Families urge judge to block law forcing display of ‘Protestant version of the Ten Commandments’ before kids return to public school in Louisiana
Families urge judge to block display of ‘Protestant version of the Ten Commandments' in schools
They need to argue that those aren't the ten commandments anyway. There is only one passage in the Bible where a group of ten laws are called that and it isn't the one people usually think of, it's much weirder. The chapter is Exodus 34:
1 The LORD said to Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. 2 Be ready in the morning, and then come up on Mount Sinai. Present yourself to me there on top of the mountain. 3 No one is to come with you or be seen anywhere on the mountain; not even the flocks and herds may graze in front of the mountain.”
4 So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning, as the LORD had commanded him; and he carried the two stone tablets in his hands. 5 Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the LORD. 6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”
8 Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshiped. 9 “O Lord, if I have found favor in your eyes,” he said, “then let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your inheritance.”
10 Then the LORD said: “I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the LORD, will do for you. 11 Obey what I command you today. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 12 Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land where you are going, or they will be a snare among you. 13 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles. 14 Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
15 “Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices. 16 And when you choose some of their daughters as wives for your sons and those daughters prostitute themselves to their gods, they will lead your sons to do the same.
17 “Do not make cast idols.
18 “Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in that month you came out of Egypt.
19 “The first offspring of every womb belongs to me, including all the firstborn males of your livestock, whether from herd or flock. 20 Redeem the firstborn donkey with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. Redeem all your firstborn sons. “No one is to appear before me empty-handed.
21 “Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.
22 “Celebrate the Feast of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year. [b] 23 Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign LORD, the God of Israel. 24 I will drive out nations before you and enlarge your territory, and no one will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the LORD your God.
25 “Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Feast remain until morning.
26 “Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.
“Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.”
27 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”
28 Moses was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments.
So that's what should be on school walls. Don't use yeast in a blood sacrifice, don't make metal idols and that goat thing.
(I have no idea why the weird goat part is on its own line, but it is.)
Why does this sound like a Monty Python skit?
Or a Mel Brooks film.
“Do not make cast idols.
All this time they just needed 3d printers or CNC machines to make idols.
I think the current recipe for idols is reality TV and orange paint
Or they could carve them, like they did before metal casting was invented.
Listen, I've got a yeast allergy thing okay...
Maybe Jehovah self diagnosed a gluten allergy and blamed it on the yeast by mistake.
I dunno...I kinda want to cook a young goat in it's mother's milk now. I bet it tastes great.
Serve it with a side of jelly beans (raw)
I feel like that argument is pretty well covered:
The plaintiffs say that the law pushes a denomination of Christianity that applies to only one segment of Louisiana residents — one which “is principally associated with Protestant beliefs and denominations.” The scripture required by the state “differ[s] in meaningful ways from those used by other denominations and faiths that recognize the Ten Commandments as part of their theology, including Catholicism and Judaism.”
“The Act requires this Protestant version of the Ten Commandments to be displayed,” the filing adds, after noting that for many religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and “other non-western faiths,” the Ten Commandments “have no place at all.”
Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in the land; for when they prostitute themselves to their gods and sacrifice to them, they will invite you and you will eat their sacrifices
These days we think of sacrifices as things like human sacrifice. But, I would bet that at the time the sacrifices were often more like a day of the dead "Ofrenda".
Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
There it is folks, that's the official name of the Abrahamic god.
He sounds like such an insecure deranged dickwad
Now let's watch the Supreme Court interpret the constitution to further permit the integration of church & state.
That's exactly what these obviously unconstitutional laws are really about. An opportunity to get a case before SCOTUS so they can reverse decades/centuries of precedent.
So let me get this straight.. The controversy isn't that the ten commandments are required to be on display. The issue is that all the different Christian denominations want THEIR version of the ten commandments on display.
Fuck it. At this point they should make it so every religion in existence should get a 3x5 card to post whatever tf they want in schools and then they can just have a wall of commandments. It's only fair. Let everyone in.
The lawsuit mentions catholics and Jews as having different versions but also other faiths that don't have the concept of the ten commandments. It's an ACLU is representing.
fuck yeah
This is the thing we found out way back in the 1500s and 1600s. The various teams don't play nice with each other. The only reason they are accepting of one another at the moment is common enemy. The second that State religion is permitted, South Baptist and Catholics are going to be kicking each other's teeth in.
There's a shit ton of money to be had in the church. No one is going to let some other team take it willingly. They will absolutely eat each other and in the process wreck collateral damage unlike anything anyone has seen since the 17th century. That's not guessing, that's like a for sure outcome. We've got a little under 20 centuries worth of history that tells us what the outcome is every time.
Wait, wasn't one of the main points of Europeans immigrating to America was for freedom of religion?
Yes... but no.
It wasn't just freedom to express their religion, it was also the freedom to form governments where they could be in power, and thus impose their religious beliefs on others.
The British colonies were basically religious fundamentalist zones. For example: Maryland -- land of Mary. Was intended to be a Catholic colony. Massachusetts was meant as a Puritan colony, and they strictly enforced that. A woman named Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston for the crime of being a Quaker.
Yeah all the horrible religious people who became outcasts thought they should bring their nightmare beliefs to a new land.
Exactly. My forefathers left the Netherlands because the government was trying to tell them how to worship God. Now many of their descendants are trying to tell people how to worship God.
Accurate
Kind of doesn't work as a joke because the point of displaying the commandments is for the kids to read them.
This state.......I'm more disgusted than ever before. That's saying something.
The only way students will even look at it is if it has boobs or kittens on it. Or kittens with boobs. Keep your cult out of public schools.
The 10 commandments are pretty funny, even if you ignore all the differences from the different factions.
Like, there's a commandment against bearing false witness, which is sometimes interpreted as not lying. But, it pretty specifically isn't against lying in the original text. The modern translation of the text is more or less: "Do not testify falsely against your neighbor". So, it's a specific kind of lying: giving evidence as a witness in a criminal setting. So, you're ok to lie, just not in court. Also, you're ok to lie as long as it isn't concerning your neighbour. What's a neighbour? Depends. The original jewish interpretation is that it's a member of the same religious community. Jesus tried to expand that to say everyone was your neighbour. But, arguably the original interpretation says it's OK to give false testimony against non-jews.
Then there's the obsession over your neighbour's wife and stuff. The catholic version of the 10 commandments actually devotes 2 whole commandments to it. But, what's weird is that stealing and adultery have already been covered. This (or these) commandments are about coveting. In other words, they're trying to control not your actions but your feelings.
IMO, one of the funniest ones is "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy". It's pretty vague, what does it mean to "remember" it? You'd think that the absolute bare minimum would be to remember which day of the week it is. But, if that's the case, why would the jewish and christian sabbath days be different? I guess they forgot.
Doest the first amendment clearly state the government cannot enforce or prevent religioun.
It says:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
It’s definitely not as clear as one might expect out of a modern legal document. That being said, the precedent here is very straightforward, and any ruling in favor of the law would be a huge shift in how the separation of church and state is applied.
That being said, the precedent here is very straightforward, and any ruling in favor of the law would be a huge shift in how the separation of church and state is applied.
Good thing the Supreme Court respects precedent. Otherwise they could decide to just change the interpretation of the Constitution to allow states to establish their own state religion, since the Constitution specified "Congress".
Commandments
summary: Don't shoot anyone.
And you want to display that in (of all possible locations) a school?
That's like asking a school shooter to think before he murders 20 kids...
Oh you're right. It should be on milk cartons and on cereal boxes.... " remember, don't shoot anyone "
Next we can deal with other tools... don't cut people with knives intended for cooking, don't close the door when someone has placed their fingers in the door hinge. Etc. but not shooting someone seems pretty important right now.
If the law goes through, there’s an obvious solution: display it alongside its equivalents. I bet that would be very educational for a lot of people.
“Best we can do is… oh shit… not like that!”
Why not display the original from the Torah? In the original Hebrew language?
Or at least display all three versions as written in the Protestant Bible.
Seems kind of silly though; it would make much more sense for Christians to display Deuteronomy 6:4-15, since that’s what Jesus stated was the greatest commandment.
Well, sure, if they weren't misrepresenting their motives. The real motive is indoctrination and the incorporation of a specific flavor of Christianity into all aspects of USAian society, transforming it into a theocracy. They're not particularly subtle about this. :)
The part they haven't appeared to think through is what subset of subset of Christianity are they going for. They could talk to the people in Salem, MA. about that, but they won't.
And they would never display quotes from sermon on the mound because its too woke.
"blessed are the cheese makers?" "it's not meant to be taken literally my dear, it refers to any manufacturer of dairy products..."
In a 2-hour quote fest, that is my favorite. The particularly arrogant tone of the response while being completely incorrect about one of humanity's noble attempts at what a better world looks like just kills.
Now, this one, I'd like to see.
Some religious Jewish people do actually wear parts of their scriptures, at least part of the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tefillin