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Glenn Beck and the 10 Commandments

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Glenn Beck can't handle reality
Glenn Beck can't handle reality
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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.
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Bob Johnson is a paralegal and a freelance writer in Florida. He was raised Roman Catholic, but after reading Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, he became a Deist. In 1993 he founded the World Union of Deists and in 1996 he launched the first web (more...)
 
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