
But the Boy Scouts aren't focused on devout Catholicism, or even Catholicism generally, or even Christianity generally. As best I can tell, the Boy Scouts are open to anyone who says they're religious, regardless of the religion, and regardless of the degree of devoutness. Hindus qualify, Jews qualify, people qualify if they say "I'm religious" even though they never pray, never go to church, and don't organize any aspect of their lives around their ostensible religiosity.
This open-mindedness is generally to the Scouts' credit, but then what's the point of excluding atheists? An atheist in a group of devout Catholics might be seen as interfering with the group's educational mission -- but an atheist in a group of people of all religions, many of whom are nominally religious at most, wouldn't interfere with anything.
What's more, the Scout policy doesn't even exclude atheists -- an atheist can be a Scout so long as he pretends to religiosity, and keeps quiet about his atheism. Dishonest atheists are allowed; honest ones are excluded. Pretty counterproductive, I think.
Comment spam is an ongoing problems that we're trying to address. Previously we required people to create accounts and log in. I am thankful to say that is no longer the case. We're giving Captcha another try and are playing around with a text-based Q&A variant of Captcha. So bear with us as we try to figure out how to best get a handle ont he problem. Please note that any comment on a post more than 30 days old will go into the moderation queue, where I will get to it when I can which could be once a week.