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The New And Improved Ten Commandments What you: http://www.islandnet.com/~luree/youdoit.html Want to make the world a better place? Tired of waiting for god? Here are some points to ponder: . . . Sources of Information for Alternatives to Religion. Atheist and other links.
Skeptics Corner: http://home.inu.net/skeptic/ THE TEN COMMANDMENTS: A Different View by Louis W. Cable.
. . . In the case of Christianity the Bible with all it's absurdities and contradictions is the sole source of its existence. . . .
The first five books of the Old Testament, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, are considered to be the core of the Bible. They are the oldest of all the biblical writings. These books constitute the original document brought from Babylon to Jerusalem around 458 years before the Christian era (BCE) by the Priest Ezra. To the Jews they are the Torah. To the Christians they are known as the Pentateuch. These books state the laws by which Jews and Christians are to live.
Many defenders of Bible infallibility claim that these books were written by one man, Moses, under the direct supervision of God, himself. However, modern investigative scholarship has demonstrated that biblical writing began about 1000 BCE during the reign of King Solomon. . . .
. . . the truthfulness of the Books of Exodus and Joshua is highly suspect. If they turn out to be frauds, as now seems very likely, doesn't that cast serious doubt as to the credibility of the Bible? . . .
Now you would think that people living today . . . would see the Exodus story for what it obviously is -- a myth and nothing more. Unfortunately, this is not so. It's not just a group of back- country rednecks who perpetuate this misconception. It is some of the highest authorities in our land; educated people who should know better and who should not be afraid to speak out. . . .
Following the recent rash of school shootings, especially the one at Littleton, Colorado, some members of congress attempted to enact legislation requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed in our public schools. The motivation behind this effort (other than cheap political opportunism) was that by being constantly exposed to these "God-given" paragons of virtue, the school children would more readily acquire moral and ethical values. It should be noted, however, that similar legislation has been routinely struck down by the U. S. Supreme Court as a violation of the establishment clause of the first amendment. . . .
The Ten Commandments are, in fact, inimical to liberty. Far from being the foundation of this country's common law, they constitute the very antithesis of those parts of our heritage of which we may be justly proud. However, many of us may have forgotten just how flawed a system they represent. Indeed, some aspects of the Ten Commandments, to which I will be referring, need to be condemned as immoral and removed from any and all recommended guidelines for ethics and morality. . . .
. . . To make things even more confusing, there are several sets on "commandments" given in the Bible. . . .
Now let us examine each of these "cornerstones of righteousness" in its complete format and try to figure out just what it is saying. In the process, we shall find that
The Biblical Ten Commandments violates the U.S. Constitution
#1. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
This commandment is of no moral or ethical value whatsoever. Furthermore, it violates the first amendment to the U. S. Constitution which prohibits any establishment of religion by the state.
Number two of the "Big Ten" is rather tricky. All we usually see of this one is the first part: "Thou shall not bow down to any graven images." When read in its entirety, this one gives quite a different impression.
#2. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to any graven images nor serve them for I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the father upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.
Could anything be more unjust and un-American than holding a person responsible for a crime committed by his or her great-great-grandfather? Like commandment #1, this one violates the U.S. Constitution. Also like #1, it has no moral or ethical value.
#3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain.
Contrary to popular notion, this commandment has absolutely nothing to do with obscene language. It has its origin in the primitive belief in word magic. The ancient Hebrews like the Egyptians from whom they appropriated many of their superstitions, believed that people and gods alike possessed secret names. By learning this name the person or god could be controlled by using it or, perhaps misusing it, in incantations, spells or curses. Another reference to this subject can be found in Leviticus 24:16 where it states: "He that blasphemeth the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death." So where is the moral in this nonsense?
The fourth commandment also violates the establishment clause of the Constitution. Besides having no beneficial aspects, this commandment has a great deal of evil behind it. As in #2, we usually see only part of it. The full account reads as follows.
#4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.
First, it should be noted that, accept for a small sect called the Seventh-Day Adventists, Christians have never observed the official Sabbath day, Saturday, or made any attempt to keep it holy. Also, this commandment tacitly recognizes, and therefore condones, slavery. In Exodus 31:15 it states, ."..whosoever does work on the Sabbath must be put to death." No penalty for buying and selling fellow human beings into slavery, but death if you are caught doing a little work on the Sabbath. Is that logical?
It should be noted that the word "servant" is used in almost all versions of the Bible. However, the root Latin word "servus" as well as corresponding Greek and Hebrew words would be correctly translated not as "servant" but as "slave." The substitution of servant for slave is an obvious ploy intended to conceal, or gloss over, a humiliate Bible fact.
Jesus' commentary on the Sabbath is interesting. In the venerated Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:17) he declares unequivocally that he has come not to destroy the law but to fulfill it. However, he contradicts this in Mark 2:27 where he says that the Sabbath was created for man not man for the Sabbath.
Another revealing fact concerning commandment #4 is that in Deuteronomy 5:15, were it is alleged that Moses is repeating the commandments, something has been added to the end:
And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.
Since Deuteronomy was written much later than was Exodus, this passage is an obvious forgery.
Commandment number five is another one of which we usually see only the shortened version. So, I will give it here in its entirety:
#5. Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which God giveth thee.
While I would agree that under most circumstances it is a good thing to honor one's parents, it is also a fact that some parents are not deserving of honor. Parents have responsibility too. It is downright wrong to honor parents who are neglectful, abusive, murderous and/or crazed by religion.
But,let us check some famous Jesus quotes and see just how well he honored parenthood and his family.
Matthew 8:21-22 -- Jesus denied a disciples request for permission to bury his father. This is repeated in Luke 9:59:60.
Matthew 10:35 -- For I come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
Matthew 12:46-50 -- Here Jesus denies his own family in a most rude and contentious manner.
Mark 3:31-35 -- Jesus deliberately snubbed his real family who had come to see him. He denied them in favor of the assembled crowed.
Luke 14:26 -- If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother...he cannot be my disciple.
John 2:4--Upon being informed by his mother that there is no more wine for the wedding reception, Jesus insults her with the insolent and disrespectful reply, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?"
The most objectionable part of commandment number five lies in the coda, .".. that you may live long in the land which God has given thee." This alludes to the pernicious myth that God gave Palestine to the Jews, along with the right to dispossess and slaughter the previous inhabitants. The ruthless displacement of the Palestinian Arabs from their homeland and all of the horrible atrocities and acts of violence that persist to this day are directly derived from this ridiculous commandment and other Old Testament verses such as Joshua 1:11.
Please note that I have now gone half way through the Ten Commandments, and nowhere in them is there anything remotely supportive of ethical and moral values. Now, let us examine the other half.
#6. Thou shalt not kill.
On the face of it we seem to be getting somewhere with this one as everyone would agree that killing is a bad thing, generally speaking. However, this commandment issues an absolute and unalterable directive that refutes and contradicts other parts of the Bible such as commandments #3 and #4 in which killing is the required punishment. Some additional examples are as follows:
Exodus 19:12--Whosoever toucheth the mount (Sinai) shall be put to death.
Exodus 22:18--Thou shall not suffer a witch to live. Because of this one little eight-word sentence, thousands of innocent women, mostly old, indigent and defenseless, were burnt alive
Leviticus 24:21--The one who kills a man shall be put to death. Incidentlly, this is the passage referred to by many Bible believing Xians as the justification for the death penalty.
Deuteronomy 21:18-21 -- When a man has a son who is disobedient and out of control and will not obey his father and mother or pay attention when they punish him, then his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the town gate. There they shall say to the town elders, 'This son of ours is disobedient and out of control and will not obey us.' Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death.
Here let me address a popular misconception. We often hear references made to "The Bible," as if there were only one. Well, this is an illusion cynically encouraged by many clergy. In reality there is no such thing. The truth is that if there ever was an original Bible there is no record of anyone living or dead ever having seen it. What served as an original has long been lost or destroyed. Today, what we have are many "versions" of the Bible. According to C.Dennis McKensey, publisher of Biblical Errancy, there are currently no less than sixteen of them all of which disagree on some basic Christian doctrines. Commandment number six is a good example.
In about half the versions I consulted the word "kill" in commandment #6 had been changed to "murder." This amounts to a significant revision. The word "kill" is an umbrella term covering all cases including war, capitol punishment, self defense, suicide, etc. Murder, on the other hand, is a special case of killing much more narrowly defined. Forbidding murder creates much less of a problem for the Bible believer. So let us humor them and change commandment #6 to read: "Thou shall not murder."
Although this revision may help them to some extent, they are still not off the hook. I remind you that Moses, the man chosen by God to lead the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, was a murderer (Exodus 2:12) who was never brought to justice for his crime. Er, Judah's first born, was wicked in the sight of the Lord; so the Lord slew (murdered) him (Gen.38:7.) Because he refused God's order to have sexual intercourse with his own sister-in-law, God murdered Onan (Gen.38:8-10.) In 1st Samuel 6:19, it is recorded that in a fit of pique God slew (murdered) 50,070 men for what amounted to a minor infraction--looking into the ark of the Lord. [God is also a genocidal murderer!]
Another record of senseless slaughter is recorded in 2nd Kings 2:23-25. It seems that as the Prophet Elisha was on his way to Bethel a group of little children came out of the city and began to mock him. They shouted at him, "Go up thou bald head...Go up thou bald head." This apparently infuriated old Elisha. So, he turned and cursed them in the name of the Lord, whereupon two she bears came out of the near by forest and tore apart forty-two of the little children. Satisfied that his dignity had been sufficiently restored, Elisha continued on his way.
The story of the Israelite massacre of the Amalekite nation is recorded in I Samuel 15. The facts of the case are these: God sent the prophet Samuel to command King Saul to smite the Amalek. "Utterly destroy all that they have," he said, "spare them not; but slay both men, women, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."
Accordingly Saul took two hundred thousand footmen and ten thousand men of Judah and carried out God's instructions to the letter including the slaughter of infants and pregnant women. Besides breaking the sixth commandment, didn't God commit what could be only called genocide? Isn't this an outrageous, immoral act that exceeds the Nazi holocaust in atrocity? After all, many Jews survived Hitler's savagery.
The story of the tenth plague (Exodus 11) is perhaps the most shameful in this book of shame. In Exodus 11:4-5 God says to Moses, "About midnight I will go into the midst of Egypt. All of the firstborn of Egypt will die, from the first born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, (don't forget that Moses grew up under the care and protection of Pharaoh's court) even to the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of the beasts." . . .
God went about the business of murdering all of the firstborn of Egypt.
Perhaps the most infamous record of murder, violence and genocide in human history is that of the Great Flood. If we are to take this story seriously, and many Christians do, it . . . What ever happened to divine forgiveness?
Take the sad story of Achan (Joshua 7:18-25.) . . . Joshua took Achan along with his sons and his daughters, his oxen and his sheep and had them stoned to death. What had the sons and daughters or the oxen and sheep done to deserve such a cruel fate?
In the story of Daniel . . . those who had informed on Daniel be thrown into the lion's den along with their wives and their children (Dan.6:24.) So what had the wives and children done to deserve this? Why didn't God intervene to save them?
For a more complete list of Bible killings and atrocities, see The Bloody Bible on this web site.
#7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
First, we must ask ourselves just how relevant this commandment is in today's world. It was conceived and implemented thousands of years ago by men who kept harems containing hundreds of wives and concubines. These men certainly were not monogamous or "faithful" as we understand these terms today, and they had no intention of living that way. What commandment number seven really says is that men should keep their cottonpickin' hands off other men's sex objects.
The culture which produced the seventh commandment was a patriarchal one in which women were considered to be little more than the chattel property of men. . . . a crime against property not against human rights.
When an adulterous couple was caught in the act, the woman was punished just as severely as the man and in some cases even more so. . . . the authorities were prepared to stone the woman to death on the spot, but nothing is said about the man with whom she was involved.
#8. Thou shalt not steal.
. . . just as in commandment number six, this commandment tends to be unrealistically absolute and unalterable. There are cases in which stealing is perfectly justified. . . . Should it prevent a hostage from stealing the gun of a crazed killer? . . .
On closer examination, however, we realize that God must have had his fingers crossed when he dictated this one because in verse 22 of the 3rd chapter of Exodus, He instructs Moses to tell the children of Israel, "Now, when you go out of Egypt, you will not go empty handed. Every woman shall ask her Egyptian neighbor to borrow jewelry of silver and of gold as well as for clothing. Load your sons and daughters with them and plunder Egypt." So here God instructs his people to repay an act of neighborly kindness with lies, deceit and out right thievery.Doesn't he? This is especially astonishing in light of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 where we are told in no uncertain terms, "Don't fool yourselves! No thief will share in God's kingdom."
Another example of theistic thievery is found in Luke 19:30-35 where Jesus orders two of his disciples to: "Go ye into yon village where you will find a colt tied. Untie the colt and bring it here. If anyone asks you why you are taking the colt, tell him the Lord has need of it." The two disciples went into the village where they did indeed find a colt tied to a tree. As they were untying it, the colt's owner ran up to them and yelled, "Hey, why are you untying my colt?" The disciples told him the Lord needed it, and they dutifully took the man's colt to Jesus. So, doesn't that make our dear Lord and Savior a common horse thief?
Here let me digress for a moment to point out how these verses pose an outlandish inconsistency in Jesus' story. Here was someone said to be endowed with great supernatural power. He fed five thousand men plus women and children with only five loaves and two fishes with lots of leftovers (Matt. 14:17-20). He turned water into wine (John 2:7-9). He cured a man of leprosy with a simple wave of his hand (Matt. 8:3-4). He walked on water (Matt. 14:25). He restored the sight of a man who had been born blind (John 9:7). He healed a paralytic by forgiving his sins (Mark 2:10-12). He resurrected Lazarus after he had been dead four days (John 11:43-44). Yet, Jesus irresponsibly chose to put his disciples at risk by ordering them to commit a criminal act. Horses were valuable property and horse stealing was not looked upon too kindly. With all that magical power He is alleged to have had why didn't Jesus just conjure up a horse?
#9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
On the surface this seems unobjectionable. However, this commandment is clearly quite restrictive in application, although it is not clear just what the circumstances are under which false witness is to be forbidden. Is it only in a court of law? Does it include gossiping? Is it only wrong to bear false witness against fellow Hebrews while being okay against others? This is a commandment that suffers from a lack of definition.
Actually, the subject of lying, to which many people believe this commandment is referring, reveals a damaging biblical contradictions. Both Titus 1:2 and Hebrews 6:18 state emphatically that God cannot lie. In Proverbs 12:22 we are told that lying lips are an abomination unto the Lord. In 1st Kings 22:21-23, however, God hatches a devious plot against Ahab, King of Israel, based on a lie. Also, in 1 Samuel 16:1-2 God tells Samuel to lie if asked why he is visiting Jesse. God even makes up the lie for him.
In Ex. 3:18 God suggests that Moses ask Pharaoh to allow the Israelites to go into the wilderness for three days to worship. The clear implication being that after completing the worship ceremony they would return, which, in reality, they had no intention of doing. So, here God conspired to make a liar out of Moses.
In John 18:20 Jesus tells three lies. He did not always speak openly, he spoke in parables to hide the truth so that people would not be saved, and he spoke in secret (Mark 4:10-12 and Matthew 13:10-13). Also, he taught in places other than synagogues and the temple.
#10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. Thou shall not set thy heart on thy neighbor's wife, his land, his slaves, his ox, his ass or anything that belongeth to him.
We see right away that this one is addressed to men only. Its primary purpose is to protect men's property rights. It says, "You men out there keep your cotton pickin hands off of other men's property, especially their sex objects." Also, here again we detect tacit approval of the institution of human slavery.
Researchers in this field, and I'm thinking particularly of the late Dr. Edward W. Lane, the great Arabologist, believe that the word "covet" refers to the ancient "Curse of the Evil Eye." In many Semitic cultures even today there is a taboo against complementing a man on the beauty of his wife, the cuteness of his children, the architecture of his house, etc. Admiration is closely allied with envy and envy to covetousness. Whenever one covets something one casts an envious or evil eye upon it and the subject is thereby bewitched or cursed according to the prevailing superstition.
If, however, this commandment is intended to forbid adultery, God is a hypocrite who doesn't practice what he preaches. In Numbers 31:18 Moses, presumably speaking for God, tells the Israelites that upon defeating the Midianites they are to kill everyone but the women children that have not known a man by lying with him. Those they may keep alive for themselves. Since many of the Israelite soldiers were no doubt married with children of their own, wasn't this an open invitation to commit adultery?
#10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. Thou shall not set thy heart on thy neighbor's wife, his land, his slaves, his ox, his ass or anything that belongeth to him.
Well, that covers the hallowed Ten Commandments, the bedrock of western jurisprudence, the bulwark of justice and the foundation for a moral and ethical society.
When I give this paper before a group, time is always set aside at the end for . . . discussions. These questions and my replies are given in Attachment 2.
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You can e-mail me at waynerp@sympatico.ca.