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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/20749204
Another positive step in the right direction for an organization rife with brokenness. There’s a lot I don’t like about the organization, but this is something a love–a scouting organization open to young women and the lgbtq community. The next step is being inclusive of nonreligious agnostic and atheist youth and leaders. As well as ending the cultural appropriation of Native American peoples.
May this organization continue to build up youth, never allow further violence against youth, and make amends for all the wrongs. There’s a lot of good that comes out of organizations like this and I won’t discount it even though it’s riddled with a dark history.
Technically, they already are, with the possible exception of nihilists.
The scout oath does include a “duty to god”, but they do not define what they mean by “god” or “religion”. Instead, they explicitly leave those definitions to the scout.
The only requirements they actually have on the subject of religion is 1. tolerance for the beliefs of others, and 2. “reverence” for your own creed.
Under their policy, “the laws of thermodynamics” is a perfectly acceptable “god”, and “In this house, we respect the laws of thermodynamics” is a perfectly acceptable “religious” creed.
“The environment” is a perfectly acceptable god, and “we must preserve and protect our environment” is another perfectly acceptable “religious” creed.
I readily concede that their policy is needlessly complex. It would be easier to just drop the “duty to god” and “reverent” requirements entirely.
I agree with most of your points, but I don’t know, I think I would keep the reverent in the scout law, even if the oath changed.
As a (nonreligious) scout, I always interpreted the reverent more as being respectful than actually religious. More like respecting the beliefs of others, or being respectful and solemn in a cemetery or a war memorial.
There’s nothing else in the scout law that conveys that feeling, and I feel like the law would be missing it if it were dropped.
Treating the oath as something that can be worked around using wordplay does nothing but make a complete mockery of the oath. We had this debate a over century ago when trial witnesses were required to swear an oath to god and atheists were prevented from being witnesses. The solution wasn’t to allow atheists to use god as a metaphor for reality, but to remove the requirement for a belief in a god.
The members of the organization decide how changes will be implemented. The members (citizens) of the US decided to remove the references. The members of scouting decided to keep the vague concept of religion, and leave it to the individual to determine specifics.
It is not “mockery” to understand that the religious aspects of scouting are defined by the scout and the scout’s family, rather than BSA or a church.
You are suggesting that it is acceptable to for scouts that do not believe in any god to lie and say that they do. Dishonesty goes against the scout principles.
Dishonesty does, indeed, go against scouting principles, but I am in no way being dishonest.
What I am doing is explicitly following BSA policy, both the letter of the policy, and the intent of the policy. That policy was specifically established to be inclusive on the basis of religion. Scouting follows it’s own law: it is “Reverent”, which includes a requirement to respect the beliefs of others.
Buddhism does not include a concept of a deity, yet Buddhist youths are welcomed within the BSA. The “God” that BSA refers to can be found within a religion that does not include the concepts of a god.
Unitarian Universalism does not require congregants to have a belief in a supernatural entity. While some UU members are theistic, there are many atheists and agnostics among them.
I mention UU specifically, because the BSA entered into an MOU with the UUA on the subject. UU organizations are welcomed to charter Scouting programs, without requiring their atheist members to abstain. The “God” that BSA refers to can be found within an atheistic Unitarian.
If I were asked how I, personally, perform my “duty to god” I would say that within my worldview, the concept that BSA refers to as “god” is usually thought of as “consciousness”. My duty is to utilize that consciousness in my daily life, to experience, to learn, to discover, to teach. I would recount one of my memorable experiences to my inquisitor, and thank them not just for asking, but for giving me an opportunity to perform that duty.
BSA policy charges me with defining “god” for myself, and nothing in BSA policy prohibits me from appointing “consciousness” to that role. I am, indeed, an atheist as the term is normally used, but my belief system is compatible with Scouting.
The UU memorandum of understanding is irrelevant. I am not a member, and I think most atheists are not either. People should not be required to join a church or a religion to join the scouts.
I don’t believe in any gods, and would never say that something was a god if I did not think it was a god. Consciousness is not a god, nature is not a god, the laws of thermodynamics are not gods. Labeling these things gods only serves to imply some sort of mystery thing about it when there is none, I would consider it lying to do so. Do you think they would accept me? I don’t.
If the religious aspects were truly left to the scouts and their families, outright atheists would simply be accepted, and there would not need to be a memorandum of understanding so that a specific organization could participate, because they would have simply been accept beforehand.
The UU MOU demonstrates that “atheism” is not inherently incompatible with scouting. The memorandum does not mean that if you want to be an atheist and a scout, you must also be a Unitarian. It means that the duty required of the oath can be fulfilled by an atheist. How is it possible to fulfill a duty to “god” without believing in “god”? That MOU serves to clarify the distinction between what the BSA refers to as “god” and what other entities refer to as “god”. It demonstrates that the BSA uses a non-standard definition of “god”, and that we need to understand what they mean by that term before we can make a meaningful judgment of their policies.
I consider it lying for me to deliberately substitute my meaning of a word for the meaning intended by another. What you (and I) would and would not call “god” is completely irrelevant to how BSA uses the word. BSA does not hold to the idea that “thermodynamics cannot be god”. Quite the contrary. If a scout wishes to define god as thermodynamics, BSA accepts it.
BSA does not hold to the idea that “consciousness cannot be god.” If a scout wishes to claim consciousness as god, BSA accepts it.
BSA does not hold to the idea that “God can only be a supernatural entity” or that “God refers to a sense of mystery”. If a scout does not wish to declare God to be a supernatural entity, BSA does not force them. If a scout determines that a sense of mystery is not necessary, BSA does not require it.
BSA developed their policies using one definition. You are using a completely different, contradictory definition. Your conclusions do not at all reflect their actual intent. It is intellectually dishonest for you to impose your meaning in place of their intended meaning.
The UU MOU demonstrates that they still discriminate. Any Christian denomination is automatically acceptable, for atheists they have to pick and choose saying “you’re one of the good ones”.
OK, that’s irrelevant. Those were clearly MY opinions, a demonstration of how I refuse to label things with the term ‘god’, followed by the rationale for me doing so.
I am not using any definition of ‘god’, I am just saying that it has a definition, not any specific one just some definition, otherwise the term would be meaningless. And if I were to label anything ‘god’ it would be because that thing fulfilled the requirements for this unspecified definition. If I were to label something as ‘red’ it would be because it fulfills the requirements to be called ‘red’. If it did not fit the definition of ‘red’ I would not apply the label ‘red’. In the same way, I would not label something as ‘god’ unless I thought the label fit. If I were to label something as ‘god’ it would imply that there was something different about it when compared to something that I would refuse to apply the term ‘god’ to. And there is nothing that I would be willing to label ‘god’.
Gotcha. You’re a connoisseur of religious philosophy. You know that it can only be called “god” if it comes from a specific region in France. Every other worldview is “sparkling belief”.