Few Americans Familiar with more than 4 of the 10 Commandments

[AnnInLa]

http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/2005/06/poll_few_americ.html#more

Few Americans Familiar with More than Four of Ten Commandments

While the Ten Commandments are increasingly popular in both text and tablet form, a new poll has found that few Americans are familiar with more than four of them. The Biblical bans on murder, theft, and adultery ranked highest among adults surveyed, while only a handful were familiar with Commandments prohibiting graven images and false witness.


WASHINGTON, DC—On the heels of a Supreme Court ruling that bars public buildings from erecting massive tributes to the stone tablets handed down to Moses by God, a new poll has found that few Americans are familiar with more than four of the Ten Commandments.

That finding comes at a time when support for the Ten Commandments is at an all time high, with an estimated 32% of Americans regularly calling into talk radio shows, writing letters to the editor or hectoring family and friends about the importance of the Ten Commandments—despite not knowing what most of them are.
Among most recognizable... murder, theft and coveting servants, wives and donkeys


The new poll, based on 2,130 telephone interviews conducted over the weekend, found that fewer than 10% of Americans were able to define more than four of the Commandments. Among the most recognizable of the Biblical bans were the prohibitions against murder, theft and adultery, and coveting the wives, male servants, oxen or donkeys of a neighbor. While the First, Second, and Third Commandments come in tops on the list of the religious and moral imperatives, few Americans were able to state with any certainty what those Commandments actually say. The stone tablet topper reads that "I am the Lord, thy God." Number three weighs in with a prohibition against "graven images."


more at http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/2005/06/poll_few_americ.html#more

[trotsky]

1. All the more reason we gotta post 'em EVERYWHERE!

Right? :sarcasm:

[Ilsa]

7. The Religious Wrong love to abdicate responsibility for teaching

religion to their children to the general public, as if schools had a responsibility for that.

[DanCa]

2. Love thy neighbor or the golden rule

Just treat your fellow man women with proper respect and everything else will follow. Of course I will be t he first to admit its not easy is this climate. Especially when we got a President in office who openly insults half the population of the United States.
I cant help but hearing that old song mountain top from the rascals. "Its seems to me oh what a wonderful world it could be if everyone eventually learned to love one another."

[GreenArrow]

3. they're even less familiar with the two commandments

.

[whistle]

4. Which Ten Commandments? There are a number of versions...

...at the link below:

<snip>
Which Ten Commandments?
A Reprintable, Royalty-Free Handbill
edited by Cliff Walker and Jyoti Shankar

One of the best-kept secrets in the discussions on the Ten Commandments concerns the fact that (according to the story) Moses smashed the first set of tables in a fit of anger, because the Israelites chose to worship the golden calf. (That this would happen or would be told casts doubt on the whole Exodus tale, but we will not cover that here.)

As the tale goes, Moses smashed the tables of stone, and God said he'd make a new set of tables containing "the words that were on the first" (Exodus 34:1). However, as we see on the second page, the second Ten Commandments in no way resemble the first set. To popularize this knowledge is to knock the wind out of this entire move to place "The" Ten Commandments in our schools.

Positive Atheism encourages readers to print out and distribute the PDF file of the two center pages of our July, 1999, issue, and distribute it far and wide. (If you don't have Adobe Acrobat, you can download it for free. If you don't use Acrobat, the contents are reproduced in HTML 2.0 below.) Although we know that the main premise of theism is flawed, many Americans haven't thought much on these things. Thus, to show biblical discrepancies can, with many people, go further than any discussion of the main premises of theism.

A discrepancy not mentioned is that between the original Ten Commandments of Exodus 20 and the recap listed in Deuteronomy 5. Exodus 20 requires keeping the Sabbath because "in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day." But in Deuteronomy, Jews must "remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day." Nothing is said about God resting after the six days it took to create the universe.

<more>
<link> http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/whichcom.htm

[Dr.Phool]

10. Well, I'm not a religious person

But I have never seethed a calf in it's mothers milk!

[jwirr]

5. Few actually understand the spirit of these commandments.

Especially the last two which discuss coveting other's property. These two commandments make greed sin. Can any repug say that the oil company repugs in control of this country are not greedy?

[Warpy]

6. No shit, which is why I lean on them to recite those first 3

commandments, the ones where everybody who isn't Judeo/Christian/Islamic gets told their religion is shit, where graven images like those 10 commandment monstrosities in granite are forbidden, and where having WalMart open on Sunday is forbidden.

It's a real eye opener for most of them after I've forced them to go scurry for their buy bulls.

Most people haven't read all 10 since they were in grammar school, and it shows rather badly. One would think their preachers haven't read them, either, since they are displaying exactly as much ignorance as their flocks.

[DanCa]

8. I like the one about false idols and using gods name in vain

Comparing GW to God is a straight ticket to hell. See why I wont be part of the Pro Life Movement? They dont follow the ten commandments.

[RethugAssKicker]

9. Is this a bad thing?

[Roland99]

11. And these are Christians I assume? Why are they bothering w/10 Commandment

Jesus taught the Beatitudes, not the 10 commandments. The 10 commandments were part of Mosaic law.