Moses Urges Israel To Obey - 4:3-4
You saw what the Lord did to you at Baal-Peor, where the Lord your God destroyed everyone who had worshiped the god Baal-Peor. But all of you who were faithful to the Lord your God are still alive today.
This parallels "Worshiping Other Gods." The reason this doesn't hold true is relatively simple: Scientific evidence proves that with each new birth creates a seperate, new mind to think and act for one's self (free will). No descent Creator would destroy the very thing, the human mind, that was designed to make those religious choices for themselves. To a Creator, they've already accepted that each human can except or reject creation. Therefore, this was a human-influenced ideal and certainly not a higher power-guided prophet.
4:5
You must obey these laws and regulations when you arrive in the land you are about to enter and occupy. The Lord my God gave them to me and commanded me to pass them on to you.
Words like "must" and "commanded" are force. If in fact the lord demands these things, why doesn't he come out in the open, in the visible, and physically prove his wishes with spoken word? Hence the enclosed system of belief in tyranny amongst religious dogmas.
4:25
...do not corrupt yourselves by making idols of any kind.
In religion this should read to not have idols superior to God. In terms of progress and ingenuity, if humanity didn't have models in achievements in arts, technology, etc., there would be no reason to expand our knowledge.
The Ten Commandments - 5:9
I do not leave unpunished the sins of those who hate me, but I punish the children for the sins of their parents to third and fourth generations.
Pretty self-explanatory really. Children should be punished for things that are out of their control.
Worshipping Other Gods 13:6-10
If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, "Let us go and worship other gods (god that neither you nor your fathers have known, god's of the people around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. And then the hands of all the people. Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
The Layman's Bible (interpretations):
It must, however, be remembered that idolatry struck at the very foundations of Hebrew national life as founded on the Covenant at Horeb. The religions of the Canaanites and sorrounding peoples was a debased from of nature worship, with revolting moral standards and practices. We may not like the exact way in which the Hebrews sought to deal with their subversives, but we can recognize the legitimacy of their abhorrence of the offense and of their desire to guard against it. They were anxious, therefore, to keep out any marks of pagan customs, even mourning rites of bodily mutilation and shaving of the head. The barriers against standards and practices must be high and thick, lest the nation eventually be engulfed by them.
In a savage period, religion still cannot be excused for acts of murder. A is A. The Bible is the only book historically that can get away with such grotesque promotions. However, if a pagan forced their values that threatened the survival of a Christian(s), of course defending ones self is right and moral. But neither paragraph really attempts to detail such, possibly due to blind obedience. The first paragraph doesn't even attempt to at all. Hence why their guilty of the promotion of murder. The second, the interpreter, is nearly as guilty. The author acknowledges the offense, mildly, but quickly by-passes it for the upholding of the Bible's principles of tyranny and self-sacrifice. There is no difference between secular and non-secular force. Both deem to engulf the individual. Blind abidance to the Bible is dangerous considering the flawed nature of its authors: humans, who have used it to protect believers from the reality of their customs of tyranny and violence. A "middle ground" is unacceptable to them for threat of divisions in religious circles (an act Morman's practice, amongst others).
The Prophet 18:15
The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from amongst your own brothers.
Layman's Commentary:
(excerpt)
The Deuteronomists -- to whom Moses was a figure of colossal proportions, to say the least -- certainly regarded him as the standard by which all messengers of God must be measured.
"Messengers of God" or "God's agents" were authoritarians who actively promoted the use of force and to suppress secular liberty. (It was secularism, not religion, that attained liberty.) Prophets used their intelligence to overstep their boundaries to acquire power. "God's word" by now is simply a phrase to draw attention to the Bible as the bearer of all morals versus human knowledge that is acquired through experience. These quotes instill fear into people, which is the entire point of religious prophetising. It implies God should be feared for God is vengeful. The problem is if God is so, then God is no better than humanity for we are vengeful. It doesn't quite make logical sense to fear God when God is superior in every way to humanity.
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