Why we don't have a bible in the house, nor would...

Do you understand lack of faith?

Do you understand doubt?

Do you understand faith?

That's quite worrying, Bags if your robust ripostes are aimed at something you can't understand. Like faith, maybe.

By which I mean it went right over my head.

I didn't evade that point, lily. I missed it entirely!

And I thought only Catholicism inculcated guilt!

Oh, Absent I was born feeling guilty! And Greatnan I come from a line of Quakers and Baptists on the female side, but I'm beginning to suspect a Jewish influence there somewhere!

Nfk - the full commandment is (or something like) 'Honour your father and mother that your days may be long on the land that God gives you'. It's all about the value of the family to the community and keeping a hold of the promised land that they were going to after they left slavery in Egypt. So unless you have some ancestral land that you want to hang on to, don't worry about that commandment too much.

Nfk - your mother was probably your primary carer, and it is inbuilt to want to stay close to them as a child. Many people spend their lives trying to please indifferent parents who don't deserve their love and loyalty. Some mothers are adept at emotional blackmail (the stereotype is the Jewish mother, source of many jokes).

Or even – dare I say it – guilt, NFK?

Love Gransnet - I'm learning so much. Just looked up honour in the dictionary and I definitely fail on the honouring mother commandment. (Respect went out the window 45 years ago.) But I still find myself running around in circles trying to make her happy, is that love or instinct?

Bags I think you have evaded the point I made which was that Harris and every other person published today is at the end of a long line of everything else that was ever written or thought. There is nothing new under the sun. The 'armed' reference was to the Greek goddess Athena who was said to have been born from the head of her father, Zeus (sprang fully formed and armed, with a mighty shout). Goddess of, among other things, philosophy and war. There's an interesting combination.

I remember - as a naive student - being very shocked when I saw this in the film 'If'................

Very true, absent - didn't both sides in the two world wars have their artillery blessed?

Yes, lily. I agree there is a difference between respect and honour. Some peoplle think their kind of 'honour' is so important, that they're prepared to kill for it. Some of them are even prepared to kill their own children. I don't think I like that kind of honour. I know my children honour and respect me because I taught them how to do it by honouring and respecting them. We honour and respect each others' differences.

The only 'armament' in the books of people like Sam Harris (and your favourite other atheist, That Man Dawkins), is rational argument. Very civilised when one thinks about it. I seem to remember that there was quite a lot of irrational stuff in the bible books – another reason I don't hold them in high regard. Why would I wish to re-read a set of stories that I don't even like? I wouldn't do that with any other storybook. I don't think anyone would if it were not called a holy book.

Greatnan I don't think the Ten Commandments says anything along the lines of "Thou shalt not kill except when someone is convicted of murder, espionage, terrorism et al after a trial, the terms of which may be decided arbitrarily by the government and which may be held in secret."

That is judicial killing though - I don't think any society allows individuals to kill others outside of the law.

The prohibition on killing is very variable in Western society too. Look at the concept of a just war, not to mention the continuing existence of the death penalty in the US. (The death penalty for murder wasn't abolished in Great Britain until the 1960s and not completely abolished until 1998 so we're in no position to sneer.)

Lilygran Isn't the consensus among scholars that the books of the Bible were written between 1000BC and AD100-ish? Of course, not all Bibles contain the same books.

And what appears in the other books sprang fully armed from the brains of people like Harris, I suppose.

Honour and respect aren't the same thing. There is a crisis in this country in the care provided for old people. The NHS and other care organisations bang on about respect by which they mean not allowing patients etc to appear semi-naked in public or to have treatment carried out in public and similar considerations. If 'honour thy father and mother' were a reality, all the tick boxes about respect wouldn't be needed.

Hmm. I think it may have had more to do with the fact that we didn't have the scientific understanding to talk about certain ideas, not that our brains weren't wired up the right way.

Small communities tend to work well, with little crime or violence. It is when you get larger groups of people and opposing groups of people who want the same resources (e.g. land) that violence escalates – tribalism. Which is where the old testament comes in. That's the level it's pitched at because of its place in the timescale of history. And that's why I think there are far more relevant books for nowadays. We still have the same problems facing us, but our approach has, naturally, refined a bit over a few thousand years.

What Harris is saying is that anything good you can find in the bible, can also be found is multiple other places nowadays, and with the advantage of not having all the violent and unrefined baggage attached. I happen to agree with him.

I don't think every parent is worthy of honour - respect is something that has to be earned, it is not automatic.

There's a William Golding novel, "the Inheritors" (I think) which explores the development of speech to express concepts.

Sorry for the digression; I am enjoying the debate.