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This website is being renovated throughout 2008. Pages and the content of pages will continue to change until the end of the year and there may be some inconsistencies and missing links. Please do not quote from or link to specific pages (apart from the home page) without contacting the webmaster first. One commandment will do Be nice to people By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 797 words Publication date: December 3, 2006 Isn’t it time to ditch the supposed link between ethics and religion? Religion is supposedly the source of morality, expressed in scriptures, which relay God’s (or the gods’) instructions to the world. Christianity offers the Ten Commandments – God’s constitution – and the various prohibitions in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, his laws. We get the big picture, such as “do not steal”, in the constitution, while the details, such as “cut off the hand of a wife who defends her husband by seizing his enemy’s private parts”, is a law. (A reminder to the faithful: although the action may have saved their lives, Deuteronomy chpt 25, verses 11-12 exhorts husbands to show their wives no pity in such a situation.) Most modern Christians respect the biblical constitution but are picky about the laws. I cannot remember the last time Pat Robertson gave a sermon on the need to stone adulterers (Leviticus 20:10), although he never fails to condemn homosexual acts (Leviticus 18:22 ) Life is too short to examine each of the laws, but we can focus on the Ten Commandments, hand-written by God on Mount Sinai. (That was also the occasion when Yahweh honored Moses with a glimpse of the divine backside.) God was obviously not familiar with PowerPoint or other means of presenting information. Depending on how you count them, there about fifteen commandments, repeated with slightly different wording in Exodus and Deuteronomy. These fifteen commands are divided differently by Jews, Protestants, Catholics and others; I generally use the “Protestant” version offered on Wikipedia. The first four commandments come in a bunch. Number one tells us to make Yahweh our Top God. Number two says make no idols. Three says do not blaspheme. Four tells us to keep the Sabbath holy. Ok, Yahweh, we get the point. Having usurped your father El and siblings Baal and Asherah, you’re still not secure in your position as The One And Only God. You need to enforce loyalty in your worshippers. In modern terms, commandments one to four are the equivalent of martial law – military decrees after a coup d’état. With dissension well and truly suppressed, God moves on to the business of the day. Commandment five tells us to honor our parents, six not to murder, seven to abstain from adultery, eight not to steal, nine not to bear false witness and ten not to covet our neighbor’s possessions. They are a curious mix. We must respect our parents “so that our days may be long”, but the link between the two is not explained. Nor are exceptions allowed for parents who are abusive, criminal or neglectful. Adultery is condemned, but not pre-marital sex, although that option, particularly for women is banned elsewhere in the Bible. The bans on theft and murder seem logical while the prohibition on false witness appears unnecessarily narrow. Are there occasions when it is permissible to lie? And if so, what are they? As for coveting, I confess I am confused. If it is a warning against stealing, doesn’t it simply repeat the Eighth Commandment? Or is it a more general warning against envy? If so, why are other presumably negative states of mind, such as anger and sloth, ignored? Or is the Tenth Commandment proof that God is the ultimate capitalist, insisting that the poor stay poor and the rich stay rich? However we interpret the Ten Commandments, they remain a hodge-podge of divine egoism, miscellaneous advice and clear prohibition. They are also inadequate for the modern world. Although they cover nuclear weaponry and terrorism (do not murder), they make no mention of other twenty-first century issues such as recreational drug use and loud cellphone conversations in restricted places. Although Yahweh’s heir Jesus insisted that every letter of the biblical constitution and law should be respected, he also clearly thought the Commandments needed updating. His version was summarized in the phrases “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind” and “love your neighbor as yourself”. Unlike Jesus, I’d jettison most of the Old Testament. Apart from being gay, I like having two different sizes of measures in the same house. One day I might want to yoke animals of different species together. I’m not happy to allow the owners of vineyards and new houses to escape conscription and I don’t want to insist that defeated enemies become slaves. I’m with Jesus up to a point. I promise faithfully to love God the moment he, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny move in next door, and I do, in principle, love my neighbor. In principle, that is, because I’ve never met my neighbors, but I like the basic idea. Be nice to people. It’s short and sweet and covers every occasion. Forget the Ten Commandments. One Commandment is all we need.
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If God existed, he would... admire the beauty of a universe that he did not create recognize that eternity is meaningless deny both heaven and hell disown all men and women who speak in his name denounce the harm caused by religious "morality" help the human race to thrive without him If God existed, he would be an atheist. |