Public Atheist Monument Across from 10 Commandments

reply to post by windword


But I'm talking about the 10 on the monument.

reply to post by windword

Houses, wives, servants, oxen and asses, and what ever stuff that your neighbor has that you "covet" is referring to ownership and property.

i'd say that falls under adultery, not property ownership. "if a man looks at a woman with lust he has already committed adultery in his heart".

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Why would you use commandments from a book filled with contradictions and immoral teachings? There are many other alternatives than to erect a monument based on a book with so many horrific moral atrocities.

Society needs better examples than outdated myths...

Its obvious we are still in the dark ages. Secular laws have just taken away the churches ability to torture and kill with impunity. I guarantee you without the secularists influence on America we would mirror the middle east. With states blowing up each others children for their version of the bible.

reply to post by Bob Sholtz

if multiple gods DID exist outside of time, they would have to be perfectly parallel. outside time, a being simply would be. all their characteristics would exist. how could one all powerful, all knowing individual being exist with a different all powerful, all knowing individual? any deviation of character would create a conflict, and conflicts presuppose change, which requires time.

I think it's an assumption that god has a characterization of being an individual that is all powerful and knowing. I just don't believe in the existence of that kind of a god.

superstructures are not mutually exclusive because they are not infinite. can superstructures occupy the same space at the same time? (i'm talking classical mechanics, matter consisting of fermions) no. if a superstructure took up all the space that there was, could another exist? no. the same condition would apply with god, although it has less to do with physical extension.

Again, I'm loosing your logic. If your definition of god is something/nothing that (non) exists outside of time and space, why can't there be more than one?

If there can be more than one universe, which technically means everything that is, but it is determined that the universe is confined in space and time, with a beginning and an ending, then there can be more than one god too.

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
reply to post by windword

 

Houses, wives, servants, oxen and asses, and what ever stuff that your neighbor has that you "covet" is referring to ownership and property.

i'd say that falls under adultery, not property ownership. "if a man looks at a woman with lust he has already committed adultery in his heart".

Adultery has it very own commandment. Remember? "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery". Jesus didn't release Christians from the 10 Commandments, he made them harder.

This commandment is immoral because it denies love, in a culture that sold women into marriage for financial and political gain.

reply to post by windword

This commandment is immoral because it denies love, in a culture that sold women into marriage for financial and political gain.

"Thou shalt not covet another man's woman..." How does this deny love? It denies the misapplication of lust, certainly. But love? I don't know about that. I see plenty of places where such a virtue could do some good.

reply to post by Wertdagf

Why would you use commandments from a book filled with contradictions and immoral teachings? There are many other alternatives than to erect a monument based on a book with so many horrific moral atrocities.

I said the commandments by themselves. I did state that quite specifically. I didn't say the Bible, I didn't say the chapter, I said the commandments. The 10 as written on the monument. Just because they were found in such a questionable piece of reading material does not negate their value in a society that clearly didn't pay much attention.

The fact that they are commonly taken from the Bible is beside the point. Had they been written by Dr. Seuss or Stephen King, I would still say the same thing.

Society needs better examples than outdated myths...

And yet our laws reflect many of the morals conveyed in the 10 commandments. Should we abolish those as well? Are those laws protecting our lives and property no longer relevant?

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by windword

 

This commandment is immoral because it denies love, in a culture that sold women into marriage for financial and political gain.

"Thou shalt not covet another man's woman..." How does this deny love? It denies the misapplication of lust, certainly. But love? I don't know about that. I see plenty of places where such a virtue could do some good.

edit on 5-6-2013 by AfterInfinity because: (no reason given)

Not that commandment.

Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery

"A noble thought, but we need to remember that love and marriage were not an exclusive contract in biblical times. Women were given in marriage as property, and had no say as who they would be forced to spend the rest of their lives serving and pleasuring. Men were allowed as many wives as they could afford, satisfying their roaming eyes.

In western society love comes first, and doesn’t always abide “till death doth part.” We value the individual’s happiness over the contract of a loveless marriage." www.abovetopsecret.com...

You also need to remember the first 2 commandments:

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.“You shall have no other gods before me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

These commandments have no place in secular society, and certainly not in a courthouse or a public school.

And yet our laws reflect many of the morals conveyed in the 10 commandments. Should we abolish those as well? Are those laws protecting our lives and property no longer relevant?

I can only think of two, that we still apply in secular society. Thou Shall Not Steal and Thou Shall not Kill. And even those are iffy.

reply to post by windword


Throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Some of the commandments are still perfectly good. That's like saying that you're an adult and too good for laws. I can think of at least four commandments that society would do quite well to observe in today's world.

Do not kill
Do not steal
Do not covet another man's property
respect your parents

These commandments are still perfectly good in today's world.

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by windword

 

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Some of the commandments are still perfectly good. That's like saying that you're an adult and too good for laws.

That's the same tired argument that the religious make against atheists. "If there was no God to tell us not to do these things, we would be out murdering, stealing and doing all kinds of other things." We can be civil and follow secular laws without the fear of some god watching and ready to punish us. We are self regulating.

Why didn't God give Noah the 10 Commandments? Why Didn't Abraham get 10 Commandments? How did all those other cultures survive without the 10 Commandments?

I can think of at least four commandments that society would do quite well to observe in today's world.

Do not kill
Do not steal
Do not covet another man's property
respect your parents

These commandments are still perfectly good in today's world.

Not as secular law. Life isn't black and white. Things aren't that simple.

Don't kill? Qualified, "Don't murder" (Unless your government or your god tells you it's okay)
Don't Steal? Who own what? How and why? Did GOD give it to them? Did they earn it? Deserve it? Who owns water? Who owns the land? Who owns the animals that live there?



Does this picture represent proper indoctrination of ownership to you? Not me.

Especially when these are the guys who made the laws



Don't covet? Our whole economy is based on coveting what your neighbor has! "Keeping up with the Jones". We don't keep the status quo of our parents and their parents.

That brings us to honoring our parents, which only can go as far as they honor us. Otherwise, you just have dysfunction.

reply to post by windword


So? They had to be fleshed out. Is the constitution rendered obsolete because it was amended?

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Like I said before, there's only two of them that are at all relevant, and they are iffy, needing page after page of qualifications for secular law.

We have no need for pragmatic "laws" from a 3000 year old myth memorialized or masquarading as a cultural standard.

reply to post by windword


Exactly my point.

But if they want to flagrantly display what is left of their pitiful and disgusting religious beliefs after thousands of years of secular influence then so be it.

Lets all put up monuments... then we can drown out the mire of religious stupidity America is only barely digging herself out of.

reply to post by Wertdagf


You sound like a grizzly with all that growling. Chill out and take a step back, you are obviously not unbiased in this matter.

reply to post by windword


No but a museum containing the shells of nuclear weapons is perfectly fine right? We're obviously proud of the nuclear devastation we've unleashed with science. Just because you don't care doesn't mean no one else does. Perhaps you should respect the desires of others if you want them to respect your opinions. From where I'm sitting you only care about what you think.

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by windword

 

No but a museum containing the shells of nuclear weapons is perfectly fine right?

What a completely snarky comment! This thread isn't about museum displays?

We're obviously proud of the nuclear devastation we've unleashed with science.

Perhaps, nuclear war just represents mankind's desire to emulate the same God that drowned the entire planet, nuked Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed the Tower of Babel, and required the blood sacrifice of his own son.

Just because you don't care doesn't mean no one else does. Perhaps you should respect the desires of others if you want them to respect your opinions. From where I'm sitting you only care about what you think.

Is this comment directed just to me or to all the atheists, agnostics and others who reject the God of the bible, who applaud the efforts to counter the 10 Commandments, or to have them removed from public schools and courthouses?

What makes you think I don't care? I wouldn't have authored this thread, and others, if I didn't.

reply to post by windword


I think this is more about a personal vendetta than anything else. That is the impression I received from you. And yes a monument is very much like a museum, Intended to represent some facet of society that is memorialized for future reflections

reply to post by AfterInfinity


LOL! Okay. A 10 year old granite "statue" (monument) that a private Christian fellowship erected and inscribed with the 10 Commandments, and then placed in a public courtyard, is a museum. Then so is the bench, that the American Atheists are erecting.

No harm, no foul.

The 10 commandments of Solon, Athens 594 BCE

The Real Ten Commandments
Richard Carrier

I keep hearing this chant, variously phrased: "The Ten Commandments are the foundation of Western morality and the American Constitution and government." In saying this, people are essentially crediting Moses with the invention of ethics, democracy and civil rights, a claim that is of course absurd. But its absurdity is eclipsed by its injustice, for there is another lawmaker who is far more important to us, whose ideas and actions lie far more at the foundation of American government, and whose own Ten Commandments were distributed at large and influencing the greatest civilizations of the West--Greece and Rome--for well over half a millennia before the laws of Moses were anything near a universal social influence. In fact, by the time the Ten Commandments of Moses had any real chance of being the foundation of anything in Western society, democracy and civil rights had all but died out, never to rise again until the ideals of our true hero, the real man to whom we owe all reverence, were rediscovered and implemented in what we now call "modern democratic principles."

The man I am talking about is Solon the Athenian. Solon was born, we believe, around 638 B.C.E., and lived until approximately 558, but the date in his life of greatest importance to us is the year he was elected to create a constitution for Athens, 594 B.C.E. How important is this man? Let's examine what we owe to him, in comparison with the legendary author (or at last, in legend, the transmitter) of the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments. Solon is the founder of Western democracy and the first man in history to articulate ideas of equal rights for all citizens, and though he did not go nearly as far in the latter as we have come today, Moses can claim no connection to either. Solon was the first man in Western history to publicly record a civil constitution in writing. No one in Hebrew history did anything of the kind, least of all Moses. Solon advocated not only the right but even the duty of every citizen to bear arms in the defense of the state--to him we owe the 2nd Amendment. Nothing about that is to be found in the Ten Commandments of Moses. Solon set up laws defending the principles and importance of private property, state encouragement of economic trades and crafts, and a strong middle class--the ideals which lie at the heart of American prosperity, yet which cannot be credited at all to Moses.


Let us now turn to the Ten Commandments of Solon (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 1.60), which run as follows:

1. Trust good character more than promises. 2. Do not speak falsely. 3. Do good things. 4. Do not be hasty in making friends, but do not abandon them once made. 5. Learn to obey before you command. 6. When giving advice, do not recommend what is most pleasing, but what is most useful. 7. Make reason your supreme commander. 8. Do not associate with people who do bad things. 9. Honor the gods. 10. Have regard for your parents. www.infidels.org...

reply to post by windword


I support both monuments.