Remember the Ten Commandments in teh courthouse? Well here's an update.

Except that the Jewish Torah is derived from the old testament of the bible.

Anyway, there has to be more to laws than “love they neighbor as thyself”…

yeah, I know… I’m saying that all law can be summed up by it.

if you loved your neighbor as yourself, you wouldn’t be killing your neihbor, or stealing from him, or getting into fights with him, or raping him, or doing whatever… the list goes on.

I’m not positive, but a few religions adapted from the bible anyways (except the jewish religion).

Just as Christianity borrowed several things from other religions- the big one being the Torah- but they also took concepts of Satan and Hell from other religions. They took their very values from other religions. In fact, Christianity isn’t that different from Zoroastrianism, which is one of the first organized religions in the world.

<img src=“http://www.rpgclassics.com/staff/tenchimaru/td.gif”> Unless you’re suicidal.

Originally posted by Cybercompost
Yes. They might as well, just considering that seperation of church and state is in the CONSTITUTION…

Actually, it isn’t.

Originally posted by Sorcerer
Actually, it isn’t.

Heh. And I got a four in AP American History- hilarious (how little I actually know about American history despite the high score). :stuck_out_tongue:

Don’t feel bad, it’s an incredibly common misconception.

We live in a mostly secular world. If something is done that you don’t like or you think you have to convert every person you see to your narrow minded views of religion it’s not our fault. And Christians won’t be hunted down. A few centuries back maybe, but not today. We’ve evolved to far as a society to attempt to eliminate entire groups of people just because they believe in a God instead of the Secular norm. And if you actually believe what you said about Christians being hunted down then you need to think about that. We’re not going to be hunted down, the only way you could put yourself in danger because of your faith is because you go too far in pushing it on people.

Originally posted by Orakio
ain’t gonna be long now before us christians will be hunted down because of our beliefs
Don’t be silly. Well aside from the fact that many Christian activist groups hold a lot of political sway, the only time you can’t promote religion is when you’re acting out an official function as a government employee. There’s nothing stopping this judge from putting his monument on his front lawn, or in front of his private business, or <i>anywhere at all</i> other than a public government institution. And schools all over the country have stuff like “Prayer Club” and religious after-school activities.

you do bring up a good point SK.

I think a lot of the paranoia about being hunted down comes from the Bible’s prophecies aboot the end days. I have noticed alot of pagan roots in christianity. I’d like to point out that the Christian Hell is a demonized version of Hel. And instead of it being cold, it’s hot. If only Jesus had lost an eye on the cross, it would make a better comparison to Odin hanging on Yggdrasil.
(i love learning about the norse). I became a christian when i was 14, and changed when i was 17. I still like to learn about it though, and get into deep conversations about it’s mysteries, a good theological discussion can be fun every once in a while.

StarStorm, that really wasnt what i meant. But useually if you have religious views, you wont sit on a Jury…

ain’t gonna be long now before us christians will be hunted down because of our beliefs

You finally caught on. The first thing I’m going to do is burn down all of the northeastern churches, and then I’m going to go clockwise across the country. Any Christians that remain, I’m going to tie them up, force them to watch gay Jesus porn, and then beat them to death with a cruxifix. Yep. All because you’re in a religion that I don’t belong to. Because thats what we agnostics do- we fucking hate Christians. Yep.

Oh, wait… we don’t have a book that JUSTIFIES these actions… FUCK- I’m going to have to get writing one. I’ll tell people that the fucking God of Cheese descended from the Cheese Heaven and told me to kill all the infidels. That should do. I’ll call it Cheddar-ism or something. -_-

Originally posted by Born_Loser
StarStorm, that really wasnt what i meant. But useually if you have religious views, you wont sit on a Jury…
Why is that?

This isn’t religious at all. This is purely political on both fronts. The ones that want to get rid of the thing are promoting their belief that religious symbols belong in appropriate places. The ones that want to keep it feel that their religion is being threatened, even though it isn’t, by the big cats in Washington. And I’m talking about the politicians there, NOT the giant cats the government’s been training to use in the search for Saddam Hussein.

I’m a christian (well, catholic if you’re one of the fuckers that say “catholics aren’t christians”), and I don’t feel threatened. That’s because I don’t force my belief onto others. When you tell someone what they believe in is wrong, it tends to get them violent. If they’re in the north, they’ll sue you. If they’re in the south, they’ll pull out their sawed-off and blow your head off. That’s why I fear the south.

Born Loser: People get off of juries on religious reasons only if there’s a conflict somehow, such as an important religious day, a disbelief in judging others, etc. There was a Dilbert about this, but I don’t have a scanner.

This one-courthouse case is small potatoes. I’d get to work on changing a few other, more widespread conventions, like the placing of a hand on a bible in order to swear our more solemn oaths, as when a witness goes to the stand in court, or when our President is inaugurated (sp?, I’m sure). The courtroom example is, I believe, particularly good; one of the Ten Commandments, you’ll remember, is “Thou shalt not bear false witness…”

Note that it doesn’t forbid lying per se. If you’re hiding Jews in your attic you are perfectly justified in telling the SS that your neighbors are just spreading nasty rumors because you’ve got a better car than them. The Commandments are very carefully worded, when you study them closely. Also note that this paragraph had nothing to do with my point in general ^_^.

Curtis: I don’t think this is an example of “The South” standing against “progress.” Moore is the only Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court that’s really standing against anything, and he’s gathered some support, and lost quite a bit (many Christian organizations are ignoring this case, for purely political reasons; they’ve got no ideological reasons to). “The South” is not at all unified on this issue. Don’t stereotype them.

Frame: You’ll just have to be annoyed, I guess, because as has been said already, prosletyzation is a part of Christian belief. They think they’re doing you a favor. I personally think that no God worth believing in would send me to Hell (even one of the cooshy circles, like that of Righteous Unbelievers), for not knowing the right name (i.e., acknowledging that Christ died to redeem mankind), but that’s a reason for not being Christian, not for having a low opinion of Christians.

Our law is based on Christian (and by way of the Old Testament, Talmudic) law. I’d like to see a stele with the Code of Hammurrabi (grah, “sp?” again) on it, but then again, no one would be able to read it, and it’s not as relevant as the Ten Commandments themselves.

Furthermore, look at the monument itself. It’s got the twin slabs with the Commandments on them, but look at the face, where it shows a line (perhaps the whole text; I’m not sure) of the Declaration of Independence, with the line “…laws of Nature and Nature’s God” inscribed in bold. I think the monument’s historical context outweighs the religious import.

[Dennis Miller]But that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.[/Dennis Miller]

“the placing of a hand on a bible in order to swear our more solemn oaths, as when a witness goes to the stand in court,”

I thought they got rid of that already.

“Our law is based on Christian (and by way of the Old Testament, Talmudic) law.”

Hardly. It shares some values with that law, but those values are older than both sets, and as you yourself just implied, date back farther. All societies around the entire world have similar values, which appear in all sorts of religions and philosophies. A secular law that forbids murder is thus based just as much on Buddhist law, or the ideas of Confucius, Socrates and Seneca, as on Christian law.

“…laws of Nature and Nature’s God”

Unfortunately, the Declaration is a rhetorical piece and not a legal document, and “Nature’s God” is a textbook Deistic phrase that doesn’t reference Christianity. And the monument was certainly first and foremost about “religious import,” since Moore himself said as much.

SK, I think that Moore was mistaken in that last point, which you referenced. The religious meaning of the Ten Commandments is overshadowed in comparison to their influence on the men who founded the United States.

I’m pretty sure that the framers of our laws against murder, for example, and purjury, were Christians, not Bhuddists or Confucians. Socrates, well, I’m more willing to accept that point, as classical philosophy was another thing that could have deeply influeced the Founding Fathers, either directly or by precedent.

The fact that the Declaration is rhetorical rather than legal doesn’t change it’s historical value any more than a relative lack of creativity in the subjects of the Ten Commandments negates it’s value.

But again, this is coming from an agnostic, so I have even less authority in speculating on Moore’s statements (wether he truly believed them or was making a political appeal for support) than would a Christian of Moore’s denomination.

I think that what many people are forgetting is that our laws are BASED on the ten commandments. Really, if you read them, you realize that I think, all of them have a place in our legal system. So there.

Even so, I don’t see it becoming illegal to practice Gluttony any time soon.

Well, in that example, Epic, gluttony is more of a Roman Catholic Seven Deadly Sin thing rather than one of the Ten Commandments. A better example would be making it illegal to work on Saturday.