224 Comments

Olsen apparently doesn't want to get the message: Posting the Ten Commandments in a public school is improper and UNCONSTITUTIONAL, and if he still doesn't know that, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, American Atheists, and the ACLU will be more than glad to instruct him in just WHY what he wants should not happen.

The saddest part of this is that he likely KNOWS its improper but basically wants to virtue-signal anyway. [damn, this has become tiresome.]

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Conservative Christians see their religion as the solution to every problem, and they never stop trying to mark their territory in the public schools paid for with everyone's tax dollars.

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I really love their notion that having the poster donated gets them out of the public resources problem. The building, you idiots, is a public resource.

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It's only unconstitutional for a little while longer. Soon SCOTUS will abolish separation of church and state. Olsen knows this. And so, he's probably hoping his case is the one that makes it up to the high court and enables them to destroy separation of church and state once and for all.

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Death by a thousand cuts... Since the Talibangelicals expect to come out on top as the dominant religion in the country, they get to make the new rules. I'm glad I am old.

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Dominant? No, only.

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More likely, he just doesn't give a shit about separation of church and state. It's about authoritarianism and control. Society is layered and each layer answers to the one above. Conversely, the upper layers are supposed to look after the lower layers. But, due to christian hatred, they're shrugged off the yoke of responsibility. Christians crave authority without responsibility and to act without consequence, i.e. in the name of god, which is why they do the appeal to god's authority fallacy. god owns everything and everyone, killing is wrong, not because it is immoral, but because only god has the authority to destroy his property. Once god gives the go ahead, christians can kill with impunity.

I learned recently that, ironically, it was several christian sects that were vying for power and control over society at the time of our founding that helped drive the separation of church and state.

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America was largely colonized by members of sects the Church of England was persecuting.

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That certainly is our "origin story" but not entirely the whole picture. As much as schools promote the whole Plymouth Rock story (1620 CE), the Pilgrims weren't the first to show up. Jamestown had already been established (1607 CE) well before they even left. There were 4 different christian sects, including evangelicals, dominant at the time of America's founding, and they all vied against each other; each one owned the entire truth and proper interpretation of the bible. There was a lot of rivalry.

Speaking of the pilgrims being persecuted, they, as puritans, were once the persecutors of everyone else because they felt no one else was taking the ascetic lifestyle far enough into abject misery. When a new King was crowned (I want to say it was a Charles, but it could have been one of the James), he was much more relaxed, and so society shifted and the puritans fell out of favor and became the persecuted. When we get taught the whole pilgrim story, they leave out that the pilgrims were the assholes first (I can imagine what their IAMTA reddit stories would be like) and didn't like the backlash. They didn't even go to America first. I think they went to Denmark (I'm probably wrong on that, but it doesn't matter), they were kicked out and returned to England before setting off from Plymouth for The New World.

Hopefully I got most of the details right.

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"They didn't even go to America first. I think they went to Denmark"

Actually The Netherlands, where they were horrified to discover *gasp* TOLERANCE!

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GMTA! They wore even the tolerant out, though.

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Thanks. I knew it was somewhere around there, just wasn't totally certain.

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As far as the arguing goes, they're still at it. I think they always will be. I think the nation will have to suffer under the Talibangicals before the lesson sinks in.

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Indeed. Though, they are more tolerant than in the past, even if only to align against non-christians. They seem to think better a believer who is wrong than a non-believer who exists.

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For now.

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Thank you! the Puritans came here because the Dutch (the tolerant protestans !) Threw them out because they were so hateful. And the king was Charles the ll, they (CromWell and his Roundheads), beheaded his dad Charles the l.

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Thanks. When I read about Cromwell (a true POS) and the puritans, I found out that the pilgrims, previously puritans, had been utter bastards to everyone until Charles II took the throne.

I visited the home of Oliver Cromwell in Ely. I read the info board in the dining room, it was talking about how he would cut off all the choice meat and give it to the dogs while he and the family would eat the gristle and fat. It's like this false suffering for god bs they would do, like nuns who perform self-flagellation, or the normal false persecution that christians suffer and crap like the war on Christmas (spoiler: it's called capitalism).

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North, Central and South America.

In God We Trust?

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Everybody else pays cash.

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A SF writer had a collection of his short stories published under the title “Time Travelers — Strictly Cash”. All the stories were set in a bar on Long Island. Writer’s name was Spider Robinson.

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Those are great books (I forget how many there were) and Spider's a good guy.

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Yep, Callahan is a bastard.

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Put on the the money during the "red scare" because Communism is bad!

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"Communism is bad!" Godless Commies? Keeping the fear alive!

MAGA is in control.

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I do not begin to understand what problem he thinks he would be fixing with this measure. Does he want the Commandments posted in schools because the churches have failed in their indoctrination campaigns? A poster with the Ten Commandments should be accompanied by a poster explaining that eight of the Commandments would be unconstitutional should anyone try writing them into law.

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Just who wants adultery to be an offense that gets you prison time?? Our economy is based on coveting. Who was the looneytoons kkkrister that ran for president on the "IMPRISON MASTURBATORS" platform?

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LOL

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How educational...

Attempting to improve education by posting a list called "10 commandments" using 11 items.

Disturbingly apropos.

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That's why protestants feel superior to catholics: "Our ten commandments go up to eleven".

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"These 15" *smash* "...10 commandments!"

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I count 12.

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Even better.

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Isn't it just~!

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"Thou shalt not kill"

Oklahoma has the death penalty.

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I'm sure they would be happy to tell you how that doesn't count.

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Originalloy, that waas relevant to members of one own tribe or clan. ALl others were fair game.

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And it was murder, not kill. “Don’t murder other Israelites” isn’t exactly a clarion call for morality.

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Moses, along with the Levites, killed 3,000 Israelites who had worshiped the golden calf while Moses was on top of Sinai receiving the first set of stone tablets.

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“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” (no, it’s not an Einstein quote) could certainly apply here if not for the possibility of it ending up in front of a sympathetic judge or justice. The best case scenario would be the bill going down in flames as it should.

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I think this is more a battering ram strategy. Sooner or later, that door will fall somewhere

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Einstein said " I = st² ".

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Ignorance=stupid twonks squared?

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I was going for 'same thing', but yours works too.

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If schools must display them, presidents should have to follow them.

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The President has immunity. Thanks SCOTUS. /s

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Like THAT will happen!!

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This stuff is just the precum to what’s coming with Trump and Project 2025, or whatever they’re calling now. It is also just a continuation of Project Blitz they pretended to abandon five or so years ago. Getting the commandments into schools the goal, it’s the distraction, a tool to keep the people fighting each other while The Heritage Foundation and others strip away our democracy, rights, and way of life. We’re fighting each other over drag queens and transgender people, immigrants eating pets and whatever banal thing escapes trump’s mouth, Greenland, Panama, Canada. While they’re installing nationalist judges and wiping out norms and laws. Sometimes we can see what they’re doing, installing Amy Coney-Barret, giving Trump immunity, taking away a protected human right, sometimes we can’t see it until it’s too late. Let’s hope some checks and balances withstand the onslaught.

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Political pandering, pious, pretentious posturing.

I don't think these politicians really care that much about their pet mini-crusades. In fact, sometimes I think they prefer that they NOT succeed getting their religious incursions past the First Amendment, because that makes it easy to just KEEP FILING updated copies of the same bills, keep getting attention, and keep getting approval from their base. They can pretend to be the dedicated public servant fighting the "good fight" instead of doing actual hard work that will benefit their districts and states. It's all about votes and dollars, not about principles.

I just upgraded my monthly membership donation to the ACLU.

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Preposterous pontificating!

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Pointless palaver!

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And pusillanimous pussyfooting! [so there! 😁]

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Dang, you used pusillanimous before I got here. My go to phrase is pusillanimous poltroons.

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Palpable parasites.

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Putrid piety!

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Pompous prattle! Patronizing piffle!

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Prevaricating poseurs!

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Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky.

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Pat Paulsen!

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Peter Parker.

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Priggish pablum.

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The first few are unconstitutional.

Honor needs to be earned, not dictated.

The next few predate the bible and are subjective.

Coveting is OK, but like most things should be done in moderation.

Churches sure do covet their neighbor's cash. (I won't mention the neighbor's kids.)

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Won't be unconstitutional for long. The so-called Supreme Court will soon abolish separation of church and state. They have signaled their desire for someone to bring the right kind of case that will enable them to do so.

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It's the Protestant version from the KJV. How fundamentalist of him.

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Please prove that is the O fishul version?

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Cuz it uses an archaic speech pattern?

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I'm sure that will help correct Oklahoma's ‘red state blues’.

Red states rank at the very BOTTOM of the country for GDP, hospital quality, health outcomes, happiness, income, education, air quality, water quality and life expectancy.

Red states also rank highest for federal funding per capita, poverty, divorce, teen pregnancies, violent crime, domestic violence, governmental corruption, child and transgender porn, COVID deaths per capita and mental health crises.

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Reading this version of the Ten Commandments, it's honestly a wonder anyone thinks they're more than a pitiful first draft. Certainly, they're not something I would be proud of creating as a foundational series of legal principles. Most of them are just what I'd consider the bare minimum for how to treat others well enough to get by in life; there's zip about subjects ranging from vandalism to rape in there. There's also entirely too many religious 'because God says so' ideas that would need to be removed; keeping a day 'holy' is subject to way too much interpretation.

Anyone living strictly by these commandments these days would, in all likelihood, wind up in prison for any number of crimes not listed. (Drug offenses, assault, etc.) Seems to me like someone's trying to run a stress test on the school to prison pipeline, not actually educate kids.

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As Dillahunty says, “Thou shalt not own people as property.” never made it onto the list.

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Nor did being Gay make the big 10. A bunch of jealous and insecure god shit did, though.

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As Buttons says, "Thou shalt not rape." never got a dinner.

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The craziest thing about this story is that that's not the 10 Commandments.

Remember the story: Moses goes up Mt. Sinai and returns with a copy of the commandments (Exodus 20). Then he smashes them on the golden idol and goes back up to get a new set (Exodus 34). God makes clear that this is just a copy with no changes made. But read the text of this second set! It's not at all the same commandments.

But this second set is the real 10 Cs, and this Christian lawmaker doesn't know his own Bible.

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Bob, Long time, no see! Hope all is well!

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So the state that ranks 47th in education is vying to be ranked 50th? And they have a giant teacher shortage! Apparently they don’t give a shit about educating their children so that possibly in the future they can become successful. The 10 Commandments and Bibles are not only a waste of time but they are offensive. Truly pathetic that Christian Nationalists zealots have succeeded in promoting their propaganda on innocent children who might benefit from instruction in reading, writing, math and history. Shameful!

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49th. OK is ranked next-to-last in Education.

They're also ranked 49th in Health Care. Can't say I'm surprised that Olsen's wasting time and taxpayer $$$ on this biblical crapola.

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Sorry I gave them more credit than they deserved. Their educational system is barely on life support. Nothing like interfering so that in the future it might not even be called education.

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Is he trying to hide the fact that they are 49th in education?

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Maybe they think 50 is better than 49 because 50 > 49.

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👆👆👆👆🎯

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Destruction of education is necessary because trump (not deserving of a capital) will get rid of all the lettuce pickers so they need to backfill.

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I wonder if making it look like a kidnapper's ransom note was on purpose.

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