Elitism for dummies

Hat-tip to my fellow blogger and Archdruid over at that epicentre of Beaker culture (near Milton Keynes) for this little story. It's about 11 year old wannabe boy scout George Pratt, resident of Midsomer Norton near Bath who has been chucked out of that movement after 10 months of service because he doesn't believe in God.

I posted on this subject before when I learned that the boy scout movement is an openly elitist organisation who insist that members must believe in God (they're not particularly fussy about which ones) in order to attain full membership. A unbelieving cynic (like me) simply sees this as a way of ensuring the maintenance of an unquestioning "in-group", i.e. that regardless or your character, ethics, ability or background, as long as you have an invisible friend that you are willing to make a promise to then you're in. This is a shame since what I fear this constraint actually does is make unnecessary bluffers of a good proportion of it's young members (great moral lesson for future life there!). Anyway as any parent knows, forget Yahweh, Allah and Buddha how many 10 year old kids actually have enough insight into anything to have strong convictions about it? (other than PlayStation or XBox of course...)

As the good Archdruid points out (and she should know!) this entry qualification is actually more onerous than those required to join most mainstream religions in the first place, entry into those organisations seems to rest with some third party mumbling a few words whilst dribbling magic water on a baby's head or hacking at some body part or other of an unfortunate infant, in both cases reassuringly far too young to understand what the hell is going on.

Hopefully if Pratt junior can manage to dodge the multitudes of murderers that live in places called "Midsomer" long enough to accrue some broader perspective on this matter he will realise that he's actually lucky to have avoided yet another mechanism for religious indoctrination, but more importantly as he gets older he'll realise that you don't need a woggle to have fun rubbing things together outdoors!