Which Ten Commandments Are Acceptable To You?

[Ultima Weapon]

Which 10 Commandments do you find acceptable even if you do not agree with the overall message of the Old Testament? Which do you disagree with and find no value in?

For those who believe do you ever question the value of any of them? Do you understand them all? Do any confuse you to exactly what they mean? Have you ever thought about it or just accept the popular narrative?

This is totally subjective, what is more important than being right or wrong simply understanding how other people believe.

Well this one is simple. I simply try to avoid making too many absolutes. That's my main problem with the Ten Commandments, it's too black and white. With most of those, it just depends on the situation.

[Imaginarynumber1]

*Snip awesome George Carlin bit.*

You bet me to it.

[Mr Walker]

I live by them, but the 10 commandments are only a small part of living with a real and powerful god.

First thing to remember is christ's words on this. He told us that the commandments are more important now than ever. So important that we must follow them in our heart and mind not just in practice.

Second, he said thay were given in love and are to be followed in love, not from fear and certainly not from legalism.

Third he said that the commandments were made for man not man for the commandments Thus we must put humanity, charity, love compassion etc., before the law. One can work on the sabbath to help another. One can kill to protect an innocent etc. One can steal to survive or to help another survive.

And finally, because we are human, we will fail to keep them all, but the point is to try. Without humans trying to keep at least the material side of these commandments, any complex civilization will fall apart.

Honesty, duty, responsibilty, faithfulness and many other old fashioned but critical values are enshrined in these laws. They epitomise beliefs and values which make people function happily and productively and which hold societies communities, and even nations, together. They stress the importance of society and social responsibilty and duty over individualism and individual rights.

Perhaps this is why they are so unpopular in today's society. They were written at a time when people realised that all individual human rights depend on a safe, functioning, and strong society. And so, to achieve individual freedoms and rights, they must first be surrendered to a certain degree, to build that social framework.

Edited December 8, 2012 by Mr Walker

[Beckys_Mom]

God text me on his holy cellphone two of his commandments ..... It read - No OMG's and dnt kill ppl

Edited December 8, 2012 by Beckys_Mom

[scowl]

It's more like a jab at the Egyptian Pharaohs then anything else. Who were what? Worshiped as Gods.

That's not in the Bible. We're talking about gods, not men. If God didn't want us to worship men, He would have said "Thou shalt not worship men", right? Do you think God is stupid?

The hated slavery and liked servitude. Read the bible and who they follow and why.

And you like servitude?

God asked people to do things. Hence servitude.

God ORDERED people to do things and they did them because they didn't want to die. That's slavery. Google "Noah's Flood" and "Golden Calf" to get started on how God murdered people both out of anger and as examples for what happens when people don't do what God "asks".

Pharaoh forced them hence Slavery. People who took things so literal mistake the difference.

You mean those of us who actually read the words in the Bible and don't change their meaning. Yes, we do tend to make "mistakes" that modern Christians don't like.

Which is what is going on here. The whole bible is denoting the difference. Slavery vs Servitude. Read the whole Bible, then base you context on that not just part of one story and try to force it in to use your point. Read the whole thing for yourself.

Well I just finished Revelation and I saw still more examples of slavery in the New Testament. I couldn't find a single verse that distinguishes "slavery" from "servitude". In fact the Greek word for slavery appears several times in enthusiastic contexts. It's quite an endorsement for the practice and has specific rules on how slaves should treat their masters.

I take out what could be seen as political influence and stick to the spirit not the letter.

Which means if you don't like it, make up something you do like that's vaguely similar.

Bear false witness is about the difference between a story and the truth. Omit truth, drop truth, change truth, misinterpret truth are all what making truth a story? What is something that isn't the truth? At the base of it all it's called a lie. Which is why some bibles say thou shall not lie

The Commandments are Commandments, not stories, not parables, not open to interpretation or extrapolation. When the Greek words for "testimony" and "against" and "neighbor" exist in the same sentence, they are there for a reason.

And there are plenty of stories where God absolutely loved deception. God loved how Jacob deceived Esau and his father. God loved how Abraham fooled the Egyptians by telling them Sarah was his sister. The whole book is full of characters who lie and receive God's blessings for it.

They didn't however testify falsely against their neighbors but some of these cases were before the Commandments anyway.

Wait that's the whole reason you're bent out of shape? It's morality I'm talking about not a set of laws.

Then leave the Ten Commandments out of it. They are laws to be obeyed, not parables designed to teach you lessons about morality.

Neighbor has multiple meanings. This was not defined in the actual commandment. Your trying to put a definition from this year on a word from 2000 years ago that has been translated between how many languages.

You are correct. To understand what "neighbor" means, look for other uses of the word in the Old Testament, You'll find that it most likely meant "fellow Israelite" in the context of the Ten Commandments.

No there are many versions of the bible from different sects of Christianity. I read the bible like 3 times and compared different versions. So I can get my own take on it from my own view with nobody forcing their view on me.

So which Bible are you basing your beliefs on?

You just arguing just for fun? Since I see that most of your arguments are just a bunch of assumptions of who you think I am. Keeps me entertained though so I don't mind.

I don't know anything about you.

[Orcseeker]

The Jews in Egypt didn't "consent" as a race to be slaves for hundreds of years any more than Africans as a race consented to be slaves in America. Jacob surely didn't "consent" to be kidnapped and sold into slavery by his brothers. Your belief that Biblical slavery was just "servitude" is incorrect.

Since when was any of this fact?

[scowl]

Since when was any of this fact?

Feel free to disprove it. Of course I meant Joseph, not his father Jacob (I get the "J" names mixed up).

There are parts in Exodus where the Israelites whined that slavery in Egypt was better than living out in the desert, completely ignoring that a supernatural being facilitated their escape and supports their survival but I don't think any of them ran back to Egypt asking for enslavement.

[Jinxdom]

The Jews in Egypt didn't "consent" as a race to be slaves for hundreds of years any more than Africans as a race consented to be slaves in America. Jacob surely didn't "consent" to be kidnapped and sold into slavery by his brothers. Your belief that Biblical slavery was just "servitude" is incorrect.

Everybody is a slave, but to what you are a slave to and what choice you have in to it is what matters. That's the most important moral of the bible(Do you be a slave to man, money, or something more?). This is the major moral plot line of the bible. Each story goes through Slavery with consent and slavery with out consent. Slavery with consent is Servitude, The bible has stories for it. The bible also has stories for just slavery with no consent(which happens to be the only thing you are pointing out not the other half). They didn't have a word for servitude so like in true fable form they tried to show the difference. It's the whole God wants people to follow him by his own free-will thing. A willing slave vs an unwilling slave. Is what they are trying to show through out the bible but a willing slave is a servant, Hence My use of the word servitude. Because choice is what makes the difference between slavery and servitude.

So yeah in those stories it isn't servitude but slavery(No consent = slavery and no consent). I'm not going to go through and take each use of the word slave and make sure the context is correct just for you on this forum. So yeah saying those were servitude would be wrong but I didn't or wouldn't because there was no consent there so it wouldn't be servitude but slavery.

I'm also not going to go and tell you which usage of the word slave is wrong throughout the bible. No consent = Slave, Consent = Servant. If it doesn't fix the context like those examples then it isn't it Servitude, it's slavery. Square peg doesn't fit in the circle hole. Word doesn't fit the meaning. It's common sense.

[Orcseeker]

Feel free to disprove it. Of course I meant Joseph, not his father Jacob (I get the "J" names mixed up).

There are parts in Exodus where the Israelites whined that slavery in Egypt was better than living out in the desert, completely ignoring that a supernatural being facilitated their escape and supports their survival but I don't think any of them ran back to Egypt asking for enslavement.

No Bible should be taken as a history book. The integrity just isn't there. Let alone Egyptian records saying anywhere a large amount of Israelites being used as slaves.

As for all religious, pyramid constructs in Egypt, they were all built by Egyptians as it was considered "unholy" so to speak if it were built by anyone else. As for actual slaves, there were probably a few as all civilisations possessed them at the time but no large amount of Israelites as mentioned in the Exodus.

Please don't put a book (written some time after mind you) above an extensively documented civilisation of the time. Where information was actually documented during the time things actually happened instead of some time afterwards where whoever was even around is already dead and gone.

@Jinxdom

Orcseeker said that? :'(

Edited December 9, 2012 by Orcseeker

[Jinxdom]

Lol didn't notice what you meant until I re-read it was cause I nicked it from your post to quote from.Quote from yours, then edited it from there forgot to change/erase your name to the proper one. Since I was lazy and didn't want to go back to the last page to nick the quote So whoopsie my bad.

Edited December 10, 2012 by Jinxdom

[Orcseeker]

Lol didn't notice what you meant until I re-read it was cause I nicked it from your post to quote from.Quote from yours, then edited it from there forgot to change/erase your name to the proper one. Since I was lazy and didn't want to go back to the last page to nick the quote So whoopsie my bad.

Haha no problems mate. Interesting stuff on the servants and slaves you were talking about btw. You believe the Bible is simply a compilation of stories with morals and such attached to conform somewhat to the ten commandments?

[scowl]

No Bible should be taken as a history book. The integrity just isn't there. Let alone Egyptian records saying anywhere a large amount of Israelites being used as slaves.

Oh, I'm fully aware that the Bible is not a history book! We were discussing the text of the Bible as stories which did reflect the society that wrote them. The Old Testament has a lot of behavior and practices which we all would find uncivilized and it's hard to ignore them.

The list of events in the Bible that contradict what we know from history is long. We have found no evidence or record of an exodus and no trace of hundreds of thousands of people having lived in the Sinai for decades.

Even more disturbing to Bible literalists, there was no Kingdom of Israel, no evidence of Joshua's amazing conquests (Jericho was abandoned at the time), and absolutely no evidence of an Egypt/Israel superpower under Solomon which would have been of enormous historical significance.

All evidence and historical records suggest that during Biblical times Canaan was an area of city-states (the mythical Kingdom of Israel could have been based on Jerusalem in the south and Samara in the north) and farms with a wide range of cultures living in their own villages. Jewish villages have been identified because they have found no pig bones. There may have been raids and small feuds among the Jews and other cultures which were embellished into Joshua's victories (the sizes of these armies stated in the Bible are ridiculous).

There are other hints in the Bible. Travelers through the Kingdom of Israel regularly come across villages of "foreigners". Sounds like the borders of this mighty kingdom had been rather porous! Most likely they're describing exactly how Canaan was at the time, a mix of ethnic villages. Also 1 Samuel 13:19 says that the Philistines prevented Israel from smelting iron. If Israel really was a powerful independent nation, why were the Philistines bossing them around?

People don't like to hear that the Bible is a fabricated history to give Jews and Christians a sense of historical importance, but all archaeological evidence says that's what it is.

[Bendy Demon]

Don't worship other gods is more like don't follow fake gods.

Isn't that a bit of an oxymoron? One fake god telling people not to follow fake gods?

Anyways...once you remove the "Don't follow fake gods" and all the religious stuff, the rest of the commandments are really just common sense stuff. You don't need to be beaten with a fairy tale book in order to learn that stealing is wrong, telling lies is wrong, hurting others is bad and so forth. In fact we heard this from our parents and from lessons in preschool. No threats from imaginary sky monsters were needed.

[Orcseeker]

Oh, I'm fully aware that the Bible is not a history book! We were discussing the text of the Bible as stories which did reflect the society that wrote them. The Old Testament has a lot of behavior and practices which we all would find uncivilized and it's hard to ignore them.

The list of events in the Bible that contradict what we know from history is long. We have found no evidence or record of an exodus and no trace of hundreds of thousands of people having lived in the Sinai for decades.

Even more disturbing to Bible literalists, there was no Kingdom of Israel, no evidence of Joshua's amazing conquests (Jericho was abandoned at the time), and absolutely no evidence of an Egypt/Israel superpower under Solomon which would have been of enormous historical significance.

All evidence and historical records suggest that during Biblical times Canaan was an area of city-states (the mythical Kingdom of Israel could have been based on Jerusalem in the south and Samara in the north) and farms with a wide range of cultures living in their own villages. Jewish villages have been identified because they have found no pig bones. There may have been raids and small feuds among the Jews and other cultures which were embellished into Joshua's victories (the sizes of these armies stated in the Bible are ridiculous).

There are other hints in the Bible. Travelers through the Kingdom of Israel regularly come across villages of "foreigners". Sounds like the borders of this mighty kingdom had been rather porous! Most likely they're describing exactly how Canaan was at the time, a mix of ethnic villages. Also 1 Samuel 13:19 says that the Philistines prevented Israel from smelting iron. If Israel really was a powerful independent nation, why were the Philistines bossing them around?

People don't like to hear that the Bible is a fabricated history to give Jews and Christians a sense of historical importance, but all archaeological evidence says that's what it is.

Sorry I must have misunderstood you initially b

Oh, I'm fully aware that the Bible is not a history book! We were discussing the text of the Bible as stories which did reflect the society that wrote them. The Old Testament has a lot of behavior and practices which we all would find uncivilized and it's hard to ignore them.

The list of events in the Bible that contradict what we know from history is long. We have found no evidence or record of an exodus and no trace of hundreds of thousands of people having lived in the Sinai for decades.

Even more disturbing to Bible literalists, there was no Kingdom of Israel, no evidence of Joshua's amazing conquests (Jericho was abandoned at the time), and absolutely no evidence of an Egypt/Israel superpower under Solomon which would have been of enormous historical significance.

All evidence and historical records suggest that during Biblical times Canaan was an area of city-states (the mythical Kingdom of Israel could have been based on Jerusalem in the south and Samara in the north) and farms with a wide range of cultures living in their own villages. Jewish villages have been identified because they have found no pig bones. There may have been raids and small feuds among the Jews and other cultures which were embellished into Joshua's victories (the sizes of these armies stated in the Bible are ridiculous).

There are other hints in the Bible. Travelers through the Kingdom of Israel regularly come across villages of "foreigners". Sounds like the borders of this mighty kingdom had been rather porous! Most likely they're describing exactly how Canaan was at the time, a mix of ethnic villages. Also 1 Samuel 13:19 says that the Philistines prevented Israel from smelting iron. If Israel really was a powerful independent nation, why were the Philistines bossing them around?

People don't like to hear that the Bible is a fabricated history to give Jews and Christians a sense of historical importance, but all archaeological evidence says that's what it is.

Sorry I must have misunderstood you initially but I completely agree with what you have outlined in this post.

[Jinxdom]

Isn't that a bit of an oxymoron? One fake god telling people not to follow fake gods?

Only if you believe it was written by a personified god, which I don't. It was a book written by man.

Who most likely hated organized religion for the same reasons a lot of people do all the trouble that came with it. Which is why it came out in fable form. Which had a powerful message and got turned in to the exact thing it was warning it's readers about.

Oh look up the mushrooms in the area like Amanita muscaria, that could easily explain most of the far fetched stories.

[KrowMax]

All Of the Ten Commandments are acceptable for me...I don't know about you guys...

[scowl]

All Of the Ten Commandments are acceptable for me...I don't know about you guys...

The government of the Philippines is a Catholic theocracy. Adultery isn't just a Commandment where you live -- it's against the law. People are arrested and go to jail for it.

[Mr Walker]

The government of the Philippines is a Catholic theocracy. Adultery isn't just a Commandment where you live -- it's against the law. People are arrested and go to jail for it.

That was the case in many civil governments like Australia for centuries even until the last century. I am not so sure it is a bad law. In any other legal partnership it would constitute a breach of contractual arrangements and be subject to penalties.

If marriage, even civil marriage, is a legal contractual arangement, then penalties and legal requirements can rightly be applied to it. This occurs with property settlements, division of assets and income, and child support etc., in a marriage and divorce. Why not with sexual breaking of the contract?