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Taking a Stand against the Ten Commandments

 

 

 

The folks over at Signs of the Times sent me a little pamphlet in my mail recenlty, titled: “Taking a Stand for the Ten Commandments.”  Within its first few paragraphs, it neatly summarizes the arguments often made by Christians who should put down their bibles and read the Constitution before they dare to call themselves Americans.

 

In short:

 

“When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the eleventh circuit ordered Judge Roy Moore to remove the Ten Commandments, he argued that the moral law of God was the basis for all law and, therefore, not a violation of the separation of church and state.  In a statewide poll, 77 percent of the residents of Alabama agreed with the judge.”

 

Meaning that 77 percent of Alabama residents are as ignorant of the Constitution as Roy Moore is.

 

This bogus argument that our law is a Christian law usually comes from two basic concepts, both of which are irrelevant.  The first is that the Ten Commandments it the basis of all law, everywhere in the world, all through history.  The second argument is that the crafters of the Constitution were Christians and, thus, must have intended for our law to be a Christian law.

 

Both these arguments are simply wrong.

 

 

AMERICA IS A SECULAR INSTITUTION

 

 

Don’t you think if the founders had really believed any of that, they might’ve said something about it—written it down somewhere?  Like in the Constitution, perhaps?  The word “God” does not appear within the text of either the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.  The only appearance of the word “religion” is in the First Amendment, which only states that Congress shall make no law establishing it.

 

“Oh, well they must’ve assumed we’d all understand that.”  Look, Christians don’t mince words.  If they’re writing down the basis of a new system of government and intend for all of its laws to be morally based in Christianity, they’re going to write that down.  They’re at least going to acknowledge that they are guided by God, or are acting under the authority of God.  They didn’t do any of those things, because the Constitution is not a religious document, our law is not based in religion, and this is not a Christian country.

Friggin’ deal with it already.

 

The United States is a country of “The People.”  The preamble to the Constitution defines the object of the founder’s intention: We The People of the United States…  That’s not a throwaway phrase.  That is a fundamental establishment of our government’s secularism.  And if the founders read their bibles, as I’m sure they did, they found justification:

 

“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.”

                   -Matthew 22:21

 

The separation between religion and state is not a trivial one—it is, in fact, a requirement of religious freedom.  Question: Can there be true religious freedom in a country where religious laws are national laws?  In that instance, do you not have the moral beliefs of a religion forced upon people?  If religious laws are being forced upon people, how can freedom of religion exist?  The concepts are antithetical to one another.  When Roy Moore argued that the Ten Commandments are the basis of law, and that as such, displaying them—a government institution endorsing and promoting them—wasn’t a violation of the Separation of Church and State, he was really arguing that there is no Separation of Church and State.  Read the Bill of Rights, Roy.

 

You cannot argue as a patriotic American citizen that it’s okay for public institutions to endorse the Ten Commandments.  If you do, you are arguing that the First Amendment is wrong.

 

The real-life distinction in a country with a majority Judeo-Christian population is subtle, but not unimportant.  We are a nation of “the people,” and our laws are formed by general consensus as interpreted by our representatives.  In essence, popular will determines law.  When a majority of people believe in the Ten Commandments, the law will reflect it.  But that does not make it a Christian law.  Even if peoples’ faith in Christianity drives the creation of the law, it is not a Christian law.  It is still a law of the people, determined by the people.  It must be, in fact, for freedom to have any meaning.

 

An example:

 

You, as a Christian living in a free country, have every right to form your beliefs about the law based on your faith.  When you write your Congressman about gay marriage, you have a sacred, protected right to argue that gays shouldn’t marry because it is against God’s law.  I, as an Agnostic living in a free country, have an equal right to argue to my Congressman that homosexuality is a condition of biology, religious arguments are irrelevant, and that it is every bit as wrong to discriminate on the basis of sexuality as it is to discriminate on the basis of gender or race.

 

A society of religious tolerance must allow both these arguments and grant them equal standing.  Because of that, the law cannot be determined by the correctness of either argument—only by which side holds the majority opinion (as interpreted by our representatives).  If gay marriage is banned, it is not because Christianity has won out—it’s because a majority of people wanted the law.  That distinction is essential if my opinion is to be as valid as yours, as it must be in any nation that cherishes freedom of thought.

 

The founders didn’t form this government to create a Christian country.  Their intentions are in fact quite clear, “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”  These are secular purposes and the only ones the founders were concerned with.  This is not to say they thought religion unimportant.  That simply was not their task.  Their intention was to form a stable, free government—they concerned themselves exclusively with that and left moral matters between individuals and God—and in fact, went out of their way to prevent either side from intruding on the other.

 

All of this was perfectly fine to the average Christian before faith started to fall off and moral relativism entered the scene.  Now that people’s minds are changing, the law is changing; and now, suddenly, Christians need to revise the intention of the Constitution in order to reestablish the moral principles society has lost.  Christianity, in failing to keep step with the times, and to embrace the intellectual discoveries around them, lost touch with its flock and lost it on several moral issues.  Rather than blame themselves, they are, in effect, blaming the founders, and demanding that the Bill of Rights be reinterpreted to fix the problem they, in part, created.

 

And as part of that reinterpretation, Christians are now arguing that injecting religion into government is the only way to reverse the rampant moral decay that is tearing us apart.  As my handy pamphlet tells us:

 

“Without the Ten Commandments, all morality is relative.  The are no absolute standards.”

 

There’s just one problem with that argument: It’s complete bullshit.

 

 

MORALITY IS NOT RELIGIOUS

 

 

No surprise that Christians of the fundamentalist ilk would embrace so intellectually bankrupt a concept, considering that they dismiss the biological basis of the argument I’m about to make.

 

Atheist’s and agnostics form their view of the world from reason, and reason breeds science, which breeds biology and ultimately sociology, which is the scientific study of how humans behave and form societies.  Sociology looks at moral issues from the perspective of what is ultimately best, and required, for a society to thrive.  And the reason the above argument is wrong is that sociology ends up in almost exactly the same place as Christianity.  Atheists believe in the same basic moral principles that Christians do, proving—if nothing else—that morality is not tied exclusively to religion.

 

So now I shall present you with an atheist’s translation of the Ten Commandments:

 

First Commandment: "I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt...” 

 

The Atheist’s faith is in reason, and in science: Our first commandment is that science is the explanation for all that is or ever was.

 

Second Commandment: “Thou shall have no other gods before Me...”

 

The Atheist is similarly restricted, in that he or she believes that there can be no other concepts of creation or the working of things above reason.

 

Third Commandment: "Thou shall not swear falsely by the name of the LORD..."

 

Few non-Christians (and many Christians, actually), have little issue taking the Lords name in vain in the classic sense, but Wikipedia defines this commandment thus:

 

“This commandment is to never take the name of God in a vain oath. This includes four types of prohibited oaths: an oath affirming as true a matter one knows to be false, an oath that affirms the patently obvious, an oath denying the truth of a matter one knows to be true, and an oath to perform an act that is beyond one's capabilities.”

 

These ideas hold true even if your faith is in reason.  Don’t use reason to support a position you know is false: It is a perversion of reason.  It corrupts its inherent value.

 

Commandment Four: "Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy"

 

I think it’s a logical sociological idea that no civilization can long endure if its people are not afforded at least one day a week to relax and reflect on the virtues of life.  What we see as virtuous and meaningful may be different, but I think most people have values they cherish, and whatever they are, we need to be sure we take time to honor them and reflect upon them.

 

Commandment Five: "thou shall honor your father and your mother..."

 

Our elders are our best way to understand ourselves.  They bring us into the world and raise us, and deserve our respect at all times. 

 

Commandments Six through Ten: “Do not commit murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not testify as a false witness against your neighbor. Do not be envious of your neighbor's house.”

 

What’s common to all five of these commandments is that the society that ignores them finds itself in chaos.  They may be God’s laws, but they are just as well justified by sociology.  Murder: A stable society can’t possibly embrace murder.  It must be outlawed.  Those who break that law must be punished severely.  That is sociologically essential.  Adultery: Even those who think we’re smart monkeys understand that the family unit is essential, and that adultery disrupts the stability of that unit.  False-witness, or lying: Chaos would no doubt ensue if we embraced lying about each other willy-nilly.  It’s essential to justice and to our understanding of reality that we don’t tell lies.  Envy: You don’t have to be Christian to know that bad things happen when people can’t just live and let live.

 

All of these acts are destabilizing to societies and all of them are within us to some degree, and must be fought against and forcibly suppressed by law and moral teachings.  The religious attribute their existence to evil; the people of science attribute them to biological holdovers from millions and billions of years ago.  But this is the point—whatever their basis, the effect on the stability of our society is the same.  We all believe these things are wrong, and yet we continue to fight them.  We’ve been fighting them throughout human history.  We’ve fought them in every era and every generation, no matter how religious or secular.  Being agnostic doesn’t make me an immoral person.  I follow the same moral laws you do.

 

The insanity of all this is how stupidly obvious it should be.  You don’t see secular people killing each other in the streets.  For whatever the hype, you don’t seem them openly embracing adultery or lying. 

 

And the Christian cries, “But look at the moral decay!” 

 

All right, so let’s look at it.  First question: Has there been moral decay?  I’d say probably, although I think it’s been overblown—turned into a buzzword for right-wing politicians who want Middle Americans to keep voting for them and their tax cuts to millionaires.  But I’d be a liar if I said we didn’t have problems.  I’m feeling old saying things like this, but when I was in high school, it was rare for teenagers to actually engage in sexual activity—of any kind.  Now we’ve got sixth grade girls performing oral sex for style points.  We have tweens dressing like prostitutes.  We have astronomical rates of divorce and we’re kidding ourselves if we don’t think that impacts our children.

 

And yes, I think the theory that all of these problems correspond to a drop-off in religion is valid.  But when the religious argue, then, that bringing back faith is the only way to reverse these problems, they’re just flat-out wrong.  Religion does not have exclusive rights to morality.

 

One thing the faithful and I can probably agree on is that immorality is a constant threat and that moral principles don’t come naturally—they must be taught to us—instilled within us at young ages.  I think our society does need the Ten Commandments—I just think my secular version of it is every bit as valid and every bit as capable of creating moral order.

 

“But your commandments,” the Christian cries, “aren’t backed by the authority of God.”

 

And yeah, I can’t argue that anybody’s going to burn in hell for breaking one of my commandments.  But it’s never been enough simply to codify moral principles and enforce them with punishments, even if that punishment is eternal damnation.  What’s essential is that people accept the validity of the rules—to accept the importance and correctness of them for themselves.  On that score, I think I’m on equal footing.  You argue that God is the creator of all things and that he and his laws must be respected as such.  I argue that morality is sociological, and that for all of us to live together and thrive together, and even to achieve true personal happiness, these rules have to be adhered to.  And for many, many, many people, that reasoning is more than good enough.  If we have moral decay, it’s because we’ve failed to teach people that these principles have meaning and value whether you look at them religiously or secularly.

 

 

LEAVE THE GOVERNMENT ALONE ALREADY

 

 

But no matter your opinion on moral values, the role of a people’s government with regard to them must be extremely limited.  The American system of government wasn’t created for the purpose of giving any particular philosophical or theological perspective total control of society.  Our laws are the people’s laws, cobbled together from all of our perspectives, which are equal in the eyes of our government.  Arguing that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of American law is antithetical to the Constitution and the concept of religious freedom.  Roy Moore was wrong, Signs of the Times is wrong, and millions of Americans are simply wrong on this issue. 

 

And furthermore, turning the government into your personal pulpit isn’t going to get you anywhere.  Like I said, it’s never been enough to simply codify moral rules and then boldly tell people what they are and what the punishments are for breaking them.  If people do not embrace the value of moral rules for themselves, they’re always going to find ways to break them—no matter how strict the enforcement is or how severe the punishments are.  If a rule is not accepted then that rule feels oppressive, and free people do not like to be oppressed—they will get around the rules anyway they can.

 

And really, if you folks think people like Roy Moore are going to win you any converts…  Please.  You try to absorb our government into Christianity—try to base the whole system in the Bible and post passages from that Bible in public places…  Do you seriously believe that’s going to change my mind?  Do you fail to see how utterly oppressive that is?  Let me ask you something: If the Atheists ever became a majority, and subsequently decreed that a big concrete monuments reading “God does not exist” should be erected in front of every public library, every court, every social security office and every other public building…  Would you feel threatened?  Would you feel oppressed?  Would you feel like your freedom of religion was being trampled on?  I think so.  And yet you do the same to us without so much as a thought, because you don’t understand the Constitution, and won’t understand the purpose of religious freedom until we find a way to turn this back on you. 

 

And just for your information, this strategy doesn’t work.  The more authoritative a stance you take, the more oppressive your lot seems.  Roy Moore is no different than the crazy man shouting about the end times on the street corner.  People like that don’t change anyone’s mind.  They only stir up the passions we already have, further dividing and polarizing us.  You are waging a futile war when you could be using your faith to actually do some good in this society.

 

Stop reinterpreting history so you can engineer our nation into a theocracy.  It’s anti-American and counter-productive.  All it does is divide people.  You are perfectly free to think I’m going to hell and I’m perfectly free to think you’re an idiot, but we all have to live together, and for the most part, our values are similar.  Is it possible…fathomable, that we could actually work together to promote those values we agree upon?  Or must the divisions in our philosophy prevent us from doing anything productive, even when we agree?

 

Sad to say it’s probably the latter.

 

I really, seriously doubt that fundamentalist Christians will ever be able to get very far with their plan to theocratize America.  The corruption of science in the classroom is bad enough, but I really don’t think fundamentalism has broad support outside of a few school districts.  But know this: If you people ever do get into a position to piss on the Constitution the way you want to, we will fight you.  And even if you win, that fight will so permanently damage this nation that I promise you we’ll all feel the consequences.  This is not your country.  It’s our country, and you will not trample on my religious freedom without a fight.

 

 

 

 

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