‘Taking the Lord’s name in vain, people do that all the time’ Rogan says, but admits the Decalogue is ‘pretty legit’
As a Texas law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools faces an uncertain legal future, podcaster Joe Rogan says he has a problem with one of those commandments in particular.
In a Sept. 16 episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” with actor Matthew McConaughey, Rogan took aim at Texas’ Senate Bill 10, which requires public school classrooms to display the Decalogue, but was blocked by a temporary injunction last month.
Ranging in topics from adolescent confusion to nurturing personal integrity in a chaotic world, the conversation turned to the Ten Commandments, which God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, as recorded in Exodus 20. McConaughey said he couldn’t think of a better moral target for children to aim for.
“With all of that exterior stimulus and here we are with adult minds and even talking about it, man, imagine a child,” he said. “Does anyone have a better suggestion than the Ten Commandments to get a child’s mind going, ‘Ooh, just those 10 things, if I look at that and aim that direction, I feel like I can’t go wrong.'”
The conversation then turned to SB 10, which drew criticism from Rogan, whose podcast is based in Austin, regarding displays of the Ten Commandments in public schools.
“If I was going to put it in a school where there are non-religious people, there’s a bunch of stuff in there like, ‘not taking the Lord’s name in vain,’ ‘not having any other gods before me,’ where that would give people pause,” he said, referring to the first and third commandments.
“They’d be like, Wait a minute, what are you telling me? I can’t take the Lord’s name in vain?’ Like saying ‘g——it’ is like taking the Lord’s name in vain, people do that all the time.”
