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

[UrbScotty]

This far-right obsession with the Commandments has legal and political ramifications because fundamentalists often try to display the Commandments at seats of government.

Federal courts ruled recently on the legality of Ten Commandments displays on public property in North Dakota and New Mexico—reaching opposite conclusions. And in Alabama, Jackson County Commissioner Tim Guffey wants to display the Ten Commandments at the county courthouse. Guffey told local media that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution “all stemmed from the word of God, from the Ten Commandments.”

Guffey’s argument is a common one: It’s OK to display the Ten Commandments at a courthouse, city hall or the state capitol because U.S. law is based on them. Thus, a government-sponsored Ten Commandments display isn’t really religious. It just makes a statement about the origins of our law.

But there’s one gaping flaw with this argument: American law is not based on the Ten Commandments. Here are five reasons why.

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

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Any historian will happily tell you that the Founders were...

as against state supported religion as anyone until Marx came along.

Several were closet atheists and all had close encounters with European state churches. English religious wars and the Massachusetts hangings of Quakers were fresh memories.

None of them afik, would want to hide the Commandments, but the thought that scholars like Madison and Jefferson saw them as a primary document behind human morality and national law is hilarious.

Jefferson, you might remember, rewrote the Bible leaving out the God parts.

http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/

Thomas Jefferson believed that the ethical system of Jesus was the finest the world has ever seen. In compiling what has come to be called "The Jefferson Bible," he sought to separate those ethical teachings from the religious dogma and other supernatural elements that are intermixed in the account provided by the four Gospels. He presented these teachings, along with the essential events of the life of Jesus, in one continuous narrative.

[pleinair]

2. the founders were Deist

not Christian, as I recall. Good article.