Yep. Are they sure they got the right 10 commandments? Because Exodus 34 says something else. 
6 Likes
- Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s."
Awww shheeeiitttt. Muh neighbor gots the best looking steer this side of the state line! Can I look but not touch?
12 Likes
… gotta patch up those continuity errors 
8 Likes
That’s how a whole lotta religion seems to work.
7 Likes
Well, but lots of people DO think hard about religion and there are plenty of people who just accept all sorts of shit that aren’t about religion… The problem is the whole “authoritarian” mindset, people uncritically accepting authority because its “authority”…
14 Likes
It does if you’re Osiris.
10 Likes
aka
Because that’s exactly what these people want us to go back to.
This is blatantly illegal and they know it. This was already decided by SCOTUS back in 1980 when Kentucky tried the same thing.
Several challenges have happened since then, some that made their way up to SCOTUS, all which were declined or denied.
They are just hoping this makes it to SCOTUS and the current crop of activist right wing judges decide to overturn precedent yet again and take away more freedoms in furtherance of a white Christian nationalist ethnostate.
18 Likes
It is notable that the Catholic version omits the prohibition on graven images (they consider Deut. 5:6-10 to be one commandment, a prohibition on worshipping other gods). Historically, the “graven image” verse has been controversial, with some Christians considering that this extends to images of God, the saints, etc.
7 Likes
I’d be curious if there’s a categorization(I assume that there is, probably a whole anthropological and theological literature, just not one I’m familiar with) for the brand of nominally-christian observance that combines rabid enthusiasm for conformity and compliance on specific social issues with striking lack of interest in many of the details that kept the reformation a hot war for decades and the endless protestant sects and subsects constantly splintering.
I’m not surprised-surprised by them; they are simply too common for that; but (probably because my own internal understanding of how religion would work if it were a thing I did is so tilted in the direction of orthodoxy over orthopraxy) I find them fundamentally baffling in a way that I don’t find the more straightforward fanatics. I tend not to agree with the latter; but their “take set of non-negotiable axioms; go from there” MO has a certain internal logic(and, while they fairly frequently deviate from their professed standards, they generally recognize that this isn’t good, though not necessarily that their judgements of how bad a given deviation are seem to be mysteriously stronger for some than for others).
What I do not understand are the ones who claim that it’s their faith that motivates them to wade into the culture wars and start messing with civil rights and establishment clause problems; but who are either deeply flexible or just plain disinterested in their own alleged theology: these guys, so eager to ram “the ten commandments” into law that they don’t care that some anodyne KJV-by-(another)-committee slurry is being represented as “the ten commandments”. Or the protestant forced-birthers who just wuv team Rome because they get on so well on that issue(and apparently that’s enough; no need to fall out on the issue of the death penalty…); but the socially liberal branch of their own denomination, identical on all formal theological points, are the vilest of opposition.
Maybe it was ever thus; and my understanding of the past is just distorted by the fact that the people who wrote stuff down were bickering theology wonks rather than the people doing the cultural score-settling with whatever excuses come to hand; but it just seems wild how seldom (even among the allegedly very pious) you see a doctrinal spat recognized in those terms; as a matter of heterodoxy or heresy; rather than seeing a culture war item where people claim to be motivated by ‘faith’; but don’t actually see to mind any of the details of it; so long as the culture war side is in order.
8 Likes
As long as they had that list handy, did they take a moment to check themselves and their mighty leader against it for any discrepancies? No? Shocked.
8 Likes
I’ve seen progressive Christians question why they focused on this vs the Beatitudes (which are from Christ’s sermons).
Probably because they are too hippy-dippy for the Nationalist Christian right and sounds too much like “Marxism” with that “blessed are the poor baloney”.
(To be clear, neither should be posted in a regular secular school.)
8 Likes
17 Likes
honestly, i think getting people to deny reality is part of plan
10 Likes
Notably, only two of the Ten Commandments are crimes in standard American law (murder and theft). (Adultery used to be in some places but I don’t think any more in the US.)
The first three are basically OT God saying, “I am the boss.” Then there’s take a day off and honor your parents.
The others are fine principles to live by – don’t begrudge other people’s success, don’t lie about people – but one gets the same results using the golden rule and that way you don’t need a boss issuing you commandments to follow in order to be moral – including commands to bow down to the boss – no thanks, a-hole, we can take care of ourselves better without you.
The students of Louisiana should be encouraged to use the mandated presence of this “boss” in their classrooms to ponder the big question: is the God in the Old Testament world literature’s biggest monster?
1 Like
I went through confirmation class in the Methodist Church, and I remember that they spent almost no time explaining how Methodists were different from any other kind of Protestant. The laity just are not into the details of theology very much, nor do they get any instruction in it.
Yeah, that minor detail hasn’t caused any problems…
4 Likes
I’m against the theocratic fascist state that Louisiana’s government is attempting to impose. It is an attack on democracy and a danger to us all.
4 Likes
… maybe they can put this one next to it
6 Likes
I don’t see anything in this law mandating what language the poster has to be written in, merely that it is in a legible font. If I was a bloody-minded Louisiana school governer, I would print the posters in the original Aramaic, citing the law’s emphasis on the “historical nature” of the documents.
4 Likes
