Andrew Louden wrote:

On Sat, 14 May 2005 20:49:45 +0000 (UTC), Emma Pease
<emma@kanpai.stanford.edu> wrote:

In article <118ci1lg63himb4@corp.supernews.com>, Brian Westley wrote:

Apparently, James Watson (co-discoverer of the structure of DNA)
is good enough to have a Jamboree subcamp named after him, but
since he's an atheist, he would be refused membership. I think
Donald Johanson, discoverer of the 'Lucy' skeleton, is also
an atheist.

http://www.scouting.org/jamboree/resources/subcamps/index.html

What hypocrites.

Not necessarily.

1. They almost certainly didn't check religious beliefs. I don't
think I found any reference to religion or church-going in any of the
bios for the subcamp honorees. Remember that on the whole theism is
not a major part of the BSA. Do a search of the newsletter and
guidebook for the Jamboree

http://www.scouting.org/jamboree/bulletin/

It mentions religious services (including UU), accommodation for food
(only kosher not halal), a daily devotional booklet (might be
interesting to see what is in that), and a special religious award
(though looking at the requirements I would have hoped there would
have been one section on learning about faith(s) other than ones own).
But religion is otherwise a very small part of the whole.

2. Any in the BSA who were aware of Watson's beliefs and involved in
the naming may not have approved of official BSA policy as regards
non-theists and so might be subversives not hypocrites.

I would say a rather obvious lack in the list is no female explorers
(e.g., Kathryn Sullivan, astronaut, scout, pusher of hands-on science
education). Admittedly Jamboree is mostly male (a few female
scoutmasters and perhaps some female scouts in some of the patrols
invited from other countries).

There is an award called God and Country, there's an award for just
about every religion and denomination.

But NOT for the Unitarian Universalist Association, not any more. The "Love
& Help" (for Cub Scouts) and "Religion In Life" (for Boy Scouts) awards
were yanked by the BSA a few years ago because the materials for the medals
had the audacity to say that UUA doctrine taught that discrimination was
wrong.

http://www.uua.org/news/scouts/index.html

In article <ijqc819t7pn00k0a94v33g2hna5hlot9up@4ax.com>, Andrew Louden wrote:

There is an award called God and Country, there's an award for just
about every religion and denomination. At least once a year we had
Scout Sunday where the Troop would show up at the church that hosted
your Troop, and there would be a ceramony, I always hated it because i
was an Atheist when i was in high school

Did you enjoy the rest (camping, canoeing, etc) or were you forced to
stay in?

The religious emphasis varies from troop to troop (and probably
affected by chartering organization, a church chartering organization
is likely to have more religious troop events). Note the
denominational religious awards (and God and Country is part of the
denominational awards) are not given by the BSA but by the individual
religions and not required for advancement (they are also available to
the Girl Scouts but when I was a scout there was no mention of them
that I can ever recall [a couple of years ago I looked at my old
manuals and found one brief mention of them in the section on what you
could wear on the uniform and where). The only time I can recall that
my troop attended a service was for the funeral of one of my fellow
scouts.

My brother's Boy Scout troop probably didn't emphasize religion too
much (I know for a fact that one of the scoutmasters was a non-theist)
though I knew they had more of it. The BSA does have major problems.
Their refusal to recognize that non-theists (and gays) can be moral
and be good scouts and the government subsidies (e.g., the site of the
National Jamboree is provided to them free by the federal government)
for a religiously discriminatory group (I'm not even sure it is a
great idea to have the government provide some subsidies free even if
they were non-discriminatory).