Moore's Law: The immorality of the Ten Commandments

Slate ^ | August 27, 2003, | Christopher Hitchens

[zarf]

The row over the boulder-sized version of the so-called "Ten Commandments," and as to whether they should be exhibited in such massive shape on public property, misses the opportunity to consider these top-10 divine ordinances and their relationship to original intent. Judge Roy Moore is clearly, as well as a fool and a publicity-hound, a man who identifies the Mount Sinai orders to Moses with a certain interpretation of Protestantism. But we may ask ourselves why any sect, however primitive, would want to base itself on such vague pre-Christian desert morality (assuming Moses to be pre-Christian).

The first four of the commandments have little to do with either law or morality, and the first three suggest a terrific insecurity on the part of the person supposedly issuing them. I am the lord thy god and thou shalt have no other ... no graven images ... no taking of my name in vain: surely these could have been compressed into a more general injunction to show respect. The ensuing order to set aside a holy day is scarcely a moral or ethical one, unless you assume that other days are somehow profane. (The Rev. Ian Paisley, I remember, used to refuse interviewers for Sunday newspapers even after it was pointed out to him that it's the Monday edition that is prepared on Sunday.) Whereas a day of rest, as prefigured in the opening passages of Genesis, is no more than organized labor might have demanded, perhaps during the arduous days of unpaid pyramid erection.

So the first four commandments have almost nothing to do with moral conduct and cannot in any case be enforced by law unless the state forbids certain sorts of art all week, including religious and iconographic art—and all activity on the Sabbath (which the words of the fourth commandment do not actually require). The next instruction is to honor one's parents: a harmless enough idea, but again unenforceable in law and inapplicable to the many orphans that nature or god sees fit to create. That there should be no itemized utterance enjoining the protection of children seems odd, given that the commandments are addressed in the first instance to adults. But then, the same god frequently urged his followers to exterminate various forgotten enemy tribes down to the last infant, sparing only the virgins, so this may be a case where hand-tying or absolute prohibitions were best avoided.

There has never yet been any society, Confucian or Buddhist or Islamic, where the legal codes did not frown upon murder and theft. These offenses were certainly crimes in the Pharaonic Egypt from which the children of Israel had, if the story is to be believed, just escaped. So the middle-ranking commandments, of which the chief one has long been confusingly rendered "thou shalt not kill," leave us none the wiser as to whether the almighty considers warfare to be murder, or taxation and confiscation to be theft. Tautology hovers over the whole enterprise.

In much the same way, few if any courts in any recorded society have approved the idea of perjury, so the idea that witnesses should tell the truth can scarcely have required a divine spark in order to take root. To how many of its original audience, I mean to say, can this have come with the force of revelation? Then it's a swift wrap-up with a condemnation of adultery (from which humans actually can refrain) and a prohibition upon covetousness (from which they cannot). To insist that people not annex their neighbor's cattle or wife "or anything that is his" might be reasonable, even if it does place the wife in the same category as the cattle, and presumably to that extent diminishes the offense of adultery. But to demand "don't even think about it" is absurd and totalitarian, and furthermore inhibiting to the Protestant spirit of entrepreneurship and competition.

One is presuming (is one not?) that this is the same god who actually created the audience he was addressing. This leaves us with the insoluble mystery of why he would have molded ("in his own image," yet) a covetous, murderous, disrespectful, lying, and adulterous species. Create them sick, and then command them to be well? What a mad despot this is, and how fortunate we are that he exists only in the minds of his worshippers.

It's obviously too much to expect that a Bronze Age demagogue should have remembered to condemn drug abuse, drunken driving, or offenses against gender equality, or to demand prayer in the schools. Still, to have left rape and child abuse and genocide and slavery out of the account is to have been negligent to some degree, even by the lax standards of the time. I wonder what would happen if secularists were now to insist that the verses of the Bible that actually recommend enslavement, mutilation, stoning, and mass murder of civilians be incised on the walls of, say, public libraries? There are many more than 10 commandments in the Old Testament, and I live for the day when Americans are obliged to observe all of them, including the ox-goring and witch-burning ones. (Who is Judge Moore to pick and choose?) Too many editorialists have described the recent flap as a silly confrontation with exhibitionist fundamentalism, when the true problem is our failure to recognize that religion is not just incongruent with morality but in essential ways incompatible with it.

[zarf]

Hitchen's strikes again...

[sauropod]

read

[Russell Scott]

I always take queers seriously when they start preaching the gospel of PC (preverted & corrupted) truth, not!

[9999lakes]

I think Judge Moore is a hero.

But I also think Christopher Hitchens is one of the few libs {If he actually is one} who:

[1] Tows no party line
[2] See things with a clear eye
[3] Says it like he sees it, no matter which side that puts him on.

Those are all valuable qualities in a journalist, and it's what "Fair and Balanced" actually means.

[tbpiper]

[2] See things with a clear eye

His eye is rather jaundiced is he sees the first four commandmets as a statement of God's 'terrific insecurity'.

[Hank Kerchief]

I always take queers seriously ...

Are you acquainted with Hitchen's wife? Isn't there something in the ten commandments about not bearing false witness?

Hank

[Gil4]

"surely these could have been compressed into a more general injunction to show respect."

Typical liberal - "If God had just asked me, I could have helped Him tidy up those commandments a bit."

[Psalm118]

Hitchens should stop long enough to read whazzup:

Matthew 12;34-37

"O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.

But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of
judgment.

FOR BY THY WORDS THOU SHALT BE JUSTIFIED, AND BY THY WORDS THOU SHALT BE CONDEMNED.

---

Luke 18:9-14

And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:

Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.

The Pharisee stood and PRAYED THUS WITH HIMSELF, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

---

I have just taken out some trash.

But by no means all of the trash.

This joint gets higher levels of stuff than the Aeugean stables.

Indulge, if you please, in that rarest of luxuries once in a while: TRUTH.

[CalvaryJohn]

Hitchens is just a guy that you have to take the bitter with the sweet. An independent thinker, yes. A Godless person on their way to hell? Most definitely.

[afz400]

I only need two:
Mark, chapter 12
28: And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?"
29: Jesus answered, "The first is, `Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one;
30: and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.'
31: The second is this, `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
32: And the scribe said to him, "You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that he is one, and there is no other but he;
33: and to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."

[Hank Kerchief]

It is just this kind of moral relativism that is destroying the morals of this country.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself is fine if one is on good terms with one's self; if one happens to be suicidal, it puts the neighbor in great danger.

As for: O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' is fine for Israel, but what about the rest of us. Of course, there is nothing said about how one goes about actually "loving" God, so one can do just anything they please and say that is how they love God.

Hank

[Blood of Tyrants]

It doesn't matter what Hitchens writes. He is a moth who thinks that the beating of his wings causes the hurricanes.

[Psalm118]

"...there is nothing said about how one goes about actually "loving" God, so one can do just anything they please and say that is how they love God".

That one used to bug me a lot. For fifty long years I went back and forth, and very occasionally at that, trying to solve the puzzle, in those rare moments, and they were moments, when I actually WANTED to find out.

Until a very serious health/spiritual crisis brought the issue to the fore, once and for all. And then it became very clear:

The unregenerate heart cannot fathom it. "Something" has to
happen, and that something as far as I can tell, cannot be willed into being, absent some fundamental pre-conditions.

[Agnostic]

Thanks for a terrific article. The truth is always bitter to hear.

[nonsporting]

Where does one begin to address this tripe?

[1] Honoring one's parents can be enforced by law. It is a capital offense to strike your parent (Exodus 21:15)
[2] Those whom God commanded to be killed were "deserving" (with one exception)
[3] Not "kill", but "murder." Death is a required punishment for many offenses--deviant sexual acts, adultery, murder, striking one's parent, etc.
[4] "Can't help but covet--only a tyrant would deny me this sin." (The Liberal/socialist creed.)
[5] He made us "good" (and "very good") and perfectly capable of sinning. This is necessary for free will. Adam and Eve lived in perfect fellowship with God for no one knows how long. Of course, God also made provision for fallen man, to rescue him from the consequences of sin, by paying the sin debt Himself. "What a mad despot this is" to die for my sin. Thank God that He did.
[6] "religion is not just incongruent with morality but in essential ways incompatible with it." What "moriality" is this? The slaughter of the unborn is "moral"? Sexual depravity is "moral?" Lying, coveting, perjuring is "moral" if the cause is "moral?"

Judge Moore isn't "picking" and "choosing." He could have had written the entire law not a "bolder-sized" monument, but on a house-sized monument. Hitchens would still howl.

[Tench_Coxe]

I think the clue to your pondering is here:

"One of the scribes came, and heard them questioning together. Knowing that he had answered them well, asked him, "Which commandment is the greatest of all?"
Jesus answered, "The greatest is, 'Hear, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. The second is like this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
"The scribe said to him, "Truly, teacher, you have said well that he is one, and there is none other but he, and to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."
When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the Kingdom of God."
No one dared ask him any question after that.

" Mark 12:28-34

Please note, I am not generally wont to go quoting scripture, since on FR it often appears to take the place of actual thinking. But I thought it appropriate for the topic you mentioned in your post.
Hitchens sought for a succinct answer. Too bad he didn't look hard enough.

[Psalm118]

Thanks for your help TC:

"you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. The second is like this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."


Darn high benchmark!. Now WHY on earth, and I mean ON EARTH, would the "natural, unregenerated person" want to rise to such an occasion, never mind measuring up to it, on his own self?.

That is the reason for His pointing out that the Pharisee stood and prayed to "HIM-SELF", saying "God, etc etc". The Holy One obviously rejecting the same prayer.

This would be very useful for people generally to remember
when (you'll pardon the expression) praying for "things" they WANT. This could be another thread sometime.

I don't know be if it gets any clearer than that.

This also addresses the important life and death of issue of why "many are called, but few are chosen".

[9999lakes]

Hitchens is just a guy that you have to take the bitter with the sweet. An independent thinker, yes. A Godless person on their way to hell? Most definitely.



Tht's exactly right!
Hitchens is on the way to hell -- certainly.
But he does tell it like he sees it, and DOES NOT tow any party line.

He's definitely worth listening to on any subject.
He may even be the sort of guy who God eventually touches.

You know, "The Truth shall set you free".