Sapper Redux said:Bob Lee said:Sapper Redux said:
Got it. So not one single mention of the 10 commandments. Thanks.
1. apparently the only good evidence that any founder believed the 10 commandments are essential and basic to a child's education, is if they wrote the words "10 commandments". The last excerpt spells out the 2 greatest of the 10 commandments, and still he didn't mention the 10 commandments? This is silly.
2. I didn't say the 10 commandments SHOULD be hung in every classroom. That's a strawman. I said it was positive and I don't have an issue with it. You're wanting me to defend the notion that the founders thought it was imperative to hang a poster of the 10 commandments in classrooms. It's more like, they would of course not take issue with that because they thought we had a duty to teach our children the precepts of the Bible. And the 10 commandments are precepts in the Bible.
If someone says we should teach children the precepts of the Bible, it excludes the most basic, foundational moral precepts found in it, in your mind?. Just a vague reference to some random philosophical precepts not named the 10 commandments? This is like you telling me that the bill of rights are basic to an education in the Law. And I say, nu uh, there's not a single class on the bill of rights being taught in law school. They only teach Constitutional law.
People can decide for themselves how the people who said these things (and a lot of others. This list is not nearly exhaustive, but I thought I'd spare you the wall of text), felt about the importance of the 10 commandments.
We are discussing a law in Texas that requires the 10 Commandments be hung in every classroom. This isn't a straw man. This is literally the discussion. The fact that many of the framers were practicing Christians does not mean the 10 commandments should be required in every classroom. I asked if there was any evidence that the 10 commandments, the issue at discussion, was uniquely important to the framers and thus vital to teach students as part of civics education. You can't provide any evidence of that. You can only show that a number of them were Christians. Cool. That's not what I asked.
What you actually did ask is if I could show you where any of the framers said anything about the 10 commandments specifically. When I showed that a signer of the Declaration and Constitution said "It is the duty of all to acknowledge that the Divine Law which requires us to love God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves, on pain of eternal damnation, is Holy, just, and good. . . . The revealed law of God is the rule of our duty"... A direct, unmistakable reference to God's commandments given to Moses in the Bible, you said there was no mention of the 10 commandments in there, and all this proves is many of the framers were Christians.
It seems like you want people to believe the guys writing arguments for using the Bible as a textbook in schools are the same kind of guys who would balk at a law requiring the 10 commandments be posted on the wall in classrooms.
I think most people can intuit the problem with that argument.