miriku.com

being in the distinct minority of americans who can actually recite the ten commandments (including the preamble), let’s go on record saying that contrary to popular right wing meme, they have nothing to do with being the basis of our laws

ones that are laws or close enough:

• though shall not kill
• though shall not steal
• though shall not bear false witness

ones that are not even remotely laws

• you shall not have other gods before me
• you shall not take the lord’s name in vain
• you shall keep the sabbath day holy
• honor thy mother and thy father
• thou shall not commit adultery
• thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife
• thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s possessions

and as a bonus, since no society ever thought that murder, stealing, and lying under oath were good ideas, we can say that america doesn’t in fact follow anything that’s unique about the ten commandments.

that’s using the catholic commandments btw, if you’re protestant then drop the ‘name in vain’ and add ‘no graven images’ and i think some other minor changes too.

next week: why the constitution doesn’t even remotely say what you think it does

i wrote a while ago that it’s amazing how everyone’s religion’s tenets seem to perfectly match their own personal beliefs and biases.

well, i found my own counterexample: the conservapedia project decided that the bible is too liberal and have taken it upon themselves to rewrite it, re: http://conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project . they’re adding free market rhetoric and removing things like forgiveness (including the ‘cast the first stone’ story and the line ‘forgive them father for they know not what they do’)

another little piece of evidence that it’s not religion that’s the problem, it’s lack of empathy for ‘the other’ that comes from living in small, closed and close-minded communities. these people are not taking religion seriously in any way. make them atheist and they’d simply remove the word ‘god’ from the book and go on right on happily rewriting it to keep justifying their own behavior to themselves.

it’s amazing how much modern spirituality, philosophy, and general thinktanking is spent rationalizing and justifying being shitty to others.