The controversy over the display of the Ten Commandments on federal property has brought to the public eye once again the relationship between government and religion, and there has been a lot of much-needed discussion and debate about this crucial issue. But in this discussion and debate, there has been little talk about the content of the Ten Commandments. It's obvious why that is: very few people actually know what the Ten Commandments are. People know they prohibit murder and stealing, and they generally have some vague idea of the mythology behind the Ten Commandments, but most Christians simply don't know what the various commandments are, or what the God of the Old Testament says we should do with people who break the commandments.

As an atheist, I find this extremely odd. If I believed there was a perfect intelligence that created the universe, and that this perfect intelligence communicated a set of ten moral guidelines to humanity and laws about what we should do with immoral people, I would take him seriously and study them until I knew them by heart and followed them constantly. Why wouldn't I, especially if I also believed that this intelligence would eternally reward or eternally punish me based on how moral he considers me? In the Judeo-Christian worldview, the Ten Commandments has to be by far one of the most important texts on the face of the planet. I can't fathom why somebody would ignore such a thing if they are serious about Christianity or Judaism.

So, what exactly are the Ten Commandments? Are they really a stunning piece of moral insight that could not possibly be surpassed by any earthly intelligence? Let's look at them one by one and see. If we're going to consider having this text prominently displayed on our public property, it's worth a close inspection.

We find the Ten Commandments in chapter 20 of the Book of Exodus. These are the first three chapters of Exodus 20 in my Bible (Today's English Version):

God spoke, and these were his words: "I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt, where you were slaves. Worship no god but me."
Okay, so right off the bat, we get a condemnation of all non-Jehovah-worshipping religions. For a country with a supposed freedom of religion, "worship no god but Jehovah" is not the kind of thing we should be pushing as morality in a courthouse used by people of all belief systems. But that's not the point. Why does God need to command us to not worship other gods? If God is real, he could just show himself to us, couldn't he? I mean, if there's nothing wrong with God giving Moses a divine tablet or appearing as a cloud of fire to guide the Jews, why can't he provide any concrete evidence of his existence to *us*? Why were the ancient Hebrews given concrete, directly observable evidence of God's existence, but we're supposed to just take their word for it?

And another point: if you're going take the Ten Commandments seriously, you already have to have put your faith in Jehovah as the almighty creator of the universe, so this rule is totally pointless. Either you already follow it, and that's why you believe the commandment is real in the first place, or you don't believe in Jehovah and consequently don't believe in the divinity of this commandment.

Going on:
"Do not make for yourselves images of anything in heaven or on earth or in the water under the earth."
Okay, now this one is just plain weird. Why does God not want us to make images of things? Is our art such a grievous breach of ethics that it is equatable with stealing and murdering in its immorality? I don't think so. Even the most fundamentalist Christians fail to follow this command. When was the last time you saw Christians blocking museums and movie theaters protesting their blatant use of graven images? There's certainly a lot more reason, biblically speaking, to block museums and movie theaters than abortion clinics. Contrary to popular belief, this does not prohibit image-worship or so-called "idolatrous images", but all images. I mean, read it. "Do not make for yourself images of anything" is a pretty clear commandment. Pointless, but clear: no art for Jehovah-worshippers, except maybe abstract art.

And by the way, what's the "water under the earth"? Is that supposed to be the ground water? Well, not quite. You see, the ancient Hebrews, like the Babylonians, believed that the earth was a flat plane that was created when God "separated the waters" and created land. In their cosmology, the water not only encircled the earth, but was also underneath it, where all sorts of mythical serpents and sea monsters were reputed to live. This is why they have God offended by images of things in the waters under the earth. It certainly isn't a specific divine prohibition on pictures of ground-water-inhabiting bacteria.
"Do not bow down to any idol or worship it, because I am the LORD your god and I tolerate no rivals. I bring punishment on those who hate me and on their descendants down to the third and fourth generation."
Whoa, whoa, whoa, what?! So, not only is God completely intolerant of all other belief systems, but if your father or grandfather or great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather, or your mother, grandmother, great-grandmother or great-great-grandmother happened to "hate" God by worshipping an image from some other religious tradition, you will be punished for that! Again, this is one of those bits of the Bible that everybody seems to ignore and that even the most devout fundamentalist Christians refuse to take seriously. Nobody, not even Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps or Jerry Falwell, is going to consider somebody worthy of punishment just because his great-great-grandmother happened to be a Hindu. This is because our society, thankfully, has moved past the barbaric ethics of primitive nomadic tribes. Yes, even the morons.
"But I show my love to thousands of generations of those who love me and obey my law."
Here, God blatantly contradicts himself. If my father worships graven images, I am punished, and if my mother worships Jehovah, I am rewarded. So which is it? Is God going to bring punishment on me while showing his love to me? (That sounds kind of kinky...)

But Christians seem to ignore all these logical contradictions. If the Bible said 2+2=5, they'd believe it, or at least come up with some torturous reasoning to rationalize that it was just a metaphorical addition problem and that God didn't really mean what he said.
"Do not use my name for evil purposes for I, the LORD your God, will punish anyone who misuses my name."
Goddamnit! I'm fucked then. Jesus Christ, what a pointless commandment. I don't think misusing the word "Jehovah" (or YHWH or Adonai or Elohim or Lord or God or Jesus or the Holy Ghost whatever he's calling himself today) should be equated with murder and stealing on the list of immoral behaviors. It just doesn't make any sense. It's just a word, a sequence of sounds or letters. And God doesn't seem to be punishing us for it; I haven't noticed anything particularly awry in my goddamn life and I misuse God's name all the goddamn time. So he must be punishing us in the afterlife then? Maybe everybody who says "goddamn" is going to goddamn to go to hell? If I went around punishing everybody who misused my name, people would call me an egocentric asshole. And they'd be right.
Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy. You have six days in which to do your work, but the seventh day is a day of rest dedicated to me. On that day no one is to workâ??neither you, your children, your slaves, your animals, nor the foreigners who live in your country. In six days I, the LORD, made the earth, the sky, the seas, and everything in them, but on the seventh day I rested. That is why I, the LORD, blessed the Sabbath and made it holy.
The most long-winded and arguably the most ignored and pointless commandment of them all. Tomorrow is the Sabbath according to Jewish tradition, and I'm going to work then. And in Christian tradition, Sunday is the Sabbath, and I'm also going to work on that day. So what does God say should be done to me? Numbers 15:32 provides the answer:
One, while the Israelites were still in the wilderness, a man was found gathering firewood on the Sabbath. He was taken to Moses, Aaron, and the whole community, and was put under guard, because it was not clear what should be done with him. Then the LORD said to Moses, "The man must be put to death; the whole community is to stone him to death outside the camp." So the whole community took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD had commanded.
So what's the reason Christians have for believing God told Moses to say we should not work on the Sabbath, but not believing that God told Moses that stoning is a proper punishment for a Sabbath breaker? There is no reason for believing one and not the other. If you're going to be logically consistent and believe the whole Moses story and all of God's supposed orders to him, you have to believe that stoning is a just punishment for working on the Sabbath. Otherwise you're being unjustifiably inconsistent: there's no disclaimer at the beginning of Exodus 20 that says "GOD REALLY SAID THIS STUFF, BUT THE REST OF GOD'S COMMANDMENTS TO MOSES YOU CAN IGNORE BECAUSE WE MADE THAT STUFF UP". If you're going to put your faith in Moses as a prophet and the Old Testament as an accurate portrayal of the Moses story, you can't pick and choose which bits appeal to your modern civilized code of ethics. Either Moses was a prophet, or he wasn't.

One final comment: why does God say your slaves are not allowed to work? This is the perfect opportunity for God to say you shouldn't own slaves at all because treating humans as property is on the same scale of immorality as killing and stealing. But he doesn't. This is, of course, because Jehovah was created by the ancient Hebrews, and they transferred their morality and their ethics onto him. Slavery was an acceptable cultural practice at the time, and hence their mythological god had no problem with slavery. It's not hard to figure this stuff out from a modern, rational, skeptical perspective. If God had a perfect never-changing morality, either he would have said to the ancient Hebrews that slavery was wrong, or slavery would still be okay today.
"Respect your father and your mother, so that you may live a long time in the land that I am giving you."
No, sorry, respect should not be automatic. A mother who beats her son senselessly every day or a father who molests his daughter does not deserve respect. Respect should be earned, or else it isn't really respect at all but blind fear-based obedience.
"Do not commit murder."
Okay, this one I can understand, because I can see how murder would actually negatively influence people's real lives here on earth. But it's too vague. Sometimes killing is justified, when doing so prevents even more disastrous consequences. For example, if somebody killed a man who was running around with a gun shooting everybody, few people would have an ethical problem with that. And few people have an ethical problem with the brave soldiers who fought the fascist powers in World War II by killing lots of fascist soldiers. In the circumstances at the time, it was necessary to prevent an even greater evil. God could certainly have been a lot clearer on when killing is justified, and when it isn't. This commandment is needlessly oversimplified, unlike the Sabbath commandment which is needlessly complicated.
"Do not commit adultery."
Well, what if my wife is cool with it? Again, this commandment is too simplistic. While I would agree that in a monogamous relationship, it might be a good idea to not try to fuck other people to spare the feelings of your partner, God could have been a lot more specific with this one. What counts as adultery? Oral sex? Fondling? Kissing? Flirting? Lusting? There is a continuum here and the line needs to be drawn somewhere. (Jesus later says that lusting counts as adultery in his famous Sermon on the Mount, by the way).

Sexual fidelity in a relationship that is agreed to be monogamous is just essentially the act of not being deceptive, which is a good idea in general. This could actually have been generalized much further into a more useful commandment like "Do not be dishonest".
"Do not steal."
Again, this is a good general rule, but it's way too vague. Stealing, like killing, is one of those things that can be justified in some situations. Take the stealing of food in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck, for example. Nobody in their right mind would consider immoral the actions of those people who had to steal food because it was the only way they could stay alive. Other situations can be imagined: what if I steal something that was stolen from somebody else and return it to its original owner? What if I steal a loaded gun from the hand of a homocidal maniac?
"Do not accuse anyone falsely."
This is the only commandment I don't have a problem with, as long as it's not interpreted as a prohibition on lying in general. Lying is justified in some situations (how often are you lying when you say "good" to the question "how are you doing?"), but I cannot think of a realistic scenario in which it would be okay to falsely accuse somebody of something they did not do.
"Do not desire another man's house; do not desire his wife, his slaves, his cattle, his donkeys, or anything else that he owns."
Again, God just lumps in slaves with other kinds of property and misses the perfect opportunity to condemn slavery once and for all. But putting that aside for a second, a perfect intelligence should be able to realize that most people do not have any conscious control over their desires. It is as ridiculous as saying "don't ever be hungry". If another man's wife is hot, I'm gonna want to bone her. If his house is awesome, I'm going to wish I could live there. If his livestock is...well, I don't really care for livestock. Point is, I'm going to feel sensations of desire whether I want to or not. It's not a matter of ethics; it's a matter of involuntary psychology.

So, out of ten commandments, only four are anywhere near reasonable, and they are the shortest and vaguest ones. Do not commit adultery, do not commit murder, do not steal, and do not accuse anyone falsely. And, if we're making a basic list of moral guidelines, there are some stunning omissions. How about do not rape? Do not take slaves? Do not commit unnecessary acts of violence? Honor your children? Those seem like more reasonable commandments than the ones the ancient Hebrews came up with for their Jehovah character.

I hope I have convinced the reader that the Ten Commandments are, at the very least, not the kind of thing we should be giving to our children and telling them it's the perfect infallible moral rule book written by God himself. Let us shelve these ancient myths with Homer's Odyssey and the Egyptian Book of the Dead already. We can figure out what's moral and what isn't ourselves, based on how much harm and benefit are created by the consequences of our actions. We don't need these superstitions, and we definitely don't need to be posting this stuff up in our courthouses and schools. Our modern moral philosophers are way better than Jehovah at this stuff. Why not teach their ideas instead?
Oneironaut Reviewed by Oneironaut on . What's Wrong With The Ten Commandments? The controversy over the display of the Ten Commandments on federal property has brought to the public eye once again the relationship between government and religion, and there has been a lot of much-needed discussion and debate about this crucial issue. But in this discussion and debate, there has been little talk about the content of the Ten Commandments. It's obvious why that is: very few people actually know what the Ten Commandments are. People know they prohibit murder and stealing, and Rating: 5