Poly’s back! Yippee! 
I prefer the term “radical right” myself…
Esprix
Esprix said:
Ick. Please don’t confuse us state’s rights, minimalize the government except for massive defense spending, nuke Cuba for Elian’s sake types with those religious wackos. The conservative- even the extremist- right wing isn’t necessarily the religious right wing.
JMCJ
Give to Radiskull!
Why do people want the Ten Commandments posted? Because we’re Americans, and we like to gloss over complex problems with simple little lists. No one ever reads them. In fact, when you read them carefully (the ones in the Bible, not the pre-packaged paraphrase people like to show you), you start to think, hmm, maybe these aren’t the most appropriate moral instructions for our children. (I’d love to go into “What’s wrong with the Big Ten”. . . Where’s the appropriate forum for that?)
But even though no one really reads them, everyone seems to agree with them anyway, and thinks everyone else should read them. That’s the essense of looking for a quick fix to complicated problems. Grocery-list morality is certainly good for getting votes, but for either prescribing ethics or making public policy, it’s pretty lame.
Your Quadell
Oh, I think right here would be a fine place to go into just that.
(I’m going from memory here-bear with me.)
These four have less to do with morals and more to do with God’s ego. Those of us who understand the Constitution also know that these four are exactly what keeps us from posting them–it amounts to the government telling athiests, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. that they’re wrong. The Religious Right-types believe the government has the responsibility to tell non-Christians they’re wrong.
I can’t really understand this one. Isn’t capitalism based on the idea of coveting? You have money, I want it–how can I get it away from you? Duane has a boss Camaro, I want a boss Camaro, I need to earn money to get a boss Camaro.
Not a bad idea in general, but what if your mother and father beat you? What if they make you work for 10 hours in their sweatshop every day after school? This commandment would suggest that you just honor them and take it. You could say, “Oh, that’s different,” but that smacks of the evil Situational Ethics that the posting advocates are trying to avoid.
This leaves us with:
So there’s the moral code our kids are lacking–don’t kill, steal, lie, or fool around on your spouse. Go find any kid over, say, six and ask them if it’s OK to kill, steal, lie, or fool around on your spouse. I can’t imagine many of them will say, “Yes.” These are not big secrets that we’re keeping from our kids, folks!
Sorry for the rant, but this is a huge issue here in Kentucky. People cannot separate morals and ethics, and cannot separate ethics from religion. I’m tired of hearing about God being taken out of our schools, and the corruption of our moral fiber, and how everything would be just peachy fine if we were only a theocracy. Sheesh.
Dr. J
Dr. J., I agree with your conclusion (I’m in KY too), but I want you to know. . . those aren’t the Ten Commandments. Those are someone’s easy-to-swallow paraphrase of the Ten Commandments.
I’m going to give my patented Ten Commandments Rant now. (I was invited, after all.)
What’s in the Bible (Exodus 20) is:
Okay, so YHWH is in charge. Flies in the face of every religion except the Big Monotheistic Three. What do you say to a Hindo child? “Sorry, but this school says your religion is wrong and ours is right”?
I’ll also note that no god brought me out of Egypt. This directly states its target audience were the Jews living at that time. Not modern America.
Holy cow! The Ten Commandments say God will punish me for my great grandfather’s sin? Yep. In fact, for the “sin” of worshipping their own religion freely. Artistically, even. This is not a friendly god here.
Wait, this is one of the Big Ten? Lying didn’t make the cut; assault, bullying, slavery, none of these were included, but saying “Oh my God” warrants inclusion?
You can see why they paraphrased this one. Okay, besides being overly long, tacitly condoning slavery (what do you think “manservants” were in those days?), and being totally arbitrary, this has to be the least followed Commandment. Don’t work on Saturday, hmmm? Has anyone here ever met a Christian who followed this commandment? Down to not letting his kids work? No one respects this commandment, and rightly so. It’s irrelevant. Even Jesus worked on the Sabbath, and was persecuted for doing so (Matthew 12). Kids are given homework to do on the weekend. This is moral instruction? It might have made sense for a nomadic people, 6000 years ago, but it holds no relevance to contemporary American law.
Also, you’ll note this is the first Commandment where YHWH makes clear he’s only talking to men. (Property-owning adult men, it would seem.) The Ten Commandments were certainly not equal opportunity (but the real blatant sexism doesn’t occur until later.)
I think that’s the real reason people want the Big Ten up in schools. (By the way, what land is the LORD giving me? I think I missed out on something.)
All routine stuff, found in most religions. The murder line, of course, wasn’t enforced real consistently. (See most encounters the Israel had with its neighbors.) Adultry, by the way, was sex with a married woman. Who wasn’t your wife.
Note that this says nothing about lying in general: just purjury. I guess kids purjuring themselves is a big problem nowadays?
And last but not least:
Read that again. A man’s wife is his property, according to the Ten Commandments, plain and simple. Anybody still want that in schools?
Seeing past that, I personally don’t feel coveting is wrong. But many religions have similar prohibitions. (The sutras in Hinduism, for example.)
. . .
So there they are. The Ten Commandments. Not something I want in my kid’s classroom.
Now if this is your religion, I understand that. All these complaints I have - a limited audience, an arbitrary moral code, the disapproval of other belief systems - these are all par for the course, so far as religion goes. I’m not saying they’re any worse than the Sutras, the teachings of the Gautama Buddha, or that overly simplistic “An ye harm none” business. But to put a set of instructions up in school requires that those instructions have merit from an objective viewpoint. And these just don’t cut it.
Your Quadell
I agree, mostly. And since this is my thread, I’d think that you guys are staying on thread. Going to prayer in schools is another issue.
I still say the 10 Commandments (yes, in full, not bowlderized), would be OK, IF in context. The Code of Hammurabi is pretty brutal at times, and the Magna Carta is more about the rights of the nobles than the “people”. But, together, w/ a few more, they show some of the history behind our laws today. The bit about posting a “short-cleaned up” version, by itself, in all our schools is just stupid.
good posts, guys!
Here are your 10 Commandments Summarized:
- Do not have any other gods before me.
- Do not make for yourselves any idols.
- Do not use the Lord’s name in vain.
- Keep the Sabbath day holy.
- Honor your Father and you Mother.
- Do not murder.
- Do not be guilty of adultery.
- Do not steal
- Do not lie.
- Do not envy.
There they are summarized. Here they are explained.
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Do not have any gods except me. So all the other religions are wrong.
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Do not make for yourselves any idols. So do not put anything else before God.
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Do not use the Lord’s name in vain. If you love God, you will not use his name to curse others.
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Keep the Sabbath day holy. Go to church on Sundays. You could at least honor him for a couple of hours 1 day a week.
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Honor your Father and you Mother. Do as your mother and father say as long as they are following God’s laws.
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Do not murder. Common sense. And it looks that lately a lot of the kids at our school need to hear this, but is going to take more than just posting these on the walls of your schools, but that is a whole other thread.
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Do not be guilty of adultery. Another common sense but if mommy and daddy did it, why is it such a bad thing?
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Do not steal. Common sense again, but it continually happens.
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Do not lie. This is pretty straight forward, and if everyone followed this law, we would not have a lot of our problems. “But a little lie never hurt anyone.” Give me a friggin break.
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Do not envy. Or do not covet, as it is a lot of times put. Do not want your neighbor’s spouse or property. You can strive to have a house like his house, just don’t want his.
You have to realize a couple of things. That these commandments does prohibit having other religions, as all religions do. Everyone who follows this religion has to believe in it, and in which case makes others like atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, etc wrong. Also, do not take the exact words to heart. Back in those days it was a male dominant society. So a lot of it does refer to women and property or other wise. It is not to be taken word for exact word. You are to take the principles behind it and apply that. That is what I have attempted to do here for you. I may have done a poor job at it considering the intimating environment, (being the minority in the argument). But you all have valid points and if I were to take as Quadell quoted I may not want it in my schools either. But it is the principal behind these commandments that make them needed.
Also in all honesty, one of the reasons I see this as such a big deal is because religions in general, are getting kicked so far out school; this is just a step back in the right direction.
Well that is what I have for now.
Umm, the Sabbath is SATURDAY, per the 10 Commandments. And this is just part of it. The 10 Commandments apply to modern Christianity about as much as the code of Hammurabi. We are not saying that there is not good lessons in them, the 10 C. just do not apply to most Americans. The Bible also prohibits the eating of Pork, but you don’t see the religous Right wanting to prohibit pork in our schools. Not to mention the scads of other dietary pohibitions. Why pick the 10 Comm?
Actually “multiply” appears 46 times in the KVJ Bible. Here are two of my favorites:
Genesis 1:28
and Hebrews 6:14
But to the OP…
As one of those “fundies” who wouldn’t mind seeing the ten commandments on the wall of every school and public building, I’ll give my perspective. I’ll say I agree with a portion of what Erratum said above. I do see a moral crisis in this nation as a result of the attempt for the past 30-40 years to squelch the public free expression of religion. The 10 commandments are important for several reasons. First and foremost, they are the moral foundation for both Judaism and Christianity. But they were also the basis for British common law which in turn made them (to a somewhat lesser extent) the basis for the law of our Land.
Now let me say, I’m not out there on the forefront demanding the 10 commandments being posted, but I do support the effort.
One problem I have is that those who so adamently oppose seeing those 10 Commandments feel like they are having religion thrust down their throat. Maybe that isthe intent of a few of those more extreme fundies who are putting them out there, but for most of us, it’s the moral value they have for everyone that I see as the importance. So what is the problem with seeing a list of things that people should live by? Heaven forbid they might actually have a positive effect on someone…
“We love Him because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19 †
I have seen greater freedom of religion for those who do not worship the Christian God, but perhaps that isn’t what you meant…
If you’ll note what other’s have said, that’s pretty much the problem: that it is telling all children that they should believe in the Christian God, and not use his name in vain, and take Saturday off, etc. If you lived in a primarily IPU-worshipping land, would you be just as happy to let your Christian child go to a public school that posted the IPU’s commandments? You have every right to publically express your religion as a private citizen, and to teach your child in your beliefs, but don’t you think that if a public school was explicitly endorsing the codes of a religion not your own, you’d feel they were interfering with your right to freedom of religion? If you simply want a list of moral rules (not that I think it will really do much good: “Well, I was going to murder my entire class, but I saw “Don’t Murder” posted next to today’s lunch menu! Wow, I had no idea it was wrong!”), fine, I’ll listen to your proposal; but all of the Ten Commandments don’t make the cut. What is moral about an atheist or Hindu not making “graven images”, or taking off the Christian God’s day? Truly, I can see from your point of view, it is best for all people to follow the Christian God, and a little push from the government to do so is a good thing; what if you were the minority religion (yet were just as sure that you had the one true religion) and another religion’s moral code was posted on the walls of your child’s public school?
Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that She is pink; logically, we know She is invisible because we can’t see Her.
Gaudere wrote:
Why is it not a problem for them to be chiseled into the walls of the Supreme Court of the United States - or should someone get the chisle out and remove them from there also? After all, by your reasoning, those in the “minority religion” may not get a fair trial.
“We love Him because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19 †
Who said no one has a problem with them being chiseled into the walls of the Supreme Court? Would you be as gung-ho for it if it was Buddhism’s eightfold path posted there? Or is it only your religion’s laws that get to be posted in government buildings? [Side note: I am unaware of the context of the Ten Commandments carved into the walls of the Supreme Court; if they have other religion’s laws as well, that would be considerably more fair.]
Please explain what my reasoning is, since I must be unaware of it. And I ask you as well: how free would you feel your religion, if your public schools are required to post a religion’s commandments that are not your own, with the justification that it will help your child’s morals by endorsing another religion’s laws? I think public schools should be in the business of teaching, not religious/anti-religious indoctrination.
I wonder how folks would react if instead of “In God We Trust,” our currency read “There is no God but Allah.”
shrug Ask those who decided that those were the laws they chose to chisel there. I suspect it’s because as I said before, the 10 commandments were the basis for British Common Law and therefore, at least partially, the basis for American Law.
And how is posting a list of moral laws on a wall indoctrination? You choose to look at them or you don’t. You choose to live your life by them or you don’t. It’s not the same as organized school prayer which I am against. (Prayer and religious discussion outside of the classroom by students, fine, but like you I am against organized prayer during class time)
BTW, are you aware that 95% of Americans profess belief in God and 85% identify themselves as Christian? By contrast only 7% identify themsleves as atheist or agnostic and less than 1% total among Bhuddists, Muslims and Hindus (from Barna Resarch Org., 1999) It’s not like we are talking about a lot of people, here to make a decision to look at and read the Commandments and be offended by them.
“We love Him because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19 †
Glyph
I think that it pretty clear from the OP that we were discussing schools in the US. I don’t know what county you’re from, but here in the US religions are not being “kicked out”.
MKM
What are you talking about?
Well, Christians ignore #1 (that whole “Trinity” thing is a cop out), #2 (a crucifix is a graven image), #3 (you worship a guy that proclaimed himself to be God. How much more can you take God’s name in vain?), #4 (I don’t see many people taking Saturday off, or even Sunday), and they don’t seem to pay much attention to the rest of them.
Do you have documentation for that claim?
So when non-Christians get annoyed at Christians pushing their religion on everyone else, it’s the non-Christians that are to blame for getting annoyed, not the Christians’ fault for annoying them?
So let me see if I have this correct: you believe that these are moral values “for everyone”, that is, you believe everyone should follow them, yet you don’t see that as thrusting religion down everyone’s throat?
Because I don’t like other people telling me how I “should” live my life.
You don’t see how forcing children to see the Ten Commandments every day is indoctrination? Sure, they don’t have to read them, but they still know what they say, they still know they’re there, they still know that this is the official viewpoint of the government under which they have to live.
I’m going to just assume you had a momentary bout of insanity and don’t actually think that that is relevant.
“Unless all men are free, no men are free,” or something to that effect. This country stands for religious freedom, not religious rule by majority. The 10 commandments, beneficial as they can be, do not belong posted in the public school classroom.
Esprix
Well, if they’re not going to be useful at getting anyone to follow them and believe them if they’re not going to anyhow, why post 'em?! 
And why the Ten Commandments, out of all the options? Is there any good reason besides that they are your religion’s laws? Commandments 1-4 don’t even cut it as a good law; should it be universally morally wrong to disbelieve in the Christian God? Should it be universally morally wrong to use His (and His alone) name in vain? Should it be universally morally wrong to work on Saturday? I think everybody can agree on “don’t murder”, but several commandments look a bit “iffy” if you’re looking for a universal standard of “right” behavior for society. A far more suitable choice would be “do unto others as you would have done unto you”, which was expressed by Confucius, Buddha and Cicero before J.C. came along. However, I still don’t see how just posting a “to do” list is going to help our kids! It seems like a feel-good patch.
Ah, the tyranny of the majority. Remember, Christianity was once a minor cult too. That is what I am trying to get you to think about, when I asked how you would feel if you were in the minority and had your child go to a public school that posted another religion’s laws as the “right thing to do”. Is such a situation a thing you would have approved of, if you were a Christian before it was popular? I’ll ask again: “How free would you feel your practice of religion, if your public schools are required to post a religion’s commandments that are not your own, with the justification that it will help your child’s morals to have the public school endorse another religion’s laws?”
Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that She is pink; logically, we know She is invisible because we can’t see Her.
MKM, imagine for a moment that the US was 85% Muslim and Christians were a small minority, maybe 5-7% of the population. The Muslim majority votes to post the Five Pillars of Islam in all schools and public buildings in the nation. If you protest, you are basically told ‘Too bad. The majority wants them up there, so if you have a problem with them, then don’t look. Anyway, what problem do you have with things like giving alms to those less fortunate than you? Isn’t that the kind of thing a person of any religion should do?’
‘But you’re missing the point!’ you respond. ‘These are the laws of a religion I don’t subscribe to! Why should they be posted in government buildings? Don’t you feel that that’s an implicit acknowledgement that the government says this is the “right” religion to follow? Don’t you think that those who don’t follow that religion would find this offensive?’
‘Like we said, too bad. If you’re offended, we’re sorry, but frankly, it’s not as though there’s a lot of you to offend.’
TMR
If you believed in yourself, and tore enough holes
in your pants, there was always a mist-filled alley
right around the corner.
MKM, while a few others have the argument from majority thing in hand, I’d like to challenge your numbers just a little.
from www.census.gov:
“Some statistics on religion can be found in the 1998 Statistical Abstract of the United States, Tables 89, 90, and 91”
According the the Census Bureau, (and these numbers are self-reported, BTW, as the gov’t is not allowed to ask religious questions as part of the census) 85 percent gave christianity as their religious preference. That might sound like semantic quibbling, but when coupled with the fact that only 52.7% of the population actually attends church, it’s important.
(I’m pleased that the Barna group and the Feds are in accord, BTW.)
-andros-
Excuse me, that’s 52.7% who attend regularly.