[Dreamtwister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jasonraymondson', 'I') never could stand people who were in boy scouts. I remember wanting to beat the crap out of those little nerds. walking around with their blue little scarfs and shit.

No wonder pedophiles number their ranks

plus all of that christian nazi propaganda bullshit

[smallpoxgirl]

OK. Nobody else is going to say it, so I'll point out the obvious. Little boys playing soldier is hardly a new ominous occurrence.

[Dreamtwister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smallpoxgirl', 'O')K. Nobody else is going to say it, so I'll point out the obvious. Little boys playing soldier is hardly a new ominous occurrence.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GASMON', 'A')sk the Pope. He has had "basic training" !!

Gasmon

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jasonraymondson', 'I') never could stand people who were in boy scouts. I remember wanting to beat the crap out of those little nerds. walking around with their blue little scarfs and shit.

No wonder pedophiles number their ranks

plus all of that christian nazi propaganda bullshit

[Sixstrings]

Huh, I've never actually read the bylaws VM.

The ironic thing about the whole religion debate is that I was agnostic / tentatively atheist as a kid. I couldn't stomach either church or church groups. So really scouting filled that void for me, the desire to be part of a community group.

In the scouts, you say the oath and that's all you have to talk about God. That's not so hard to deal with after all, isn't God tangentially mentioned everywhere anyway? On the money, in the pledge of allegiance and such?

But in church, well, it's all Jesus all the time. So my advice to atheists would be this.. if your kids are interested in scouting, just let them say the traditional oath and get on with it.

Ideally, they really need to drop the last vestige of religion in the scouts (which is the oath). The grief it causes is way out of proportion to what the scouts actually do. Scouting is not church -- they don't sit around talking theology. The scouts go camping, they travel, they have weekly meetings with some kind of activities and secular moral lessons, and they do a lot of community service.

Religious discussions are actually avoided in the scouts, since the organization is open to any religion. Given that fact, you can't get deep into religious talk anyway when you've potentially got a mix of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists etc.

I think another factor keeping the scouts blessedly religion-free is that the hard-core churchgoing types actually don't even have their kids in scouting, they have them busy with church groups.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') was in the Scouts when it meant something. We learned how to hunt, drink ( hard stuff ), trap, shoot, and help old ladies across the street.