So, the girl guides are changing their oath from "God, queen and country" to "Queen and community".

If they are dropping God and country why are they retaining queen and why "community"?

The world's going madder by the day.

If you have any interest in the Girl Guides, then the Jimmy Saville police want to interview you.

But to answer your question, god doesn't exist, country music is shi'ite and they are big fans of Joel McHale.

With "wit" like that you could start a civil war in the Middle East.

1. Because the Queen is their patron
2. Because "community" is more relevant than "country"

There already is.

I wouldn't have kept Queen in there, personally, but it's a welcome change that guides will no longer be required to pledge an oath to a fictitious entity.



In what way?

There was a guy interviewed on the radio today from the Humanist Soc who used almost those very words, when asked why they should leave "The Queen" in there but remove "God" he said "Well I expect its because the Queen is a real thing"

I suspect rather related: [url=http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8932301/atheism-has-failed-only-religion-can-fight-the-barbariansin an article in the [iSpectator[/i last week,[/url the Chief Rabbi declared that, in the future, intellectuals will be astonished that anyone was an atheist in these times.

Okay, that's a simplified version.

But much of what he appears to be saying (apart from, in essence, there being no morality or altruism without a god) is that 'our culture,' without religion, will fall.

It's an argument that is appearing rather regularly these days and does, indeed, remind me of the view espoused on this forum by Dally and Dally Jnr that religion is important. But only for 'those others', not for them, of course.

Part of it is simply the ramblings of people who think that their own belief of choice is not as popular or as influential as in previous times.

But part of it genuinely seems to be held as a view that religion is the glue that binds us. It's a view that is often seen on the [iTelegraph[/i forums.

Such people never seem willing to actually explain what pieces of theology they believe – or to explain what one is to do if one does not believe in the central tenets of any religion (the most central being, of course, the existence of a god).

See the comments on that piece. Atheists apparently breed less – which will also forward the demise of western civilisation.

I find myself wondering if what they all mean is simply that everyone should feign belief and attend church dutifully each week. Or do they have some magic pill that everyone can take in order to genuinely believe? Themselves included, perhaps?

Is it real, extended faith they crave from everyone – or just a preparedness to go along with the forms. And breeding, of course.

It is quite, quite extraordinary.

Why should a child with no religious beliefs be forced to make some meaningless "oath" to a "god" they have no belief in?

Adults who do not believe in a god (and even those who do) don't even have to swear an oath to a god in the gravest criminal trials. Why should the Guides anachronistically be an exception? It's plain common sense - unless such as Dally want the Guides to be exclusively for "Christian" children, which (although something the Guides themselves got past a long time ago) is I suspect pretty near to the mark.

In response to Mintball's general remarks, religious fekkwitery is on the rise in some areas, because all flavours of religion have understood that there needs to be coercion and peer pressure for the game to succeed, and the places where various religions have a strong hold are invariably places where you are, to put it neutrally, not welcome unless you subscribe to that particular lunacy. Certain large areas of the US seem to be in the thrall of cults and I have the impression it is getting worse.

Mintball's post makes the real point. People say they are ethical, have morality, etc but as I have speculated umpteen times, that's more often than not because they or their parents were exposed to a degree of religion and of course our national and continental "culture" is Christian - a religion. Totalitarian regimes suppress religion for a reason - as it imbues a moral resistance to the states ideology.

As more generations are brought up without the "moral compass" of religion so our society will tend towards break down. Except, I do not believe it will because there will be a religious revival to fill the void.

Don't talk (again). Is it really your position that we need religion to know not to kill, or not to steal? If The Bible or The Koran had not been written, do you seriously believe that we'd all be unashamedly raping and enslaving one another?

Most people are good because they're good, not because a book tells them to be. Indeed, if you are only good because your religion tells you to be, then you're a pretty ty human being.