I don’t DO just one:
Ancient Rome
Ancient Greece
Ancient Egypt
Assyria
Persia
Babylon
Sumeria
China (Ancient and current)
Japan (Ancient and current)
Zulu
Masaai
Maori
Vedic societies and successor cultures
Mongol
Viet
Siamese
Iroquois
Huron
Natchez
Cherokee
Ojibway
Inca
Maya
Aztec
In fact, I’ll knock off here because I have not yet found a society in which murder was ever permitted.
What makes you think it was a lie ?
Except that being a religious commandment, it’s effective translation is “Don’t kill your fellow believers in the One True Way of worshipping the One True God; the lives of others have no meaning.” Or the ever popular “Kill them all, let God sort them out.”
Footbaths aren’t a threat against unbelievers; the Ten Commandments are. Thous shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me and all that; a rule historically enforced with great brutality.
There’s a word for someone who relies on “personal responsibility”; well, two words. Victim, or hypocrite. We live in a world full of forces and organizations that can crush any individual like a bug. Either a person relies on an organization to protect them, or they get squashed. Including many of the protected or outright coddled & priviliged people who whine about personal responsibility. Whose real goal in many cases in to make people easier for them to prey upon.
Most people aren’t Christian, and Christianity doesn’t stop people from killing; quite the opposite. Nor are they especially wise.
The police stop murder just by existing. Eliminate the police and society would degenerate into the War of All Against All within a generation or two.
Not cooties. Smallpox. Trivial quibble, I know, but still…
One more time before I check up on each one… You are saying that all these societies “never encountered the Ten Commandments”?
And Poland… don’t forget Poland!
Because there is no mention of it in any historical document.
I’d be happy to read about it if you can point me anywheres.
Effective translation of the Koran, maybe. What Ten Commandments are you referring to?
– Exodus 20:13 "You shall not murder. –
Where are you getting the rest?
What threat does the Ten Commandments pose? Legal? Physical? Spiritual?
For a government institution to pay for a specific religious necessity is a dangerous precedent and even under the flimsy excuse of safety it is intimidating that one religion gets a government freebie while others do not.
We were talking in terms of the contributors to public safety and their ranking in the scope of things, not people who rely on an extreme.
Sure it does, for the most part… not in every single case, but the murder-quelling effects of Christianity and all other non-murdering religions are obvious. You said it yourself down below.
“Eliminate the police and society would degenerate into the War of All Against All within a generation or two.”
Religion is an effective thought police for those who are indocrtrinated, and I can guarantee you that there are millions of people who do what their religion tells them to do. Billions, even. You can see for yourself in everyday life. I seriously doubt that all these obedient, church on Sunday, follow the sacraments type people are going to scoff at a commandment they were brought up to obey. Millions upon millions are told to go to church on Sunday, and they do. Why would they not obey the commandment not to murder?
Aside from that, if Christianity has no effect on whether people choose to kill or not, then just how are the Ten Commandments threatening? You claim the religion is powerless, but you also claim the commandments have power. The commandments are part of the religion, a very integral part.
Oh yeah, and Hebrew scholars have always agreed that killing in war is allowed by the Bible, so a War of All Against All could not be stopped by the Ten Commandments but the looting should not be so severe because that commandment has no loophole, AFAICT.
Remind me to hold your opinion in my brain for when the death penalty issue arises.
That was a British person, silly.
The USA wasn’t even around then!
I am sure that different people can try to spin different dates for some contact. However, setting aside any speculation that they might not have even been compiled until the Babylonian Captivity, and relying on tradional dates for the Exodus, then no society in existence prior to around 1300 B.C.E. (including the peoples who became the Israelites) could have had an acquaintance with the Ten Commandments.
Somewhat more realistically, while the odd Israelite might have wandered away from home and mentioned the Ten Commandments to those he encountered (who may or may not have ever mentioned them to anyone else), it would be far more probable that the first mention of the Israelites to anyone outside their homes would not have occurred until the conquest of Babylon permitted the exiles to return to Judaea, at which time some who had become traders during the exile might have begun taking news of the Commandments out of the Middle East, so no one outside Mesopotamia prior to about 540 B.C.E. had any such information. The serious expansion of the Jewish merchant efforts in the Mediterranean did not occur until after the Greek conquest of the Middle East and much of North Africa in the fourth century B.C.E. and did not really make it farther down the Mediterranean to Rome until the second century B.C.E.
Mind you, we only have evidence that Jewish merchants lived in the Mediterranean cities (with a few moving up the Rhone Valley) by the first century. We have no evidence that they actually spent any time talking about their beliefs and there are no Egyptian, Carthiginian, Roman, Greek, or Persian documents or stories that identify anything resembling the Ten Commandments even though all those societies already had their own laws that condemned murder.
After the first century, there would have been more contact with the Ten Commandments in the widespread Roman world, but only among the people who converted to Christianity.
A Jewish community made it to Kochin India in the first post-exilic wave of merchants and a second wave got to Mumbai around the first century B.C.E., but again, there is no evidence that they spread the word of the Commandments outside their small communities, (and the Kochin community arrived around 2800 years after the Vedic society was established which was a few thousand years after the first Indus Valley settlement).
All the evidence we have regarding Jews in China indicate a ninth century immigration, so a few thousand years of that society would never have encountered them.
Then there are all the societies in the Americas that could not have encountered the Ten Commandments prior to 1492, and most of which encountered them substantially later.
Now, if you want to get whiny and say that each of those societies did “encounter” the Ten Commandments (after the sixthe century B.C.E. or the first century B.C.E. or the fifteenth century), (aside from the Sumerians and others whose societies had already risen and fallen prior to 1300 B.C.E.), then I will merely point out that your claim was that it was the Ten Commandments that was keeping people from murdering each other and regardless whether a someone in China might have heard of them in 1250 B.C.E. or in 900 or after the fourteenth century when European trade began to actually reach China in any realistic way, the reality is that such a society was able to survive for thousands of years without the people, at large, having any awareness of the specific codes of a small Bronze Age peoples on the Southeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea.
So, using the realistic description of a society encountering a concept to mean that the majority of its members (or even only its literate class) had an actual awareness of a particular document or series of statements, the majority of the societies of the world did not encounter the Ten Commandments until after the European invasions of the sisxteenth century and later.
Your claim that precipitated this excursion
is shown to be false.
The first several commandments are purely religious in nature. They have been employed to prevent atheists from holding office, to outlaw language that one person or another considered profane or blasphemous, to enforce blue laws that interfere with commerce, and to create a hostile atmosphere in which people who worship more than one god or no gods are persecuted with impunity because they are believed to be in violation of God’s law, even when no specific statute is violated.
As to the footbaths, unless they are restricted so that only Muslims may use them, I do not see the problem. I get tired of hanging around Christians with stinky feet. We already accommodate Christians by making Christmas a national holiday, so it is not as though there is no precedent for making accommodations as long as the benefits are not restricted to one religion.
I admit that now, and regret not thinking my statement through. Now it is time for some learning on why I did not think it through.
Of those societies you listed, or their subsequent successors, have any of them gone backwards in terms of casual bloodlust since they were introduced to the Ten Commandments? I know I am cherry-picking but a quick glance at the list makes my brain react with fleeting scenes of Mongolian hordes, Romans feeding Christians to lions for entertainment, the ancient practice of decimation, and Inca/Mayan/Aztec human sacrifices.
I say no. I say that for many societies, the introduction of Christianity and it’s Ten Commandments eventually put an end to these types of killings of the innocent. I know there are huge glaring exceptions to that line of thought so needless to say, I will not be making any sweeping, solid statements in relation any time soon. A lesson has been learned by me and I will be schooling myself on my shortcomings on understanding the issue. Thank you for your dilligent effort. It was a pleasure to be set on straighter course.
As long as it is a state or lower office, then it is well within the rights of the state (or lower) to prevent an atheist from holding office. It is legal. I would think that that particular state’s constitution would be not only a threat but a full-fledged assault regardless of where the framers got the idea in the first place.
I am unfamiliar with any blasphemy laws so I cannot understand how the Ten Commandments could have been employed in such a way.
I would think, once again, that the actual laws are more of a threat than the document that spawned them. The laws obviously pass the Constitutional smell test, so the words that inspired the Constitutionally allowed state law should be no more of a threat than the existing law itself.
To believe people will definitely be “persecuted with impunity” because the Ten Commandments hang on a wall is akin to believing that you may end up stabbed by a blindfolded lady holding a scale. It is up to a lawyer to make sure that no prosecution takes place without a specific statute violation.
Hostile though, maybe. Point out where in the Constitution that things that appear hostile to certain people are forbidden. This is an issue of free speech and nothing more.
There is no such Constitutional term as a national holiday. Congress only has the power to close federal offices, and maybe a few other minor things on a federal holiday. That is a clear catering to the Christians and perhaps it does set a precedent. If Christians can have a holiday, Muslims can have free footbaths, then what is the problem with the Ten Commandments hanging in a state courthouse?
As for everyone getting to use the footbaths… everyone can look at the Ten Commandments hanging on a courtroom wall, so that should make it okay then? The government would not even be paying for the Ten Commandments as they were invented a long time ago.
You may wish to take that up with the Supreme Court that has ruled that the 14th Amendment establishes rights for citizens that supersede those limited by the states–a general opinion that has not been overturned or seriously challenged even by Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, or Alito.
And even if it were legal, it is wrong.
Most of the blasphemy laws have finally been repealed or fallen into disuse, but they were based on the understanding that one could not “take the name of God in vain.”
The laws pass the idiotic “ceremonial deism” test. I am not challenging their legality. You asked what harm they presented and it was an adherence to an understanding of that particular reading of that religious document that led to their enactment. Opposition to repeal still invokes cries that we are desecrating the “Lord’s Day.”
Persecution can occur without a specific law being prosecuted. Judges who rule against parties because they do not view those plaintiffs or defendants as sufficiently religious, (or of the sufficiently correct religious belief) cloaking their opinions in religious claims, are still persecuting people. Lawyers who slip appeals to religious belief into their presentations and are not corrected by judges are able to use those beliefs to persecute persons.
Does the mere presence of the tablet makje that happen? No. But the tolerance of that mixing of particular religion into public law makes it easier to persuade people that such impermi9ssible mixing is actuall permitted.
No. It is an issue of the enforcers of law supporting people who are using religion to persecute others or failing to protect persons because they have the “wrong” belief. The actual dereliction of duty may be based on personal prejudices, but they are given more weight when the community is willing to accept the mixing of prevalent religious beliefs with the law. (I thought you were the advocate of personal responsibility. Why is it the responsibility of the government to tell everyone what one group of citizens happen to believe in a religious context? Let them put their copies of the Ten Commandments on their own walls.)
You cannot buy a stamp at a post office or secure a passport on Christmas because of Federal law. Regardless of the quibbling over language, that is an action undertaken to support one religious group. In contrast, the Ten Commandments violate the beliefs of atheists and polytheists and animists*, meaning such people are not “allowed” but "compelled’ to “look at” the government advocating religious beliefs they do not share. And, of course, there is the fact that there is no consensus regarding the numbering of the commandments, so any list will be an insult to some large group of Christians or Jews.
< points at Brainglutton’s link.
“Murder”, in this context, meaning “Thou shalt not kill any fellow Jew, unless Jehovah says so or they violate some minor religious law or convert to another religion. Everyone else, KILL ! !”
It’s an attempt to push Christianity down people’s throats, and Christianity is the greatest evil in human history, in my opinion.
You mean like, oh, putting up the Ten Commandments ? Oh, let me guess; it’s only OTHER religions you don’t want to see catered to.
They are nothing of the sort. There’s zero evidence that religion of any kind reduces the murder rate, and some evidence that it increases it. And Christianity is not and never has been a “non murdering religion”; it’s always been quite bloodthirsty.
Which, primarily, means “Attack or oppress anyone who is of a different religion”.
Because they are told God wants them to. Or that what they are doing isn’t murder. Or because the voice in their head that they’ve decided is God tells them to.
I have never claimed that it’s powerless. Just insane, stupid, and evil.
If everyone on the other side ( except the young women taken for sex slaves ) is dead, who’s to stop the looting ? Have you ever actually looked at the Old Testament ?
:dubious: Where did that come from ?
I will get to the rest of this post and other posts in a bit. For now a quickie:
Brainglutton posted a link about a British General who may have purposely infected Native Americans with smallpox. This happened before the United States even existed. Maybe you or he should explain how the USA pulled that one off.
If the 14th amendment truly establishes such rights that supersede a state discriminatory religious law then what chance does the Ten Commandments have in causing any harm? If the 14th amendment is powerful enough to squish the effects of a current, full-fledged, in writing, state constitution law, then it surely can protect against a conceptual threat seen only by certain people… under certain conditions.
Maybe I should have stated that I was more interested in current threats rather than historical/outdated threats. Thanks for the effort.
Please note that I am from Massachusetts. The major cries are from government hacks who like their weekends permanently off, left-wingers who think another day of work will oppress the working class and poison the planet by another 14%, and malcontents who like complaining about stuff. Now that I think about it, I would not be surprised if all those letters were from sock puppet fundies trying to appeal to the sensibilities of the left…
The hanging of the Ten Commandments does not mix religion into public law any more than putting a statue of Lady Justice in a courtroom mixes law with blindfolds. Hanging a picture and mixing law and religion are two separate things.
76% of the population of the USA is Christian yet we do pretty well keeping the fundies down to a dull roar. At 76% saturation, you are going to have things popping up all over the place that will worry some people. Letting those worries spill over to infringement upon free speech is not acceptable in my book.
It is a by-product function of the government to tell everyone what one group of citizens happen to believe in a religious context for the same reason we have a national anthem and artwork hanging in the halls of almost every government building.
It is not the responsibility of government to do so, but rather it is a time honored, essential identity celebration and historical commemoration, if you will. Artwork, statues, architecture and what we choose as national landmarks have serious, serious meaning and are very important to our national identity. Even though 24% of people do not identify themselves with the Ten Commandments, 76% do. Contrary to what you wrote, hanging the Ten Commandments does not tell what one group of citizens believes in a religious context because who says a Christian really believes any of the Ten Commandments? In reality, I bet your average Christian cherry picks for the important ones and ignores the annoying ones and doesn’t bother to figure out the cryptic/vague ones.
Your complaints appear valid, but the fact that Christmas is a federal holiday shows that it is either Constitutionally allowable to cater to a specific religion or someone is not doing their job. If Christmas as a federal holiday is Constitutionally legal, then what is up with not letting the Ten Commandments hang in a courthouse?
I am pretty sure there has to be a worship of the graven image in question. The fourth commandment tells people that God shows “steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.”.
There is probably a half dozen translations for “keep”, none of which give me a zinger or point, but I can’t see an idolatry problems as long as God gets the lions share of the love. You would have to ask Judge Moore if he shuns God in favor of the tablet. Growing up, us Catholics worshiped the body and blood of Christ in the image of a cup of wine and a wafer. We did this every week for an hour. His blood, his tablets, it’s all good in my humble opinion.
He owes me two apologies now. He accused me of something I clearly did not do in post #121, and then tried to fool me into thinking that a British army commander in 1763 infecting Native Americans with smallpox is the fault of the United States of America.
You are making up those qualifiers. This is the Straight Dope, not The Made Up Dope.
[quote]
It’s an attempt to push Christianity down people’s throats, and Christianity is the greatest evil in human history, in my opinion.
[quote]
There oughta be a law…
The judge we have talking about paid for the Ten Commandments himself. It is the money that bugs me. If there is free money involved for a clearly religious item, then I see a threat. Precedent is big in these trying times. Dual-use items do not bug me so much. My opinion should not be taken as being in direct line with the laws.
Okay.
Okay.
There are very few Christian attacks in my lifetime. A few abortion clinic killers. The oppression, meh. I don’t see it. Perhaps an example would help.
Where are Christians told these things. I would like to sit in on a session for education purposes. Perhaps you have a transcript?
You claimed that Christianity was powerless to stop people from killing.
[quote]
If everyone on the other side ( except the young women taken for sex slaves ) is dead, who’s to stop the looting ? Have you ever actually looked at the Old Testament ?
[quote]
Ingrained morals would stop looting by proper Christians.
If police stop murders by merely existing (your claim) then the death penalty surely must stop murders by existing. A death penalty is a worse thing to face than a police officer in most cases when one is involved in murder.
I was playing on the fact that almost every person who hates Christians is also against the death penalty.
No, I’m not. Even the most casual reading of the Old Testament will show that I’m right. That’s what they did.
The war on Iraq comes to mind, and the likely one on Iran. Of course it could be mere coincidence that Christians keeps attacking Islamic countries, but somehow I doubt it. And then there’s the fundie Christian support for Israel against the Islamic, and the eventual expectation that they’ll be killed by either God or the Antichrist when the End Times come, depending on who you talk to.
Because that’s not what it’s for. That’s like expecting Nazism to promote racial tolerance.
The Inquisition would disagree. Along with millions of others.
Not at all. The people who are up for the death penalty are generally either innocent, stupid, or crazy ( in the realistic, not legal sense ). Not to mention that the obvious race, gender and class bias of the death penalty make it hard to take seriously as a punishment for anything but being born the wrong sort of person.
< snickers > My, you lead a sheltered life. You mean like the Taliban ?
Stunning. Simply stunning.
Don’t you know ? If you are not a right wing, death penalty loving Bushie, you aren’t Christian. Or American, for that matter. You’re obviously a Christian hating, America hating Commie-liberal terrorist. Or even a . . . Democrat ?! :eek: