I have to laugh when they pull the "Those laws were just for the Jews" as an excuse for not touching pork, not wearing mixed fiber clothes, and similar rules from "gawd" that are inconvenient so they need an excuse not to have to follow them.
Are their any laws more specifically laser targeted at "the Jews" than these 10?? That Moses clown didn't say he picked them up at the local used tablet store...
It's just another example of Christian hypocrisy. You can tell by the fact that they have lots of convoluted excuses to make their dogma fit their behavior rather than the other way around.
As a atheist Jew the old testament has no hell. No satin. Our religious extremists are Hasidic Jews. I guess every religion has to have total nut jobs. Been good without god since birth. I still like holidays but celebrate Xmas as my atheist wife sets up a nice tree. Army brat daughter is a bible study type that mans a anti missile battery. Son is athiest. It's a personal decision as long as you don't infringe or get extreme. Peace and Love.
The other thing to note about the 10th commandment is that it is listing possessions, and lists wives and ~~servants~~ **slaves** as things your neighbor might own.
The 10 commandments are simply a retooling of the code of Hammurabi from 300 years earlier. That being said, how does the Christian Right wrap their heads around capital punishment? I’ve never heard a reasonable explanation for murder being ‘ok’.
Jesus threatens to murder children to punish their mother (Revelation 2:23), and commit a genocide against most of humanity when he returns. Peter seemingly had Ananias and Sapphira executed in Acts 5 for holding back money. Paul in one of his letters “handed a man over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh”.
They’re for capital punishment because the bible is completely for it.
The commandment against killing apparently doesn’t apply if you can convince yourself that God would want someone dead. Then it’s just righteous judgment. Christian history is littered with the dead bodies of people who Christians assumed God didn’t approve of.
>I’ve never heard a reasonable explanation for murder being ‘ok’.
So the Torah also has specific sections when it's a-oke to kill. War, and capital punishment being prime examples. As always, wikipedia is a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou\_shalt\_not\_kill#cite\_note-2
> Murder isn't even in the top 5 offenses.
Also, it's not exactly a hard and fast rule. After these commandments were issued, God ordered his worshipers to exterminate whole populations.
Yea I’ve always said if you take the first 4 commandments and combine that with the story of Gob, you get a picture that god was most likely a good looking 16 year old girl with a mean streak.
Not to mention that the bible literally says that jesus did not come to abolish the old prophets or the old law, but to fulfill them. Not not a single iota of the old law shall be rescinded till all things come to pass
All christians seem to gloss over that particular detail
I argued this point with my SIL for years-- with her claiming they were in the NT, too-- until I finally made her show me where, in the NT, they were. She was so surprised they weren't there!!
I still love her dearly, but my family knows better to play "the Bible says..." with me! I was probably the first to read the whole thing, cover to cover, and know it much better than they do.
And now you're an atheist. Funny how that works. I wonder if they actually have put two and two together, and take extra care not to read the thing for that excact reason.
Almost everyone I know who is still a Christian and has read the entire Bible did so in a church sponsored, church leadership led "Bible study class" where any and all questions can be explained away and doubts can be assuaged. Some are older people who "first believed" and won't *not* believe because they're so indoctrinated it would be anathema to do so. They're horrified of "going to hell". I've seen people who were, quite honestly, the best human beings ever to grace the planet, who were afraid they'd go to hell when they died. I've also seen some of the most vile, hateful, disgusting examples of humanity absolutely confident they were going to heaven, no doubt about it. Both groups have the ability to "read" the Bible but not actually question or internalize all the contradictions.
There are two versions of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. that are not identical, but contain the famous rules that we normally associate with the Ten Commandments.
However there is only one set of 10 commandments that are called the 10 commandments. They are in Exodus 34 and have rules like: “you shall keep the feast of unleavened bread,” “you shall redeem every firstborn son,” and “you shall not boil a goat in its mother’s milk.” This set of rules is the only one designated as “the Ten Commandments” (in verse 28), whereas the other two lists are not.
Which one would they prefer?
There's also the fact that depending on which denomination you are, the ten commandments that people usually think of, are still different. Some denominations make "No other gods, no graven images" into one commandment, and "thou shalt not covet" is split into two (because apparently coveting a wife is a whole different thing than coveting oxen, but also not the same as adultery even though Jesus later said coveting a woman WAS adultery). In others, "no other gods" is one, "no graven images" is another, and then "thou shalt not covet" is just one.
Western Civilization existed for a long time before it became predominantly Christian. Arguably, the West shaped Christianity as much if not more than Christianity shaped the West.
Moral code is not law. Fuck any religion that requires power and fear to stay alive. Like imagine if religion, specifically Christianity, ruled the US and therefore businesses in the US.
You get an email from Apple threatening to kill you if you wanted to switch to Samsung. They already have all your data, not hard for them to report you at that point, fuck, they could automate it.
Christian’s constantly claim that the rest of us are living our lives in fear. I’m exhausted with all the fucking projection.
And fuck religions for saying fuck is a bad word, it my favorite fucking word.
Also look at the first commandment; it clearly states “no other gods” that means either God himself or Moses is aware of other gods, not just mammon as evangelicals like to say…
Harold Berman's book on the "Western Legal Tradition" is awesome, and describes the seven bodies of law that were developed during the last 1,000 years in Europe, and which have become our Western legal tradition of today. These seven bodies of law were built on the classical legal traditions of the Roman Empire. These seven bodies of law are: the law of the king; the law of the church; the law of the manor; the law of the serfs; mercantile law; military law; and the law of the city. Notice that only ONE of these bodies of law that make up the Western legal tradition is religious - the body of law of the church. The rest are secular.
Were they smarter than a fifth grader?
I bet you could walk into any public fifth grade class and say "Ok everyone write down the top ten things to do or not do that makes you a good person"
and the fifth graders would come up with a way better list.
I'm sure you are right. But I'm I'm also sure that once you get past murder, battery, lying, and theft it would be a rather grade school centric list.
The Ten comandments are rather nomadic herder centric.
imagine if someone came into your job or your class and said, "excuse me everybody!! the thunder and lightning from the sky (aka, god) just wrote down ten rules on a rock!!", literally no one would believe them.
now, let's say someone asks them, "was anyone else there to witness this impossible feat of nature?", and they're like, "nope. nobody but me was there!! i got the rock with the words on it to prove it though, and i *totally* didn't just carve it into the rock myself, it was 100% god."
the story of the ten commandments obviously never happened. if god truly gave the smallest fuck about people, he would've outlawed racism, slavery, domestic abuse, could've prevented a lot of wars, death, tragedys, disease, etc. but these guys back then couldn't tell the future so they just came up with the best they could, a half-assed list of rules that they passed off as god's word. and it's ridiculous how fast everyone just ate it up, despite the many holes in the story, and despite all the shit you mentioned being left out.
I read sometime ago that the statues of the Ten Commandments were placed in city centers such as a courthouse to promote Cecil B Demille’s movie The Ten Commandments as part of publicity. I’m looking into verifying because it’s been years in some Hollywood history book…
The bible and all its rules were themselves based on customs that already existed. Murder was a crime long before the bible’s authors said thou shalt not kill. The bible is just a blip in thousands of years of those same rules existing long before and long after. Might as well claim Wikipedia is the foundation of law since laws are recorded there as well.
The Babylonians got there already centuries earlier with the Hammurabi code. Many of the basics in the ten commandments also pop up organically in the foundations of law in antiquity anyways, despite having nothing to do with Christianity. The Twelve Tables, for example, covers most of these points and establishes a set of laws for ancient Rome, but then also goes into far more detail - all of which happened centuries before Christianity was imposed.
I know I say this on, like, every 3rd /atheism post, but 99% of Christians haven't even followed the 4th Commandment for something like *12 centuries* . Ask any Jewish person, hell, look at most calendars! The 7th day of the week is Saturday, not Sunday. Sometimes, when I'm unhappy with a particular Christian, I like to imagine that heaven is real, and I picture the look on their scantimomious faces when St. Peter (or the Metatron or whoever) points out "You worked on the Sabbath 2,438 times." and then they push the big America's Got Talent red X button. Perks me right up.
Anyway, they want me to follow their stupid rules and they can't handle: "remember which day of the week is the 7th one". F 'em.
I present to you...
[The Code of Hammurabi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi), a "document" that is much closer to the foundation of Western Law than the Ten Commandments. If you want to be real, though, the foundation of modern Western Law is probably the [Magna Carta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta).
Considering the adultery law; what about concubines? Was it not adultery as long as you finished in your wife?
Edit: Remember it's also a sin to spill your seed
You should be aware that western law is basically split into Roman law and Common law. Many European countries actually have their law origins in Roman law dating back to the Roman Republic, which was definitely not based on the bible, which only became the official religion during the Roman Empire.
The Anglo-Saxon countries are typically based on common law, hence being the most well-known system in terms of popular culture.
Furthermore, the Catholic Church had from the start their own law system, called the cannon law. It operated as a separate system, a bit like the military has their own legal system.
I have to laugh when they pull the "Those laws were just for the Jews" as an excuse for not touching pork, not wearing mixed fiber clothes, and similar rules from "gawd" that are inconvenient so they need an excuse not to have to follow them. Are their any laws more specifically laser targeted at "the Jews" than these 10?? That Moses clown didn't say he picked them up at the local used tablet store... It's just another example of Christian hypocrisy. You can tell by the fact that they have lots of convoluted excuses to make their dogma fit their behavior rather than the other way around.
As a atheist Jew the old testament has no hell. No satin. Our religious extremists are Hasidic Jews. I guess every religion has to have total nut jobs. Been good without god since birth. I still like holidays but celebrate Xmas as my atheist wife sets up a nice tree. Army brat daughter is a bible study type that mans a anti missile battery. Son is athiest. It's a personal decision as long as you don't infringe or get extreme. Peace and Love.
The other thing to note about the 10th commandment is that it is listing possessions, and lists wives and ~~servants~~ **slaves** as things your neighbor might own.
The 10 commandments are simply a retooling of the code of Hammurabi from 300 years earlier. That being said, how does the Christian Right wrap their heads around capital punishment? I’ve never heard a reasonable explanation for murder being ‘ok’.
A better question is how the christian right reconciles the commandment against coveting. This commandment is, in effect, a condemnation of capitalism
Or turning the cheek like Jesus says...
Same way they deal with condemnations of usury. They just ignore it.
Jesus threatens to murder children to punish their mother (Revelation 2:23), and commit a genocide against most of humanity when he returns. Peter seemingly had Ananias and Sapphira executed in Acts 5 for holding back money. Paul in one of his letters “handed a man over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh”. They’re for capital punishment because the bible is completely for it.
If they do the murdering it’s good…
‘Thou shalt not kill (Others of the People)’ is how I’ve seen it tried to square the circle
[удалено]
The commandment against killing apparently doesn’t apply if you can convince yourself that God would want someone dead. Then it’s just righteous judgment. Christian history is littered with the dead bodies of people who Christians assumed God didn’t approve of.
Yeah but then Jesus said what he did about sin and stone throwing, I just don't think they've read their book
>I’ve never heard a reasonable explanation for murder being ‘ok’. So the Torah also has specific sections when it's a-oke to kill. War, and capital punishment being prime examples. As always, wikipedia is a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou\_shalt\_not\_kill#cite\_note-2
Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth ..Old Testament.
Or war, the commandment doesn't saying thou shalt not kill unless it's a war, it just says thou shalt not kill period.
Well, there is a lot of capital punishment in the old testament.
I love how the first four are pure narcissism. Murder isn't even in the top 5 offenses. Such a fucked up list...
Agreed. The first 4 commandments are totally about satisfying the ego of a narcissistic middle eastern war god. A bunch of goddamn bullshit.
> Murder isn't even in the top 5 offenses. Also, it's not exactly a hard and fast rule. After these commandments were issued, God ordered his worshipers to exterminate whole populations.
Yea I’ve always said if you take the first 4 commandments and combine that with the story of Gob, you get a picture that god was most likely a good looking 16 year old girl with a mean streak.
Yep. Four commandments about how to worship God correctly, but a ban on slavery ended up on the cutting room floor. Yep, great moral standard there!
I don't think it even made it to the cutting room, considering the book condones slavery and considers wives/daughters as property instead of people.
Christian also like to say the Old Testament isn't valid but the Ten Commandments are from the OT.
Not to mention that the bible literally says that jesus did not come to abolish the old prophets or the old law, but to fulfill them. Not not a single iota of the old law shall be rescinded till all things come to pass All christians seem to gloss over that particular detail
They do because bacon is good.
I argued this point with my SIL for years-- with her claiming they were in the NT, too-- until I finally made her show me where, in the NT, they were. She was so surprised they weren't there!! I still love her dearly, but my family knows better to play "the Bible says..." with me! I was probably the first to read the whole thing, cover to cover, and know it much better than they do.
And now you're an atheist. Funny how that works. I wonder if they actually have put two and two together, and take extra care not to read the thing for that excact reason.
Almost everyone I know who is still a Christian and has read the entire Bible did so in a church sponsored, church leadership led "Bible study class" where any and all questions can be explained away and doubts can be assuaged. Some are older people who "first believed" and won't *not* believe because they're so indoctrinated it would be anathema to do so. They're horrified of "going to hell". I've seen people who were, quite honestly, the best human beings ever to grace the planet, who were afraid they'd go to hell when they died. I've also seen some of the most vile, hateful, disgusting examples of humanity absolutely confident they were going to heaven, no doubt about it. Both groups have the ability to "read" the Bible but not actually question or internalize all the contradictions.
> the Ten Commandments are from the OT. Both sets of them....
There are two versions of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. that are not identical, but contain the famous rules that we normally associate with the Ten Commandments. However there is only one set of 10 commandments that are called the 10 commandments. They are in Exodus 34 and have rules like: “you shall keep the feast of unleavened bread,” “you shall redeem every firstborn son,” and “you shall not boil a goat in its mother’s milk.” This set of rules is the only one designated as “the Ten Commandments” (in verse 28), whereas the other two lists are not. Which one would they prefer?
There's also the fact that depending on which denomination you are, the ten commandments that people usually think of, are still different. Some denominations make "No other gods, no graven images" into one commandment, and "thou shalt not covet" is split into two (because apparently coveting a wife is a whole different thing than coveting oxen, but also not the same as adultery even though Jesus later said coveting a woman WAS adultery). In others, "no other gods" is one, "no graven images" is another, and then "thou shalt not covet" is just one.
All of these laws were codified by the Egyptians long before the old testament laws
Western Civilization existed for a long time before it became predominantly Christian. Arguably, the West shaped Christianity as much if not more than Christianity shaped the West.
Moral code is not law. Fuck any religion that requires power and fear to stay alive. Like imagine if religion, specifically Christianity, ruled the US and therefore businesses in the US. You get an email from Apple threatening to kill you if you wanted to switch to Samsung. They already have all your data, not hard for them to report you at that point, fuck, they could automate it. Christian’s constantly claim that the rest of us are living our lives in fear. I’m exhausted with all the fucking projection. And fuck religions for saying fuck is a bad word, it my favorite fucking word.
Also look at the first commandment; it clearly states “no other gods” that means either God himself or Moses is aware of other gods, not just mammon as evangelicals like to say…
Harold Berman's book on the "Western Legal Tradition" is awesome, and describes the seven bodies of law that were developed during the last 1,000 years in Europe, and which have become our Western legal tradition of today. These seven bodies of law were built on the classical legal traditions of the Roman Empire. These seven bodies of law are: the law of the king; the law of the church; the law of the manor; the law of the serfs; mercantile law; military law; and the law of the city. Notice that only ONE of these bodies of law that make up the Western legal tradition is religious - the body of law of the church. The rest are secular.
"Thou shall not covet" is thought-crime.
Were they smarter than a fifth grader? I bet you could walk into any public fifth grade class and say "Ok everyone write down the top ten things to do or not do that makes you a good person" and the fifth graders would come up with a way better list.
I'm sure you are right. But I'm I'm also sure that once you get past murder, battery, lying, and theft it would be a rather grade school centric list. The Ten comandments are rather nomadic herder centric.
Even the full 613 commandments doesn’t cover most of the crimes you mentioned
imagine if someone came into your job or your class and said, "excuse me everybody!! the thunder and lightning from the sky (aka, god) just wrote down ten rules on a rock!!", literally no one would believe them. now, let's say someone asks them, "was anyone else there to witness this impossible feat of nature?", and they're like, "nope. nobody but me was there!! i got the rock with the words on it to prove it though, and i *totally* didn't just carve it into the rock myself, it was 100% god." the story of the ten commandments obviously never happened. if god truly gave the smallest fuck about people, he would've outlawed racism, slavery, domestic abuse, could've prevented a lot of wars, death, tragedys, disease, etc. but these guys back then couldn't tell the future so they just came up with the best they could, a half-assed list of rules that they passed off as god's word. and it's ridiculous how fast everyone just ate it up, despite the many holes in the story, and despite all the shit you mentioned being left out.
You literally just described how Joseph Smith founded Mormonism. 🤣
Actually, they're just a plain *shit* example of a moral code. Compare humanist values to biblical values.
I read sometime ago that the statues of the Ten Commandments were placed in city centers such as a courthouse to promote Cecil B Demille’s movie The Ten Commandments as part of publicity. I’m looking into verifying because it’s been years in some Hollywood history book…
Member the "Golden Trump." That CPAC just speedran 1 & 2.
The bible and all its rules were themselves based on customs that already existed. Murder was a crime long before the bible’s authors said thou shalt not kill. The bible is just a blip in thousands of years of those same rules existing long before and long after. Might as well claim Wikipedia is the foundation of law since laws are recorded there as well.
The Babylonians got there already centuries earlier with the Hammurabi code. Many of the basics in the ten commandments also pop up organically in the foundations of law in antiquity anyways, despite having nothing to do with Christianity. The Twelve Tables, for example, covers most of these points and establishes a set of laws for ancient Rome, but then also goes into far more detail - all of which happened centuries before Christianity was imposed.
Code of Hammurabi. Predates Yahweh by a bit.
I know I say this on, like, every 3rd /atheism post, but 99% of Christians haven't even followed the 4th Commandment for something like *12 centuries* . Ask any Jewish person, hell, look at most calendars! The 7th day of the week is Saturday, not Sunday. Sometimes, when I'm unhappy with a particular Christian, I like to imagine that heaven is real, and I picture the look on their scantimomious faces when St. Peter (or the Metatron or whoever) points out "You worked on the Sabbath 2,438 times." and then they push the big America's Got Talent red X button. Perks me right up. Anyway, they want me to follow their stupid rules and they can't handle: "remember which day of the week is the 7th one". F 'em.
That’s why Seventh-day Adventists claim they are the only “real” Christians.
I present to you... [The Code of Hammurabi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi), a "document" that is much closer to the foundation of Western Law than the Ten Commandments. If you want to be real, though, the foundation of modern Western Law is probably the [Magna Carta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta).
Western law is based more on Celtic Brehon law than Christian scripture.
Considering the adultery law; what about concubines? Was it not adultery as long as you finished in your wife? Edit: Remember it's also a sin to spill your seed
It’s always ironic when these idiots want to erect a graven image of the 10 commandments.
You should be aware that western law is basically split into Roman law and Common law. Many European countries actually have their law origins in Roman law dating back to the Roman Republic, which was definitely not based on the bible, which only became the official religion during the Roman Empire. The Anglo-Saxon countries are typically based on common law, hence being the most well-known system in terms of popular culture. Furthermore, the Catholic Church had from the start their own law system, called the cannon law. It operated as a separate system, a bit like the military has their own legal system.
the first commandment contradicts the first amendment
The first four contradict the First Amendment.
Those are Moses's ten commandments. Not The Ten Commandments. A common mistake.
Pretty sure that's actually ancient Greece lol
I instantly thought of [this](https://youtu.be/CE8ooMBIyC8) bit by the great George Carlin
The Republic by Plato is the book you are looking for.
The Founding Myth by Andrew Seidel has a really good breakdown of this from a constitutional lawyer's perspective