{"id":2160,"date":"2011-10-06T07:32:22","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T12:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=2160"},"modified":"2011-10-06T07:32:22","modified_gmt":"2011-10-06T12:32:22","slug":"scouts-and-survivors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2011\/10\/scouts-and-survivors\/","title":{"rendered":"Scouts and Survivors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Monday, 03 October 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Twice now in the past few days, I have been presented with information on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scouting.org\/\">Boy Scouts<\/a>. I guess my son is at the age where he can join this club. The club engages in many great activities, and I&#8217;m sure my son would try his best to get every single little merit badge the club offers. The club appears to support some great ideals, too. From their website:<\/p>\n<p>The Boy Scouts of America provides youth with programs and activities that allow them to<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Try new things.<\/li>\n<li>Provide service to others.<\/li>\n<li>Build self-confidence.<\/li>\n<li>Reinforce ethical standards.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>However, there are a few problems.<\/p>\n<p>First, as my wife noted, it&#8217;s a boys-only club. This didn&#8217;t bother me, really, because I pointed out that there is an equivalent club for girls (it&#8217;s called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.girlscouts.org\/\">Girl Scouts<\/a>), but my wife says this club is not affiliated with the Boy Scouts &#8211; it was formed in response to the Boy Scouts, since the Boy Scouts left out girls. So, I&#8217;m not sure on this one; maybe it&#8217;s an issue, maybe it&#8217;s not.<\/p>\n<p>More importantly, the club requires all new members to recite (and, apparently, follow) the Scout Oath. The Oath is as follows:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to  obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself  physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>What, you may ask, is the Scout Law spoken of in this oath?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s basically a list of attributes that members are to embody. There are a number of good qualities encouraged on the list, including being honest, brave, and courteous. The final quality mentioned is reverence, with this accompanying explanation:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reverent<\/strong> \u2013 A Scout is reverent toward God. He is faithful in his religious duties. He respects the beliefs of others.<\/p>\n<p>The idea of being reverent (deeply respectful) to a non-existent being is just plain silly, but even if the god of the bible exists, I don&#8217;t see why he&#8217;d be deserving of reverence. It&#8217;s hard to see how my son could do his &#8220;duty to God&#8221; when there&#8217;s no clear definition of what this is. The god of the bible made some pretty bizarre and cruel requests of his followers, and so I wouldn&#8217;t want my son following this god reverentially without first requesting a rationale for the duty. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.faqs.org\/faqs\/scouting\/rec.scouting.issues\/section-11.html\">first Boy Scout handbook<\/a> stated that no one was good unless they believed in God which, of course, is complete bullshit (by this definition, all babies are bad).<\/p>\n<p>Of lesser concern is the commitment to do one&#8217;s best to do &#8220;my duty&#8221; to the country. Unlike God, the country is real and it actually has bestowed some benefit on a number of people. But again, I don&#8217;t like the idea of blind allegiance. America was formed by rebellion and dissent, and there are a number of national policies that I think do not deserve &#8220;my duty&#8221; &#8211; I would much prefer my son swear an oath that he will follow his conscience or that he will try his best to make his country a good place for its citizens to live in.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, no gays allowed.<\/p>\n<p>The official site doesn&#8217;t appear to say anything about this, but <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Boy_Scouts_of_America_membership_controversies#cite_note-4\">this Wikipedia page<\/a> does indicate the Boy Scouts have had a history of discriminating against homosexual members and parents.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tuesday, 04 October 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This evening, Owen and I watched the <em>Star Trek: The Animated Series<\/em> episode &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Albatross_%28Star_Trek:_The_Animated_Series%29\">Albatross<\/a>.&#8221; In it, the Dramians (a weird kind of aliens) accuse Dr. McCoy of having unleashed a plague upon their planet 19 years earlier. The Dramians claim the plague had a 100% mortality rate. McCoy is ordered to stand trial. While investigating the case, Captain Kirk meets up with a Dramian who survived the plague and can therefore testify on McCoy&#8217;s behalf.<\/p>\n<p>When the show was over, Owen asked to see the list of <em>Star Trek <\/em>episodes. (Yes, I keep a list of <em>Star Trek<\/em> episodes handy. You never know when you&#8217;re going to need it.) I took it down off the shelf and he asked me which episode was called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Survivor_%28Star_Trek:_The_Animated_Series%29\">Survivor<\/a>.&#8221; Surprised he had remembered the episode (we watched it back in July), I pointed out that it was episode #6. Owen then asked: &#8220;If they are on a five-year mission, then how come the show said that McCoy helped the survivor 19 years ago?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I thought this was an awesome question. First, it shows he <em>really<\/em> pays attention. Second, it appears he is already on the path of nit-picking science fiction, which is great fun.<\/p>\n<p>I explained that the survivor from episode #6 is not the same survivor that was in the episode we just watched. I defined the word &#8220;survivor.&#8221; This had the added benefit of showing him why the reality show <em>Survivor<\/em> is so named. I next pointed out that, while McCoy is on the Enterprise as part of a five-year mission, he must have been part of other missions, on other ships, in the past, and that is probably when he originally met up with the Dramians.<\/p>\n<p>Owen crinkled his eyebrows and thought about it for a while. I think he thought I was just feeding him a bogus answer. Finally, he accepted my explanation and asked if we could watch another episode. I said no; it was time for bed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monday, 03 October 2011 Twice now in the past few days, I have been presented with information on Boy Scouts. I guess my son is at the age where he can join this club. The club engages in many great activities, and I&#8217;m sure my son would try his best to get every single little [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2160"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2162,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2160\/revisions\/2162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}