5 Things the Religious Right Needs to Learn About the 10 Commandments

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/5-things-religious-right-needs-learn-about-10-commandments

***SNIP

1. The Ten Commandments don’t provide a coherent system of governance. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to base a government solely on the Ten Commandments for the simple reason that they are not a governance document. Nor could the Ten Commandments have influenced the Constitution, the foundation of American law, because the two documents serve very different purposes.

***SNIP

2. Nothing in the Constitution makes it illegal to break religious laws. The Ten Commandments are very clear on certain religious matters: There is one God. You owe him your allegiance and you’re not to put other gods before him. You are not to take his name in vain or desecrate the Sabbath. Take care to honor your parents.

***SNIP

3. The Religious Right’s main argument is based on a phony quote by James Madison. Virginian James Madison is known as the “Father of the Constitution.” Madison was the primary author of the Constitution and worked tirelessly to see it adopted. A decade later, he helped draft the Bill of Rights.

***SNIP

4. Historians have listed the real sources that inspired the Constitution. If the Ten Commandments had inspired the founders, we would see evidence of that in the founders’ writings and speeches. It isn’t there.

[DetlefK]

1. HA! When reading the headline, I knew this had to be an alternet-article.

[cbayer]

2. Good points, but I don't see the Ten Commandments brought

up that much by them. It's all those other, rather obscure, passages that they seem to go for.

I guess it's mostly about displaying them in public buildings.

[safeinOhio]

3. Which 10 Commandments?

Protestant Catholic, Hebrew.

First Tables of Stone (Exodus 20)
 "which Moses didst break&quot 
 

Second Tables of Stone (Exodus 34)
 "the words that were on the


http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/whichcom.htm