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Comment by leephillips | Hacker News Reader

To be a merit badge counselor in the Boy Scouts, you must agree to a statement that begins, "The Boy Scouts of America maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God." I don't know any scientists or engineers who would be willing to sign on to this kind of bigotry, although I'm sure there are some. So the Boy Scouts make due with whoever's left. It doesn't seem as if the Girl Scouts have a similar requirement. If that's true, they'll have a larger pool of higher-quality counselors to help the girls with science and engineering study, and will soon outclass the Boy Scouts.

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As a scout I agreed to it vacuously. No God, no obligation, and it's not that hard to fulfill a vacuous obligation. I'm sure that's not what they meant, but I figured "be friendly" and "tell kids that homosexuals are unclean rapists" [1,2,3] were also obviously contradictory in spirit.

If they get political cop-outs from their pledges, then so do I.

[1] unclean: "We believe that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the requirement in the Scout Oath that a Scout be morally straight and in the Scout Law that a Scout be clean in word and deed, and that homosexuals do not provide a desirable role model for Scouts.” https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-699.ZO.html

[2] rapists: E.g., http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gordon-klingenschmitt-bo...

[3] To their credit, BSA has since modernized its policy and, hopefully, this remains a minority voice. But still, a large and vocal minority IME.

So far as I know, Girl Scouts is a separate, and secular, organization. And, there are unofficially "tolerant" boy scout troops.

This is because the boy scouts of America is a Mormon initiative.

In terms of finances I think they're the biggest by a narrow margin, but they make up 15% of the membership (a huge chunk of which doesn't even participate), recently withdrew from both sponsoring the Varsity and Venturer programs, have all sorts of exceptions to the way they run the program that no one else does, and a majority supports withdrawing entirely, but sure - let's blame Mormons for a stance the organization had before they even partnered up.

It's "bigotry" for a company founded on religious principles to be religious?

FWIW there's a huge difference between "sorry, but this is a safe space for religious people" and "if you're not a religious person then you can't be a good American".

I don't think anyone has a problem with the former. But yes, the latter is... worthy of criticism, especially from engineers and scientists who pay attention to things like empirical counter-examples. Maybe not bigoted, but also clearly false.

In case this is a serious question, I'll answer you: no, of course not. But do you feel that the import of the statement I quoted is merely that the BSA is a religious organization?

>I don't know any scientists or engineers who would be willing to sign on to this kind of bigotry

I guess you don't know many engineers, or you only know software engineers in Silicon Valley or something. Engineers, in my experience, and especially the non-software kind, tend to be extremely religious. In fact, studies have found that many middle eastern terrorists come from engineering backgrounds. The engineers I've worked with have been overwhelmingly conservative, and frequently religious. (Those that weren't conservative were usually libertarian.)

Yeah, your typical Millennial programmer in the Bay Area probably isn't religious at all, but hang around some 40+ mechanical or electrical engineers and you'll see an entirely different crowd, with probably a lot of Trump supporters.

We've probably encountered a different engineering demographic. But it's not just a question of being religious. Would the religious engineers of your acquaintance say that unbelievers are incapable of being the best kind of citizens, by virtue of their lack of belief in the supernatural? That's what the Boy Scouts say.

I haven't asked any that particular question, but I see no reason to think that many religious people, engineers or not, would answer that they believe that unbelievers are incapable of being the best kind of citizens. That's a pretty normal kind of belief for religious Americans really.

I suppose you're right, that this kind of bigotry is commonly considered acceptable among believers. I know more scientists well than engineers. Even the ones who are Christians would be appalled by the Boy Scout Principle.

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