Glenn Beck is a confused man. For
example, he seems to think the Deist and American Revolutionary hero
Thomas Paine was a conservative. This in spite of the fact that in
Paine's Agrarian
Justice he not only calls for an estate tax to pay for a
universal program that would pay the elderly and disabled, but would
also give money to young people just starting out in life.
As
a Deist Thomas Paine was hated by the conservatives of his day. His
essays and correspondence
make it very clear he completely rejected the Bible, Torah, Koran,
Judaism, Christianity and Islam as well as Freemasonry. If Beck and
the religious right and neoconservative movements can't grasp this
fact from Thomas Paine's essays and correspondence, they need to read
Paine's monumental work, The
Age of Reason, The Complete Edition. Paine powerfully and
unambiguously makes certain the reader sees the absurdity of
Christianity and the other "revealed" religions while
pointing them to the natural religious philosophy of Deism.
Recently
Glenn Beck, while talking
about the unrest in the Middle East, the earthquake and tsunami in
Japan, etc. made it clear he thinks people should start following the
10 Commandments. It appears Beck is as ignorant about the 10
Commandments as he is about Thomas Paine.
The 10 Commandments
are found at Exodus
20:2-17 and at Deuteronomy
5:6-21. If Beck took the trouble to actually read them he would
see they are NOT intended for him or for any Gentile. In both places
they start with God allegedly addressing the Hebrews with, "I am
the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage." This lets any thinking person know
who the 10 Commandments are addressed to; the ancient Hebrews. They
are not addressed to any Gentiles, only to the
Hebrews/Jews/Israel.
The Jewish American comic Lewis Black
humorously makes this important and overlooked point in his DVD Red,
White & Screwed. Lewis says it makes him very angry
(can you believe that!), when he sees a Christian preacher on the
television explaining the Old Testament. Lewis emphatically and correctly states
the Old Testament is a Jewish "holy" book, not a Christian
"holy" book. He further observes that you never see a Jewish rabbi on television explaining the New Testament.
Since the Torah and Old Testament, as
well as the New Testament and the Koran, are so lacking in morality
that they don't even speak out against slavery, they should not be
used to teach morals to anyone. The 10 Commandments are a great
example of this moral vacuum. Its only teaching on slavery is not to
covet your neighbor's slaves/manservants/maidservants. If the 10
Commandments were of good moral value they would instruct the Hebrews
not to have any slaves because slavery is morally wrong. But instead they only instruct the Hebrews not to covet their neighbor's slaves. And
it lumps women/wives into property men own along with slaves,
livestock, etc.
When we look further into the Torah/Old
Testament we see the sick and disgusting practice of slavery is
approved by the Bible god provided the slave owners are Hebrews/Jews
and the slaves are Gentiles. Even Gentile children are fair game.
Leviticus
25:44-46 makes this painfully clear when it states, "Both
thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of
the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen
and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do
sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that
are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your
possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your
children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be
your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel,
ye shall not rule one over another with rigour."
How Beck can try to compare himself with Thomas Paine and how he and most Christians can try to lay claim to the 10 Commandments is beyond reason. Too bad people like Beck and the religious right who claim to have God on their side reject God's gift of reason.
