A recent survey conducted in Britain, using Anglican Clergy as a target, found only 40% of those questioned could actually recall all the Ten Commandments. How many of the flock are fully conversant with them is unknown. The suspicion is a far lower percent than 40. To try and overcome this ignorance of the much-touted regulations of ancient times, they have been enunciated in rough form below.
And God gave them his Ten Commandments
Which nation can happily run on Ten rules that are already just a minute part of social norms? Successful societies cannot be so by the utilization of just Ten laws. Far less at success will be the result if those rules can be interpreted to suit any outcome by further selective extractions from ancient scrit.
Let us look at these ‘sacred’ orders from on high as they are presented. Even though there is a confusion of what they are and how many there are, because of their twice mention in the Bible, somehow the below is the generally accepted famous Ten. Taken from Exodus 20: 1 – 17 and Deuteronomy 5: 6 – 21.
“I am the Lord your God, Who has taken you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery”
Did God really need to inform the chosen people of such an obvious fact? If you were witness to plagues and the opening of seas, pillars of fire etc., would you not be convinced? Supposedly, the Israelites believed in Adam and Eve, the Great Flood and other wonders of their times.
“Thou shalt have no other gods but me”
Were there other Gods that had shown their equivalent power to the Israelites? The idea of this omnipotent God disallows the reality of any other. Having seen at first hand, the wonders of supernatural acts by the one and only God, it could only be mental incompetence to even want to be involved with other Gods. Maybe God meant this message only for the insane. Why would he do that?
“Thou shalt not take the name of your Lord in vain”
God really must have thought that his people were thicko’s. Having seen the power and knowing that the God in question knows and sees all, it would be idiocy to upset him by such actions. Again, after being rescued from slavery with promises of a land of milk and honey (a strange diet), one would think that endless gratitude to be the order of the day by people with just a minute amount of rational ability.
“Thou shalt remember and keep the Sabbath day holy”
All the other days, holiness is not required, so it seems? Because God rested from his universe building on the seventh day presupposed some truth in that event. As science totally disputes our beginnings as such, this commandment is now redundant.
“Honour your father and mother”
This little beauty continues in a selfish vein and further states that if you do so, you will live a long life as reward for forced affection. There is no empirical evidence to suggest the slightest link between longevity and parental care.
“Thou shalt not kill”
Straight to the point as this brief order is, with no embellishments or escape clauses, it is a farce. The Israelites slaughtered their way through chapter after chapter in the Holy Book. Christians continued this legacy by burning, massacring, pirating people, dislodging indigenous tribes and making wars from then till now. The most Christian country in the world, the United States of America, is one of the few democracy remaining that holds dearly the right to execute its own, by way of the death penalty. The religious do not seem to be happy unless they are killing the “enemy”, either real or imagined.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery”
Even Moses must have thought that God was out of his infinite mind on this one. We have to consider that maybe God was not that stupid, for he would have known the high probability of adultery happening. It was most likely his intention to initiate the guilt-trip that later Christians used to the hilt. Make a law that cannot be successful and a perfect control mechanism is in place. We are sexual beings with evolutionary drives and if they were overcomable then the race would die out. Good one God!
“Thou shalt not steal”
Did this mean, do not steal the lands of people already established? Did it possibly suggest that stealing the minds of children, with the indoctrination of myths, and teaching them as truths, was a no-no? Is not the over-use of resources in Christian countries the stealing from developing nations? This commandment is short, sharp and shiny with no loopholes, yet the religious of the world have and are embarking of such a magnitude of planetary theft as to leave it in a state of uninhabitability.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbour”
By definition contained in the next commandment, your neighbour is male. Guess its OK to bear false witness against his wife?
“Thou shalt not covet your neighbour’s goods. Thou shalt not covet your neighbour’s house. Thou shalt not covet your neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his bull, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbour’s.”
Envy of the possessions of others is a normal human response. It is not something that can be turned on or off by legal decree. The sexist nature of possessions owned by your neighbour (male) and the mixing of property and people as possessions of him, is most un-Godly. Manservant and maidservant gives the impression of them being work persons. These are euphemisms for slaves. Bull and donkey must indicate to the religious that these rules could be a tad out-of-date. On second thoughts though, the Bull does seem to be appropriate.
Moses went up the mountain and returned with the Tablets that contained the Ten Commandments.
Then he broke them in anger and all the pieces were lost forever. God’s finger had inscribed both sides of these stones and no one thought to take extra special care in preserving them for posterity. What a bunch of self-centred, selfish, thoughtless idiots.
Humanity cannot run its affairs on a few simplistic rules. It is worse for humanity if those pliable laws can receive justification for any action required, by selectively plucking from anywhere in the Bible and adding to them.
Democratic societies make laws as required for the betterment of it’s people and they are not immutable nor intended to fit pre-existing concepts which benefit some and not all. Established democracies have thousands and thousands of laws and any suggestion of Ten having the same effect is plainly just stupid.
The Bible and the Ten Commandments have been guilty of allowing the worst aspects of human behaviour to be acceptable and recommended. This archaic system has actively disallowed humanity formulating a basic ethical structure for its betterment.
Those that consider and preach that the Ten Commandments have some kind of relevance to modern intelligent peoples are living in a fool’s paradise of self-delusion and are a threat to the good order of democracy. Not seeing through the sham of self-made illusions brings with it a poverty of wasted potential enlightenment of our race.
Historically to the present, does however emphatically show, that the Bible has only produced Commandments of the less than useless kind.
After reading the above, one has to conclude that God, as an all-wise being, did not or would not want to be the author of the so-called Ten Commandments.
By David Nicholls