Requirement 11 (Cub Scouts Duty To God)

Recently I had to explain to my 7 year old son the consequences that being an atheist might have on his being a cub scout.

You see the scouts are inherently discriminatory against atheists. The cub scout promise starts "I promise to do my duty to god..." so if you don't believe in god, how can you possibly keep your scout promise?

I didn't realize this about the scouts until he had spent almost a year as a tiger scout and even then there didn't seem to be any material impact. After all, he says the Pledge of Allegiance every day at school and we understand that this was written a long time ago and the inclusions of god is a formality, so it is no big deal. In addition I must point out that while the official stance of the scouts is a discriminatory one, his particular den has never shown any such inclination.

For Wolf scouts there are requirements to demonstrate your duty to god. We discussed ways that he might be able to achieve his scout requirements without believing in god. We mentioned that some might be met simply by understanding his own and other religions. We discussed what it meant to have faith. (About a year ago he demonstrated his own show of faith by proclaiming that despite no evidence to prove it, he felt that by simply believing in magic it would be true. Something I ultimately could not refute.) We discussed that believing that god does not exist is basically faith since you can't prove it. We discussed helping the Ethical Humanist Society.

I have to say he took the whole thing like a champ. He was very upset about the whole thing and was on the verge of tears for quite a while. He asked us why people are like this? Why do they discriminate? We explained that people have been discriminated against since as far as recorded history. We reminded him of Rosa Parks and other well known examples of discrimination against people because of race, religion or gender. On the bright side I believe that dealing with adversity such as discrimination builds character.

Ultimately he said when he grows up he wants to start his own scouting organization. One that doesn't discriminate against anyone.