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The problem with this guy called Jesus of Nazareth

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Tonix777

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This man who lived 2,000 years ago is one of the most clear demonstrations of the long range power of ideas

His concepts modified the history of the World for the last two Millenniums, and specially during the last two Centuries due to the strong influence of the United States of America on the so called Western civilization.

Almost all the Christian commandments are harmful in one way or another to the Mind, the Reason, the Progress and the Self-steem of men but two of them are specially evil in modern times:

1-"You shall love your neighbor as yourself"

2-"You shall not kill"

The first one gives place to consider altruism or un-selfishness as one of the alleged highest virtues of our society, and is often stretched to the even more insane "You shall love your neighbor more than yourself" as the pinnacle of virtue

But who is "your neighbor"? The commandment doesn't mention anything about your relation with him: Is he your friend? your relative? someone you admire? someone unknown? someone known but despised by you? your enemy?

Does your neighbor deserve to be loved by you? Is he wise? idiot? honest, thief, criminal? brave or coward? helpful or useless? hard-worker or lazy? nice or indifferent?

The commandment doesn't specify anything, so we should assume that we should love everyone, anyone.

This commandment is deeply affecting the politics and economics of the World because no one dares to defend Capitalism on moral grounds, simply because it goes against this commandment which is taken as some kind of axiomatic truth, some revealed supreme virtue that everyone seems to agree with...

Why? Simply because it resonates deeply in our brain, in our soul where we have genetically hardwired thanks to our evolution as species other virtues like kindness or compassion or sympathy which are (were at least) essential for our survival as group and individuals because these virtues allow us to live in tribes and societies which in turn has the potential to greatly improve our chances of survival and our standard of life

But I say it is not possible to love your neighbor as yourself, it is an evil ideal impossible to comply in real life and thus created only to make people feel guilty. I say it is not right to love your neighbor as yourself without knowing who your neighbor is, without knowing if he deserves your love or your indifference or scorn or even your hate or your fear or whatever he could deserve according to your own values and to his virtues, his vices, his merits, his faults or his crimes...

The second one "You shall not kill" is a blind blank check extended to your current or potential enemies in order to allow them to harm you, is an invitation to become a sacrificial lamb for anyone that doesn't share the same ridiculous principle

You shall never kill? Not even in self-defense? Or in defense of your loved ones? Or to defend your property, your village, your country?

I hate pacifists almost as much as I hate ecologists. What kind of man offer the other cheek to his aggressor? A coward.

The "combo" of these two commandments exempt people from the responsibility about their own safety, and from the need to analyze more carefully the World and the people living in them, the need to discriminate between others, the "neighbors", on the naif belief that if one is good everybody will somehow love or appreciate us and nobody will finally or seriously harm us, or the mistaken idea that there will be always some one there to defend us. These commandments also encourage anyone else to act with impunity knowing that we are sacrificial lambs ready to be their next victims.

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The ten commandments of Judaism were written several centuries before Jesus and the spawn of Christianity. Jesus had nothing to do with it. The "Christian commandments" are Jewish commandments that Christians have inherited in the Old Testament.

This is not some technical flaw I am citing - rather, you have failed at basic history.

That does not affect your ethical analysis of the ten commandments, though.

Edited by brian0918
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The ten commandments of Judaism were written several centuries before Jesus and the spawn of Christianity. Jesus had nothing to do with it. The "Christian commandments" are Jewish commandments that Christians have inherited in the Old Testament.

This is not some technical flaw I am citing - rather, you have failed at basic history.

That does not affect your ethical analysis of the ten commandments, though.

Thanks for the lesson about history, I wonder where the Judaism inherited the concepts from. In human history there is almost always some precedent for everything...

http://www.crystalinks.com/tencommandments.html

"Some historians believe that the Ten Commandments originated from ancient Egyptian religion, and postulate that the Biblical Jews borrowed the concept after their Exodus from Egypt. Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead (the Papyrus of Ani) includes a list of things to which a man must swear in order to enter the afterlife. These sworn statements bear a remarkable resemblance to the Ten Commandments in their nature and their phrasing. These statements include "not have I defiled the wife of man," "not have I committed murder," "not have I committed theft," "not have I lied," "not have I cursed god," "not have I borne false witness," and "not have I abandoned my parents." The Book of the Dead has additional requirements, and, of course, doesn't require worship of YHWH"

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(ARI)Ridpath noted in his History of Religion the use of El or Elohim prior to the ascent up the volcano to retrieve the Tablets. There after, El became YHWH.

El was the top god over the other gods of Egypt at the time according to (Author)Ridpath of Encyclopedia of World History from the late 1800's.

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Hey, since we are talking about the Ten Commandments...

Here it goes my version of the Ten Commandments of Objectivism! :thumbsup:

1- You shall have no gods before Reason.

2- You shall make for yourself an idol in the form of the Hero of your own life

In heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall always bow down to Reason for she is a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who dare not to think, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who think and keep the power of the mind.

3- You shall not misuse the name of the Concepts, your essential resource to understand the World, for the concepts will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses theirs names.

4- Remember the Learning day by keeping it holy.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is for Learning. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days Nature made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but she rested on the seventh day to learn about she did.

5- Honor your father and your mother only if they deserve it, so that you may live long in the land of the World.

6- You shall not kill, except in self-defense.

7- You shall not commit adultery because you choose not to, according to your own principles.

8- You shall not steal the fruits of other man's work or reason. Make your own instead.

9- You shall not need to give false testimony against your neighbor. Because need of lying come from fear and weakness in Reason.

10- You shall covet your neighbor’s house, wife or servants or his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor, only if you are willing to acquire the skills and make the effort to get the same or better things by your own.

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Also, as far as I have been able to find, there is no evidence that this person ever actually existed. No one who was born while he was alive wrote a single word about him or the miracles he supposedly performed.

So we were screwed up by a ghost? :)

Getting more serious I am convinced that the religious phenomena is worth of more study than just the classical "God doesn't exist"

For more info please refer to Mathew Alper's research in the book "The God part of the brain"

Aligned with this line of thought I am convinced that there is something hardwired in our brain about having a good attitude towards other people, it is related to what David Kelley calls "the selfish basis of benevolence" which means having a careful positive approach to the unknown. I believe this is hardwired in our brain as a consequence of our evolution as species because living in groups (tribe, society) ensures more chances of survival for the human animal.

But at some point religions got mistaken Compassion with Pity (the difference between the etymology of these two word is no longer very clear but the two different concepts I propose are clearly different for me)

Pity is more close to misery, it is a feeling born from the supposed superiority of the non-suffering over the (supposed) suffering who is seen as permanently helpless and unable to recover by himself. Pity is normally a feeling without respect for the others. And there is a lot of people that like to feel pity just to feel somehow superior to others and then having a reason in their mediocre lives to increase a little their low self-steem by sacrificing themselves to "help" those others while in reality they are only helping their own poor and guilty souls to survive one more day trough their boring lives.

Compassion on the other hand is a feeling more born from sympathy, from identification with other's temporary misfortune, from identification with his merits and his struggle for improving. Born from the though "it could be me", born from realizing that finally we all are on the same game: The Life.

All struggling for survive, for happiness, for our particular values. Each one with his own good or bad fortune, abilities, willpower, energy, intelligence, but finally all under the same rules: Reality.

Edited by Tonix777
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So we were screwed up by a ghost? :huh:

If you are trying to grasp why things are what they are today, you may discover that causality has something to do with it.

Getting more serious I am convinced that the religious phenomena is worth of more study than just the classical "God doesn't exist"

The consequences of the religious phenomena can be viewed first hand today. Iran is one such example.

Both anti-life and anti-mind, religion cuts at the root of requirement for human survival. Faith is not a tool of acquiring knowledge.

By packaging the lie in with several truths, embellishing it with 'pretty things' like pity and compassion only helps to direct the attention away from the gaping void at its center.

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  • 1 month later...

I don't mean to defend Judeo-Christian philosophy by any means, but it is quite possible that mistranslations have screwed us over in regards to the two aforementioned commandments. "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not murder" are too vastly different things. Killing someone in defense of life or property is not murder. If the commandment is indeed "Thou shalt not murder," then killing for a valid reason would be perfectly moral under Judeo-Christian law.

RE: the "neighbor" commandment - I'm not a linguist at all, but it would make sense that the original word that translates down to "neighbor" meant something much more. It could have meant a member of the same tribe, which today would be akin to defending one's free country from tyranny. The original intent might have been not to put one's "neighbor" above oneself, but to stand with your neighbors against common enemies for the good of each individual in the tribe, where not loving one's neighbor could mean death at the hands of an enemy.

The Judeo-Christian religion has some seriously fucked up shit in it, but I think these two commandments read in this way are actually quite moral by Objectivist standards.

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Yes, the commandments are flawed by poor and sometimes deliberately manipulated translations. Barring the whole deity thing the commandments are quite practical when you consider that it wasn't a commandment not to kill (made obvious by the same books instructions on when it is acceptable to kill) but obviously a commandment not to murder.

As to "loving thy neighbor as thyself" contectually this is misinterpreted today as well. The nature of love being in those times something quite different. I would interpret it more as a "golden rule" commandment- one where you would not commit or allow to be commited upon your neighbor (also understanding "neighbor" to be more a tribal affiliation issue than what we understand today as the person who owns the home next to you) things that you would not want done to yourself.

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Ragnar69 & QuoVadis:

I mostly agree with you about issues in modern translations of ancient texts, but if we focus more on the commandments as a concept in general, I don't share that "...these two commandments read in this way are actually quite moral by Objectivist standards"

The very nature of a "commandment" is against Objectivist standards from my point of view since a commandment is something you are supposed to follow more or less blindly AKA without conscious judgment.

Religious commandments were written in a time when people didn't think very much by themselves and needed precise orders about how to live...

Oh wait I suddenly realized that I am speaking about present time!! :)

Edited by Tonix777
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The very nature of a "commandment" is against Objectivist standards from my point of view since a commandment is something you are supposed to follow more or less blindly AKA without conscious judgment.

I was about to make the same point. No matter how correct a moral statement is - e.g. "don't initiate force against anyone" - if it is made as a commandment, grounded in nothing, then it is irrational to follow it.

Someone who chooses to follow such an irrational commandment - even though it is a correct moral statement - cannot be trusted to act according to that moral statement, for the very reason that they are acting irrationally. That person is likely to act irrational in some other way - either by violating the very commandment on a whim, or arbitrarily supplanting the commandment with some other irrational rule, etc.

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I don't mean to defend Judeo-Christian philosophy by any means, but it is quite possible that mistranslations have screwed us over in regards to the two aforementioned commandments. "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not murder" are too vastly different things. Killing someone in defense of life or property is not murder. If the commandment is indeed "Thou shalt not murder," then killing for a valid reason would be perfectly moral under Judeo-Christian law.

The Jewish commandment in Hebrew is properly translated as "thou shalt not murder". You can see the error repeated here by Christian interpreters.

להרוג Kill

רצח Murder

Two different words in Hebrew, as in English.

-------------

Edited by A is A
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