philip964 wrote: Thu Apr 27, 2023 12:54 pm
My guy didn’t bring these down. But my guy was a follower of this guy though. He added one more “ Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self”
These are great rules to live by to have a successful and happy life.
School doesn’t want to teach morals anymore.
It would seem
A “rules to live by” would not be a bad thing to have posted in schools for kids to see.
They would need to be purged of thee, God and thou.
Some more added, like be punctual, don’t do drugs, if you find a gun, don’t touch it, tell an adult, and take pride in the work you do.
But yes, posting the Ten Commandments is wrong.
In the "Stonemont" series of plausible post-CME survival fiction books, the author's (Steven C. Smith) main character declares that the law of the land in Stonemont shall be:
1. The Ten Commandments;
2. The Golden Rule;
3. Common Decency towards one another in private and in public life.
The character further stipulates that even though some residents may not be Christians, those are still very good rules to live by. You might be an atheist or worship a doorknob—and believe that what the religious person calls divine providence is really merely blind luck—but it is
still a better way to live when one treats others as he’d want to be treated, honors one's parents, doesn’t steal or lust after what isn’t his, doesn’t murder, doesn’t bear false witness, etc., etc.
I don’t know that there were any atheists among the Founders, but there were certainly theists who believed in the existence of a divine authority, yet didn’t accept the complete Bible as their guide for life—Thomas Jefferson among them.
Quoting Wikipedia…
Courtroom friezes: The South Wall Frieze includes figures of lawgivers from the ancient world and includes Menes, Hammurabi, Moses, Solomon, Lycurgus, Solon, Draco, Confucius, and Augustus. The North Wall Frieze shows lawgivers from the Middle Ages on and includes representations of Justinian, Muhammad, Charlemagne, John, King of England, Louis IX of France, Hugo Grotius, Sir William Blackstone, John Marshall, and Napoleon. The Moses frieze depicts him holding the Ten Commandments, although only commandments six through ten, usually considered the more secular commands, are visible [emphasis mine ~ TAM]. In 1997, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) asked for the image of Muhammad to be removed from the marble frieze of the façade. While appreciating that Muhammad was included in the court's pantheon of 18 prominent lawgivers of history, CAIR noted that Islam discourages depictions of Muhammad in any artistic representation. CAIR also objected that Muhammad was shown with a sword, which they claimed reinforced stereotypes of Muslims as intolerant conquerors. Chief Justice William Rehnquist rejected the request to sandblast Muhammad, saying the artwork "was intended only to recognize him, among many other lawgivers, as an important figure in the history of law; it is not intended as a form of idol worship". The court later added a footnote to tourist materials, calling it "a well-intentioned attempt by the sculptor to honor Muhammad".
The concept of "law-givers" is an ancient one, and most cultures have some form of law-giver tradition in their religious underpinnings and ancient mythologies. It’s pretty much indisputable that, while Western culture certainly has many other influences (see the above mentioned
other law-givers), the Judeo-Christian influence has most strongly directed the post-dark age West's eventual ethical/legal/moral underpinnings. Personally, I would go a step further and declare that the more we as a culture walk away from those underpinnings, the more we will experience continued and worsening social and political chaos.
Quoting from the second in the Stonemont series mentioned above:
"Patrick Henry said that virtue, morality and religion are the great pillars of government, and were the armor that made our country invincible in its early days. John Adams said that the U.S. Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people and that it was wholly inadequate for the government of any other. There can be no argument that those pillars cracked and crumbled in later years, or that the moral and religious underpinnings of our country dissolved in a culture increasingly consumed with self and celebrity worship. As Abraham Lincoln, Douglas Macarthur and many others warned us, the nation which could not be defeated from without was eventually weakened and defeated from within."
So while I understand that people may get offended and focus only on the idea that the first part of the Ten Commandments on public buildings somehow "forces religion down their throats", in their zeal to perceive offense, they lose sight of the fact that the
rest of it teaches how we must
ALL act if we’re all going to get along together as a just and unified society. If we eliminate those reminders from the public square, we deserve the results.
In a free society, you are at liberty to ignore the first several of the Ten Commandments for the simple reason that the 1st Amendment of our constitution guarantees your right to accept or reject them. You may mentally delete them, or substitute the phrase "I am your Doorknob, and you shall have no other doorknobs before me". After all, that right preexists its codification in the amendment…the amendment merely recognizing its existence and guaranteeing its protection. But you can’t really ignore the secular (for lack of a better term) commandments, because they lay down some fundamental rules about how we are to behave toward one another if we want to have a functioning and just society, and they are universally applicable—as is the Golden Rule—regardless of what one’s spiritual inclinations may be.
As a religious person myself, I freely concede that my opinion in the matter may be somewhat biased. But I would challenge my accuser to tell me what parts of commandments 6 through 10 are anathema to a free society.
Other than that, I have no opinion on the matter.
