What Rights did "God give us" in the Ten Commandments



A dufus Catholic priest has been in the news recently claiming God gave us our rights. It isn't just right wing priests who say such stuff. I heard Gorden Robertson, Pat's son, say the same thing several years ago on the 700 Club. When it comes to the "rights" such whackos are referring to, I suppose it is the "right" for protesters to block abortion clinics and close them through mob rule. It might include the "right" of Christian school administrators to require teachers to read from the Bible and pray to the Christian god every day. Right wing Christian rights are always about taking rights from others. A public official has been standing up to the priest and challenging the notion the rights of Christians to do whatever they want was given to Christians by God.

Our Constitution, and court cases, talked specifically about the rights of individuals, rights not to be taken away by governments.

A 1943 court case said, "The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts." The author(s) of this opinion did not quote the Bible as their source of this. It's simply that human beings in a civilized society have some rights the moment they are born.

One of the odd things often quoted, even by members of the Supreme Court, is that atheists cannot be trusted to tell the truth. That is because the believer fears punishment by an invisible god. Since atheists do not believe the invisible god exists they have no fear of punishment for lying. Judge Clarence Thomas himself once said this. 

I hope those of us who know the U.S. was not founded to be as a nation with a government approved religion, Christianity, will not tire of the game Whack-a-Mole which is now being played. New strange and wrong versions of U.S. laws and history keep popping up and need to be whacked down.

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