Not sure if anyone noticed, but the Ten Commandments monument was smashed. Interestingly, there was also a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of Christians to have it removed - which they lost.
The plaintiffs in this case do not seek the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from the state capitol lawn because they find the text of the monument offensive, but rather because, like many Oklahomans, the Ten Commandments constitute a core part of their sincerely held religious beliefs and it is offensive to them that this sacred document has been hijacked by politicians.
This should be interesting. It might be easier for courts to reject the Satanistsâ arguments since in many respects Satanism is more of a long-running gag designed to annoy religious conservatives than a bona-fide religion in and of itself, but Hinduism is at least as old as Christianity and has almost a billion followers.
The link at rajanzed.com is now returning a 404 not found. Google tells me that a year ago, some Hindus said they will fill out the application. Anyone have a decent link about this story (something more credible than addictinginfo)?
The ceremonial deism argument can cut both ways. Since most modern monotheists usually just use a generic word for âgodâ instead of actually naming theirs, one could just as easily inject Hinduism by glossing over Hanuman as âGodâ the same way Christians might sneak Jehovah in as âGodâ. They didnât invent deniability! If you donât specify your god, you get what you get. Honestly, real Deism is closer to Buddhism IMO than it is to contemporary Christianity anyway.
So how about a statue of Marduk holding a copy of the Code of Hammurabi? If theyâre going to claim that the Ten Commandments are the basis of US law and thatâs why they deserve to be represented by a statue, I think it would be hard for them to claim with a straight face that one of the oldest known legal codes isnât also an ancestor of US law and so also deserves a statue.
Because, indeed, it wasnât their plan - that was just their excuse as to why the 10 commandments monument didnât constitute state establishment of religion when pressed by the ACLU - but now that theyâve said itâs their planâŚ
Ok, I get what youâre saying. I guess it was hard for me to believe that they would be so thick as to not realize that their reasoning would also apply to others.
In fact, I remember good olâ Mr. OâReilly last year (during the latest iteration of the War On Christmas, or whatever itâs called now) was resorting to the argument that Christianity is a philosophy and not a religion.
So, by that reasoning the Ten Commandments would clearly be a monument to a philosophy and thus completely different from a Giant Monkey God Statue. But what other philosophies might have monuments?
Sure, because Sri Baba OâReilly is an expert on such matters, along with his other many qualifications.
This is easily disproven even the very name âCommandmentsâ, direct religious revelation puts this squarely in the religion camp. And to seal the deal, the same religious fundamentalists tend to be hostile to philosophy, since in encourages comparative religious study, along with other ideas. Even if we forget about Hanuman and offer work commemorating other philosophers, they are still going to kvetch. Are we going to see monuments to Plato and Nietzsche then?
[quote=âpopobawa4u, post:33, topic:45027â]This is easily disproven even the very name âCommandmentsâ, direct religious revelation puts this squarely in the religion camp.[/quote]But there are nonreligious concepts with names like the Categorical Imperative.[quote]Are we going to see monuments to Plato and Nietzsche then?[/quote]It might be interesting, but is there anything in that area that lends itself particularly well to the same kind of representational statuary? A statue of Plato or Nietzsche would just look like a statue of a man.
Sure, but these are a specific set of commandments, hence the proper name. If the statue had ten different commandments then the ones the supporters were expecting, they would need to balk on scriptural grounds. âHey, they represent a philosophy - what have you got to complain about? Since itâs not religion, it doesnât need to be a specific philosophy, does it?â
Just like a statue of Moses would look like⌠however Moses looked. I said monuments to other philosophers, not of other philosophers. They could be text, like the first one was.
