They are deemed to be secular, like Christmas.

What's the secular reading of "You shall have no other gods before me" ? What?

I can understand that Christmas has mutated into a family reunion, a time for gathering with loved ones etc, even Santa Claus, name and all, has turned into the figure that brings presents, but even if I can understand "You shall not murder" as a secular rule, the ten commandments as a whole are really hard to take as such no?

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SoftTalker 3 days ago | parent [-]

They are common to all Abrahamic religions, in spirit if not word-for-word. Hinduism also has its 5 principles and 10 disciplines which are broadly similar.

Perhaps "secular" is not the best description, but for anyone faithful to any of the major religions, these are going to be broadly shared principles, in addition to being the basis for most of our laws and social norms regarding individual behavior (don't kill, don't steal, etc.)

It's kind of like having "In God We Trust" printed on our currency. It's not a specific (i.e. Christian) God, at least that is the justification, and it's not seen as "respecting an establishment of religion" in the Constitutional sense.

	▲	yencabulator 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Even if you can find multiple religions that you claim agree on something that does not make that thing secular. > Secularity [...] is the state of being unrelated to, or neutral in regard to, religion.

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dylan604 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The ten commandments are definitely not secular, but it is funny how up until the 1950s christmas was deemed a pagan religious holiday and was even listed this way in encyclopedias from that time. Then suddenly, it was listed as a christian holiday, except there is no reference about it in the bible with new testament references specifying to not keep that holiday. How these can be deemed the same is beyond rational thinking.

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dragonwriter 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> but it is funny how up until the 1950s christmas was deemed a pagan religious holiday and was even listed this way in encyclopedias from that time

Deemed by whom and in what encyclopedias? There are certainly religious groups who are historically recent offshoots of Western Christianity that viewed it that way in the 1950s, but the same groups do so today, nothing substantial has changed on that front since the 1950s. For the rest of Christianity, well, it was adopted as a Christian feast in the 4th century and has been treated as one since pretty consistently by most of Christianity. Certainly so in the largest branches of Christian in the US in the 1950s, which constituted between them the great majority of the population.

	▲	dylan604 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I had a copy of Britannica from the 50s that had this. It was picked up in one of those Books By The Yard for cheap.

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yencabulator 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Christian leaders realized they're losing a fight against folk traditions and went into damage control mode. Other "Christian" special dates were similarly specifically picked to match an older special date.

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yencabulator 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This is one of the stupidest things I've read all year, and I fear that we're still only in August. I really have no words. They're by definition a set of religious directives from a claimed god.