The Founding Myth
Page 41
13 Jefferson to Danbury Baptist Assoc., January 1, 1802.
14 Exod. 19:21–25. In verse 24 there’s a command that Aaron ascend the mountain as well, but it’s not clear if this is followed and does little to add veracity to the tale—surely Aaron’s account would back up his brother’s.
15 Paine, Age of Reason, 8.
16 Christopher Hitchens, “The New Commandments,” Vanity Fair, March 4, 2010.
17 “Monotheism.” In Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 8, 659–61.
18–19 Ibid. Special thanks to Joseph Lewis, The Ten Commandments (New York: Freethought Press Association, 1946), 174–75, for pointing me to the Jewish Encyclopedia and its riches.
20 US Const. art. VI (emph. added).
21 Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 166–67 (1878).
22 Madison, Federalist, no. 49.
23 Hamilton, Federalist, no. 22 (emph. in orig.).
24 Franklin, remarks during the Constitutional Convention, July 25, 1787, in Records of the Federal Convention, vol. 2., ed. Farrand, 120 (emph. in orig.).
25 James Monroe, “Views of the President of the United States on the Subject of Internal Improvements” (May 4, 1822), in Founders’ Constitution online, vol. 2, Preamble, doc. 20, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/preambles20.html.
26 Adams, “Defence of the Constitutions of Government,” in Works of John Adams, vol. 4, 293.
27 Ibid., 292.
28 “We formed our Constitution without any acknowledgement of GOD; without any recognition of his mercies to us, as a people, of his government, or even of his existence. The Convention, by which it was formed, never asked, even once, his direction, or his blessing upon their labours. Thus we commenced our national existence under the present system, without GOD.” Timothy Dwight, A Discourse in Two Parts: Delivered July 23, 1812…(New Haven, CT: Howe and Deforest), 46.
29 US Const. art. VI, § 3.
30 US Const. amend. I.
31 Ibid.
32 Seidel, “Dating God,” 129–51.
33 Stone, Perilous Times, 7.
34 Pope Leo XIII, On the Nature of Human Liberty encyclical (June 20, 1888), https://perma.cc/AH87-C5TC.
Chapter 15 • Punishing the Innocent: The Second Commandment
1 Exod. 20:4 (KJV, which interprets the term idol as “graven image.”)
2 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, bk. 2, ch. 8, § 20, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008), 245.
3 John Hodgson’s shorthand notes, The Trial of William Wemms, James Hartegan, William M’Cauley, Hugh White, Matthew Killroy, William Warren, John Carrol, and Hugh Montgomery…for the Murder of Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell, and Patrick Carr… (Boston: J. Fleming, 1770), 149.
4 Smith v. People of the State of California, 361 U.S. 147 (1959).
5 Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495, 504–5 (1952).
6 The two 1,500-year-old monumental statues were carved into a cliff on the Silk Road and were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. According to the New York Times, the Taliban “decided that the statues were idolatrous and should be obliterated.” Barbara Crossette, “Taliban Explains Buddha Demolition,” New York Times, March 19, 2001. See also W. L. Rathje, “Why the Taliban Are Destroying Buddhas,” USA Today, March 22, 2001.
7 Origen, Contra Celsum, bk. V7, ch. 65, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04167.htm.
8 Ibid., ch. 62; See, e.g., Tacitus, The Histories, bk 5, trans. Alfred J. Church and William J. Brodribb (London: Macmillan, 1905), 195.
9 MacCullough, Christianity, 442–56.
10 Ibid., 443–44.
11 The full text of the Canon is available in Henry R. Percival, The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church…, vol. 14 in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1979), 401, https://perma.cc/6DVK-4B93.
12 John Calvin, “On Suffering Persecution,” The World’s Greatest Orations, vol. 7, ed. William Jennings Bryan and Francis W. Halsey (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1906).
13 New Oxford Annotated Bible, 1427.
14 Ibid., 1361.
15 Wisd. of Sol., 14:25–27.
16 Ibid., 14:12.
17 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address at the Dedication of the National Gallery of Art, March 17, 1941, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-dedication-the-national-gallery-art.
18 Ibid. (emph. added).
19 Wisd. of Sol., 14:25.
20 US Const. art. III, § 3.
21 Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 243 (1944) (Jackson, J. dissenting).
22 Madison, Federalist, no. 43.
23 Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 705.
24 Korematsu, 323 U.S (Jackson, J. dissenting).
25 Ibid., (Murphy, J. dissenting).
26 Gen. 19, 19:8.
27 Gen. 19:29.
Chapter 16 • Suppressed Speech: The Third Commandment
1 George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” Horizon, no. 76 (April 1946): 252–65 at 262, http://www.unz.org/Pub/Horizon-1946apr-00252.
2 J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (New York: Scholastic, 1999), 298.
3 Exod. 6:3.
4 Lev. 24:10–16.
5 “Blasphemy.” In Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 3, 237.
6 Mark 3:28–29. See also Matt. 12:31–32, Luke 12:10.
7 2 Sam. 12:14–18.
8 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2nd Pt. of the 2nd Pt., q. 13, art. 1, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3013.htm.
9 James Wilson, “A Charge Delivered to the Grand Jury in the Circuit Court of the United States, for the District of Virginia, in May, 1791,” in Collected Works of James Wilson, vol. 1, ed. Kermit L. Hall and Mark David Hall (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007), 326, http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2072#Wilson_4140_1597.
10 Wilson, “Of Crimes Immediately against the Community,” in Collected Works of James Wilson, vol. 2, 1149, http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2074#Wilson_4141_1600.
11 Madison, Federalist, no. 37.
12 Ambrose Bierce, “Decalogue” entry, in The Devil’s Dictionary, Tales, and Memoirs (New York: Library of America, 2011).
13 Lewis, Ten Commandments, 238. Lewis wrote, “Do you want me to tell you why appeals in the name of God are uttered in vain? Do you want me to tell you why prayers are not answered? I will tell you. There is no such thing as a God who answers the prayers of man. The sooner we come to that realization, the sooner the human race becomes cognizant of this fact, the sooner will man set about to accomplish for himself all that he has appealed to God for in vain. ‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain….’ Thou canst not take the name of God in any other way” (emph. in orig.).
14 Musser v. Utah, 333 U.S. 95, 97 (1948).
15 Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 (1972).
16 John Adams to Jefferson, January 23, 1825, in Works of John Adams, vol. 10, 415–16.
17 See, e.g., Ben Hubbard, “Saudis Begin Public Caning to Punish a Blogger,” New York Times, January 9, 2015, telling the story of Raif Badawi.
18 For more on Raif Badawi, see his book: 1000 Lashes: Because I Say What I Think, trans. Constantin Schreiber (Vancouver, CAN: Greystone Books, 2015). And his wife’s book, Ensef Haider and Andrea Hoffman, Raif Badawi: The Voice of Freedom: My Husband, Our Story (Boston: Little, Brown, 2016).
19 Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, April 19, 1814, in Jefferson: Writings, ed. Merrill Peterson (New York: Library of America, 1984), pages 1333–35 at 1334.
20 Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495, 505 (1952).
21 Ibid.
22 Ingersoll, Trial of C. B. Reynolds.
23 See Freedom From Religion Foundation v. Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders, No. 079277, 2018 WL 1832631 (NJ April 18, 2018).
24 Leigh Eric Schmidt, Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way
in a Godly Nation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2017), 175–84.
25 Ingersoll, Trial of C. B. Reynolds, 10–11.
26 Ibid., 31–32.
27 Ibid., 45.
28 New Jersey Revised Statutes 237, § 22 (1874). The two prior sections made it a crime to practice witchcraft and to impersonate “our Savior Jesus Christ.” See Revision of the Statutes of New Jersey, vol. 2 (Trenton, NJ: John L. Murphy, 1877), 238.
29 Leonard Williams Levy, Blasphemy: Verbal Offense against the Sacred, from Moses to Salman Rushdie (Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1995), 511.
30 Ingersoll, Trial of C. B. Reynolds for Blasphemy, 9.
Chapter 17 • Forced Rest: The Fourth Commandment
1 Thomas Paine, “Of the Sabbath Day in Connecticut,” in Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. 4, 324.
2 Exod. 31:14.
3 Num. 15:32–36.
4 Sandoz, Political Sermons, vol. 2, 1123.
5 Pascal, Pensées, § 7, no. 425.
6 David N. Laband and Deborah Hendry Heinbuch, Blue Laws: The History, Economics, and Politics of Sunday-Closing Laws (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1987), 30.
7 Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U.S. 599, 602 (1961), citing McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 42, at 437–40 (1961).
8 Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom (1786). Maclear, Church and State in the Modern Age, 64.
9 Braunfeld, 366 U.S. at 437–40.
10 Soon Hing v. Crowley, 113 U.S. 703, 710 (1885).
11 Senator Richard Johnson made the Sunday Mails report to the Senate on January 19, 1829, the 20th Congress, 2nd Sess. In American State Papers…of the Congress of the United States, from the first session of the First to the second session of the Twenty-Second Congress (Washington, DC: Gales & Seaton, 1834), class 7, Post Office Dept., no. 74, 211–12; see also Sunday Mails report to the House of Representatives, no. 75, 212–15, https://books.google.com/books?id=cAdFAQAAMAAJ.
12 McGowan, 366 U.S. 42, at 420, 453.
13 Frederick Douglass, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: From 1817–1882, Written by Himself, with an Introduction by the Right Hon. John Bright, ed. John Lobb (London: Christian Age Office, 1882), 110–11.
14 Exod. 21:2.
15 “Slaves and Slavery,” in Jewish Encyclopedia, vol 11, 403.
16 Exod. 21:7–8.
17 Exod. 21:9–11.
18 Luke 12:47–48.
19 Eph. 6:5–8; Col. 3:22; Titus 2:9–10; 1 Pet. 2:18.
20 James Madison, Records of the Federal Convention, ed. Farrand, vol. 2, 415.
21 Edmund Randolph, debate in the Virginia Convention, June 21, 1788, in Records of the Federal Convention, ed. Farrand, vol. 3, 334.
22 Justice Thurgood Marshall, Bicentennial Speech, remarks at the Annual Seminar of the San Francisco Patent and Trademark Law Association, Maui, Hawaii, May 6, 1987, http://thurgoodmarshall.com/the-bicentennial-speech/.
23 Deut. 5:15.
24 Exod. 20:10.
Chapter 18 • On Family Honor: The Fifth Commandment
1 Hitchens, God Is Not Great, 53. Hitchens was slightly wrong here. Islam says Ishmael, not Isaac, was to be sacrificed. It does not alter the point.
2 Hitchens, “The New Commandments.”
3 Ibid.
4 Anne Nicol Gaylor, Lead Us Not into Penn Station (Madison, WI: Freedom From Religion Foundation, 1983), 11.
5 Gen. 19.
6 Gen. 19:36.
7 Gaylor, Lead Us Not into Penn Station, 11.
8 Deut. 32:46
9 Eph. 6:4.
10 Martin Luther, Large Catechism, in Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Friedrich Bente (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1921), 565–773 at 627. The fourth commandment section of the Large Catechism begins on 611 and ends on 629.
11 Robert Tilton, “What is a Vow?,” Robert Tilton website, last accessed July 30, 2018, at http://www.roberttiltonlive.com/vowing.html. See also Understanding Evangelical Media: The Changing Face of Christian Communication, ed. Quentin J. Schultze and Robert H. Woods Jr. (Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 2009) 300, n. 32.
12 Psalm 89:26; Mal. 2:10.
13 To pick one book from the New Testament, John 1:18, 5:18, 6:27, 6:45–46, 8:41, 8:42, 10:36, 13:3, 16:27, 20:17.
14 Matt. 23:9.
15 Daniel Cox, “White Christians Side with Trump,” PRRI, November 9, 2016, https://perma.cc/TJ5K-NVEU.
16 Mark Setzler and Alixandra B. Yanus, “Evangelical Protestantism and Bias against Female Political Leaders,” Social Science Quarterly 98, no. 2 (2017): 766–78. “Even after controlling for partisanship, evangelicals are nearly twice as likely (as other voters) to believe that men make better political leaders than women,” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ssqu.12315/epdf.
17 D. F. McCleary, C. C. Quillivan, L. N. Foster, and R. L. Williams, “Meta-Analysis of Correlational Relationships between Perspectives of Truth in Religion and Major Psychological Constructs,” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 3, no. 3 (May 23, 2011): 163–80.
18 Ann Coulter, interview by Lloyd Grove, “Ann Coulter Might Dump Her ‘Emperor God’ Trump over Bannon,” the Daily Beast (August 18, 2017), https://perma.cc/CT6V-CNXZ.
19 Hitchens said something like this on several occasions. This particular quote comes from his debate with Alister McGrath, “Poison or Cure? Religious Belief in the Modern World,” October 11, 2007, Georgetown Univ., Washington, DC. In this instance, Hitchens was speaking of Josef Stalin.
20 Gregory Smith and Jessica Martinez, “How the Faithful Voted: A Preliminary 2016 Analysis,” November 9, 2016, Pew Research Center, https://perma.cc/6DPJ-9B88.
Chapter 19 • Unoriginal and Tribal: The Sixth, Eighth, and Ninth Commandments
1 George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (New York: Hyperion, 2004), 17 (emph. added).
2 Stefan C. Reif, Problems with Prayers: Studies in the Textual History of Early Rabbinic Liturgy (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006), 115.
3 F. C. Burkitt, “The Hebrew Papyrus of the Ten Commandments,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 15 (1903): 392–408, https://perma.cc/UMN6-48YL.
4 Mark 10:19. See also Luke 18:20, Rom. 13:9, and James 2:11.
5 See, e.g., Andreas Sofroniou, Moral Philosophy: The Ethical Approach Through the Ages (Swindon, UK: PsySys, 2003), 74; Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York Univ. Press, 2002), 170.
6 Ibid.
7 Christopher Hitchens, debate with Alister McGrath, “Poison or Cure? Religious Belief in the Modern World,” Georgetown Univ., Washington, DC, October 11, 2007.
8 McCreary, 545 U.S. 844.
9 For other, earlier legal codes see David Wright, Inventing God’s Law: How the Covenant Code of the Bible Used and Revised the Laws of Hammurabi (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009); Kenneth A. Kitchen and Paul J. N. Lawrence, Treaty, Law and Covenant in the Ancient Near East, pts. 1–3 (Wiesbaden, Ger.: Harrassowitz, 2012).
10 John Hartung, “Love Thy Neighbor: The Evolution of In-Group Morality,” Skeptic 3, no. 4 (1995): 86–99, http://strugglesforexistence.com./pdf/LTN.pdf.
11 The earliest version of this story I could find is in Liz Murray, Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard (New York: Hachette, 2010), 291; she attributes it to one of her English teachers, Perry Weiner.
12 See Hector Avalos, The Bad Jesus: The Ethics of New Testament Ethics (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2015), 32–34; Hartung, “Love Thy Neighbor.” This is the minority interpretation and many, if not most, scholars disagree. See, e.g., Richard Elliott Friedman, “Love Your Neighbor: Only Israelites or Everyone?,” Biblical Archaeology Rev. (September/October 2014), https://perma.cc/PEB6-PUR2.
13 Ibid.
14 Lev. 19:18 (emph. added).
15 Lev. 19:16 (emph. added).
16 Deut. 15:1–3 (emph. added).
17 Deut. 15:3.
18 I was first made aware of this in Richard Dawkins’s The G
od Delusion (New York: Mariner, 2008), where he, in turn, cited Hartung, “Love Thy Neighbor.”
19 See, e.g., Exod. 23:23 (6 races of people); Exod. 23:27–29; Num. 21:3, 21:34–35; Num. 31:7–11, 31:17, 31:35; Deut. 7:1–2 (seven nations), 16, 20; Deut. 13:15; Josh. 6:21; Josh. 8:22, 8:24; Josh. 10:28, 10:30, 10:31, 10:33, 10:35, 10:37, 10:38, 10:40; Josh. 11:1–9 (13 kings and their people), 11:11, 11:14, 11:20, 11:21; Josh. 12:7–24 (31 genocides); Judg. 1:8, 1:17, 1:25; Judg. 3:29; Judg. 6:16; Judg. 8:16, 17; Judg. 9:45, 49; Judg. 18:27; Judg. 19:22–30 (just a horrific story of slavery, rape, and murder, but not a genocide); Judg. 21:10–12.
20 Pinker, Better Angels of Our Nature, 10.
21 Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sanhedrin, folio 79a, ed. Isidore Epstein, trans. Jacob Shachter and H. Freedman (London: Soncino Press, 1935), http://www.come-and-hear.com/sanhedrin/sanhedrin_79.html.
22 Ibid.
23 “Gentile.” In Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 5, 619.
24 Matt. 10:5–6.
25 John 13:34.
26 John 13:35.
27 1 John 2:9–11; 3:10–17; 4:20, all discussing love for brothers or brothers and sisters, but in terms that refer to fellow believers, i.e. brothers in Christ, not in terms that indicate the love is for all fellow humans. See also 2 John 1:5 and 10, which says to “love one another,” but was written to a Christian congregation and then points out that no non-Christians should be given hospitality or allowed to enter Christian homes.
28 1 John 2:9–11.
29 New Oxford Annotated Bible, 2140, notes for 1 John 2:9–11.
30 1 John 3:11–17 (emph. added).
31 Matt. 15:21–28. See also Mark 7:24–30.
32 Matt. 5:44.
33 Rev. 22:15.
34 Rev. 9:4–5.
35 Matt. 25:41; Mark 9:43–48; Luke 16:22–24; John 3:18, 36; 2 Thess. 1:8–9; Rev. 14:10–11, 20:10.
36 Gal. 3:28.
37 Orwell, Animal Farm.
38 Gal. 3:26–29 (emph. added).
39 Daniel Carey, God: The Original Segregationist (privately published, 1955), https://perma.cc/9DA5-JQHW.