1,500,000 Romani, 200,000 handicapped, political and religious dissenters, 15,

Jblake, I think the interpretations are pretty much these:

I stand corrected. Lecturing on history from memory often fails me.

You know, I'm just not a big fan of memorials at all. Memorials are about feelings, so when feelings get hurt, it's no surprise everyone gets overly passionate and upset. I bet that around 50% of memorials are erected in anger as a way of tells us all to go fly a kite rather than out of respect and a sense of education of the public. In this case, my question is why do we need a holocaust memorial erected in 2013? Do we need a new civil war memorial too? What about a new War of 1812 memorial? Seems like a stale topic to be erecting statues for it. How much did it cost? And the land

You will find that the persecution of Christians involves: * Denying official school-led prayers in government schools * Pulling specifically Christian symbols from public institutions funded purely with taxpayer money where other beliefs's symbols are not allowed * Any mention that churches pay taxes on profits * Requests that we remove references to spiritual entities from money, slogans, pledges, etc. In short, Christians in the US feel persecuted any time their absolute domination of American public life is challenged in favor of a secular, non-religious approach. I am

Conservative = resisting change. As the United States has historically not offered equal rights, and has historically resisted changing to offer them, I would say that not offering equal rights to people who do not fit the mainstream is a conservative idea. In short, to offer equal rights to all was not a founding principle of the US. Slaves were accepted, blacks counted as 3/5's a person, anyone not male and owning land could not vote. Access to public areas and business was limited to those in narrow group. It is very conservative to refuse service and rights to those who are consid

Do tell what are those basic religious principles and what laws have we that are based on them? "founded on religious principles" is said often but unsubstantiated. So is the idea that our country is great. Great how? Greater than what? I have lived in many different countries. I do not find the US particularly superior overall. It has some good points and some bad points. I'm also not sure, acco40, how you can have a great country without great citizens.

The principles of Christianity made our country great? I would like to read the evidence for that claim. What in our history says that religion was responsible for American success? Will we even be able to agree on what American success looks like and what examples of it are? I doubt it. I believe a few particular people and events are what made our country great in terms of government process: Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (the real one) were hyper-intelligent men. They were also not particularly religious people. Their input was instrumental in everything that went on in the late 1

The road is already paved: Do scouting as they do it in the UK.

You state your opinion, and it is looking for consensus. I state my opinion, and it is looking for a fight. See how that works? One day, in the future, I believe people will recognize what they were doing was wrong, and will stop attempting to silence atheist belief and expression as an attack when they realize that religious expression and belief are just as much an attack as it is. Either that, or they will silence all on either side for the sake of silence. That would be sad.

Sure it does. Science reveals to us what happens in the world. We come to understand that when we do X, Y will happen. We test it repeatedly, and we know. What happens when you steal something? What happens when you help someone? Simple physics: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you help someone, that's what you get back. Call it karma or whatever. You don't need stories of ancient days and gods and demons and sins and crucifixions to be nice to people. You're just raised to believe that because you happened to be born into a society that believes that. If

Not really. Tell, me what is this shade you think you have it made in? It will not lengthen your life. It will not protect you from illness. It will not protect you from violence. It will not protect your family. It will not reveal to you anything you can use in today's world that a simple kindergarten lesson in ethics is not superior to. It will cost you money. It will cost you time. I have been told that if I believe and there is a God, I will go to Heaven. I do not want to go to that Heaven. It does not sound appealing. It is filled with all of the unintelligent, closed-minded people

And I trust that you also could see where the same stories were being told over and over again. Admittedly, I have not made it through the Old Testament, nor at the age of 61 do I feel inclined to (not when I have so much to write about BSA and about network programming). But I did read through the New Testament a couple times through. I have also read thePirke Avoth ("Sayings of the Fathers", part of the Talmudic tradition). I found the teachings of Jesus himself rather good, especially when he agreed with the Pharisees (spirit of the law vs the letter of the law, especially regarding

That's factually incorrect - what you see as a flaw is in reality its strength!!! Science was always wrong before and will be wrong again? Not exactly. Scientific ideas are proposed, tested, observed, experimented with. As we learn more, we expand our knowledge, and the idea is clarified, additional detail is added, and the explanations improve over time. Example: We once thought the Universe was 7 billion years old. We now have better technology and analysis and know it is at least 13.7 billion years old. We weren't wrong before. We knew it was AT LEAST 7 billion years old. We now have