You know what would be an interesting experiment to do in the United States?

[xiphias]

I think it would be very interesting to have a polling firm do the following poll, throughout the United States. Two questions, but the second one would be a bit long:

1. With the caveat that you might be able to see exceptions in some cases, do you, on the whole, come closer to supporting or opposing the display of the Ten Commandments in public, not-overtly-religious buildings such as courthouses, town halls, or schools, and the like?

2. Please name as many of the Ten Commandments as you can.

Question 2 would be scored from 0 to, oh, about 14 or so, with half-points given for partial credit. The reason for going over 10 would be for people who could name multiple versions of commandments, including the "keep" and "remember" distinction in the commandment of the Sabbath, and between the Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish versions. Actually, perhaps one would want to score from -1 to 14, to cover people who list things that aren't in the Ten Commandments, such as "Love thy neighbor".

I hypothesize that there would be no correlation between the "support" or "oppose" answer, and how many they could name. And that the average number would be somewhere around 2.

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, that really only applies to courtroom situations.

[redbird]

I'd say it arguably applies to any sort of lie about a person that's intended to harm that person (e.g., telling someone "your spouse is having an affair" when the teller has no reason to believe that but has an old grudge, or falsely accusing a co-worker of theft). It might even cover some lies that aren't intended as harmful, when the liar could/should have known it was likely to (some baseless customer complaints whose intention is to get a free meal or other compensation from the company, and that could cost the person complained about a promotion or even their job).

It probably doesn't apply to the odd person who was going on at some length to me about having seen cattitude with another woman, because I suspect he thought it was a joke, rather than trying to cause trouble between us.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

No; the term is a specifically legal one. It refers only to perjury in a courtroom situation. It doesn't cover general lying, or even general talebearing. THAT is covered by the commandment "Thou shall not go about as a talebearer among the people," which is a different one.