Godless (32 page)
If a god is trying to get his message across to the masses of humanity, why did he do it in such a way that the only people qualified to grasp its true significance are those with doctorates in biblical studies? And then, how do we know which authorities to believe? What the bible means
in plain English
is what most people read. If it embarrasses itself in plain English, then it fails to make its point. In any event, Dr. Lowe did not explain how his sophisticated liberal understanding makes the brutal scriptures less brutal. No matter how you interpret it, administering the death penalty for picking up sticks is cruel and barbaric.
in plain English
is what most people read. If it embarrasses itself in plain English, then it fails to make its point. In any event, Dr. Lowe did not explain how his sophisticated liberal understanding makes the brutal scriptures less brutal. No matter how you interpret it, administering the death penalty for picking up sticks is cruel and barbaric.
We freethinkers actually do know what the bible says. Mark Twain said: “It’s not the parts of the bible I don’t understand that bother me; it’s the parts I do understand.”
Toward the end of the debate I asked Dr. Lowe to give an example of a good moral teaching in the bible. He was unable to cite a single verse. Curiously, he did not mention the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, “turn the other cheek,” “love thy neighbor as thyself” or the Golden Rule, passages that historically have stood as shining examples in the “Good Book.” Yet a closer look at even these “good” teachings shows that the shine is rather dull.
After a speech in which I mentioned a lawsuit by the Freedom From Religion Foundation seeking to move the Ten Commandments from the Colorado capitol grounds to an appropriate private location, such as a church, a woman asked me, “How can you object to the Ten Commandments? They are the most perfect set of laws ever given to humans! Our country is based on those laws.” People who make such statements apparently have never studied the Ten Commandments (or American history).
Only three of the Ten Commandments have any relevance to American law: homicide, theft and perjury. (Adultery and Sabbath laws are still on the books in some states, but they are artifacts of theocracy.)
The first four commandments have nothing at all to do with ethics or moral behavior:
First Commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” This was spoken by
Elohim
(ironically, a plural name for the god
El
), who is the “Lord” of the Israelites. This is the equivalent of establishing the nation of Israel, not the United States of America. It can be taken as either monotheistic (only one god) or henotheistic (only one supreme god), and in any case is contrary to the American constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience and against an establishment of religion. In the United States, we are free to worship many gods, one god or no gods at all. Elohim does not appear in any of the governing documents on which our country was founded.
Elohim
(ironically, a plural name for the god
El
), who is the “Lord” of the Israelites. This is the equivalent of establishing the nation of Israel, not the United States of America. It can be taken as either monotheistic (only one god) or henotheistic (only one supreme god), and in any case is contrary to the American constitutional guarantees of freedom of conscience and against an establishment of religion. In the United States, we are free to worship many gods, one god or no gods at all. Elohim does not appear in any of the governing documents on which our country was founded.
Second Commandment: “Thou shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” This statement, ironically, appears on a graven image monolith of the Ten Commandments in many locations. As law, it would violate free speech. At face value, it rules out all art! (Later versions of this commandment prohibit “molten” images.) And how do Catholics get around this? Their churches and homes are filled with images of saints and virgins. Actually, the Catholic Church tried to get around this injunction by deleting the second commandment altogether! Some of the granite markers of the Ten Commandments that have been put on public property actually (humorously) omit this one and cut the last commandment into two prohibitions against coveting in order to round it out to ten.
Third Commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” This would be like prohibiting criticism of the president or other public officials. It is undemocratic and contrary to free speech.
Fourth Commandment: “Remember the sabbath day.” According to the biblical application of this law (as we already saw in Numbers 15), millions of Americans deserve capital punishment.
The first four commandments are religious edicts, not moral guidelines. They have nothing to do with ethics or how we should treat each other. They certainly have no official place in a country that “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Fifth Commandment: “Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land” is the first statement in the Decalogue that approaches morality, although there are no details here explaining exactly how to honor parents. Do we obey them in everything? How long do we obey them? Until they die? There is obviously some merit in the idea expressed by this commandment, but there is precious little guidance here beyond a general principle that parents should be respected. Isn’t this just another variation of the bible’s “respect authority” message? Wouldn’t a moral principle suggest that you should not do anything to hurt your parents, that you should not take advantage of them, and that you should treat them with the basic respect deserved by all human beings? What if your parents are uneducated and poor advisors? What if they belong to a kooky or abusive religious cult? What if they are evil? We all know that some parents do not deserve to be honored or obeyed. How do you “honor” a father who commits incest? Notice also that the rationale “that thy days may be long” is an appeal to self-interest, not to the value of parents as human beings.
Sixth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill” is the first genuine moral statement in the Decalogue because it deals with the issue of real harm in the real world, although it is unqualified. Does this mean that capital punishment is wrong? What about self defense? What about war? What about euthanasia requested by the terminally ill? The drawback of this law is its absoluteness—good laws make distinctions. Since the actions and commands of God burst with bloodthirstiness, this commandment seems to lose its import. Besides, prohibitions of murder existed long before the Ten Commandments or the Israelites appeared on the scene. It is not as if the human race never would have figured out that it is wrong to kill without some tablets coming down from a mountain. Laws against murder and manslaughter based on self-preservation and social stability have found their way into almost every culture before and after Moses, and it would be odd if the Israelites did not have a similar principle. (See Chapter 11 for more on this commandment.)
Seventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is also a good idea, though it is not against the law. And if it were, it hardly merits the death penalty: “And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” (Leviticus 20:10) Adultery involves a broken promise between consenting adults and has nothing to do with a government. In many, if not most, cases it is destructive to a relationship and affects children if the marriage falls apart as a result. (Other things, such as fundamentalism, can cause the same problem.) But adultery by consenting adults does not fall into the category of a malicious or harmful felony. It is a legitimate concern of ethics; however, it is no crime. Why don’t the Ten Commandments mention rape? What about incest? How about the more useful “Thou shalt not beat thy wife?” Why don’t the Ten Commandments tell husbands that it is immoral to force an unwilling wife to have intercourse? Why doesn’t the bible say that it is wrong for you to have sex, even with your spouse, if you knowingly have a sexually transmitted disease (which the bible would do if it were relevant to today). Although adultery is important, does it rate the Big Ten? In the bible, women were considered the property of men (see Tenth Commandment), so adultery was really a crime of theft.
Eighth Commandment: “Thou shalt not steal” is generally good advice and makes good law. Except in wartime most cultures, before and after the bible, have observed statutes that respect the property of others. But what about exceptions? The Ten Commandments, couched in absolute terms, allow no situational dilemmas. Would it be immoral to steal bread from a wealthy person to feed your starving child? Isn’t Robin Hood considered a folk hero? Nevertheless, most cultures recognize that taking someone’s rightful property without permission, in principle, is generally wrong. Do Christians claim that without the Tablets from Mount Sinai it never would have dawned on the human race that stealing is wrong?
Ninth Commandment: “Thou shalt not bear false witness” is also a generally good principle, but there is no universal law in America against telling lies. We have adequate laws against perjury and false advertising. But we all know that it is sometimes necessary to tell a lie in order to protect someone from harm. Lies in wartime are considered virtuous. The biblical prostitute Rahab was considered virtuous because she lied to protect Israelite spies (Hebrews 11:31). If I knew the whereabouts of a woman who was being hunted by her abusive husband, I would consider it a moral act to lie to the man. True morality is being able to weigh and compare the relative merits of the consequences of one action against another. It is flexible. The bible, on the other hand, makes absolute statements without admitting the possibility of ethical dilemmas. As with killing and stealing, most cultures through history have made honesty a high ideal, with or without the Ten Commandments.
Tenth Commandment: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house… wife… manservant… maidservant… ox… ass… nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.” If there were a law based on this commandment, our entire system of free enterprise would collapse! Notice that this treats a wife like property. It does not say “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s husband” because it is assumed that everything, including law, is directed at males. This is a plainly silly commandment. How can you command someone not to covet? And why would you? If stealing is wrong, then there is no need for this commandment. If I tell you that you have a beautiful house and that I wish I had it for myself, is that immoral? (Some claim that “covet” in this verse more properly means “to cast an evil eye” or spell upon something, and this should be viewed as a prohibition of sorcery. But the Hebrew word
châmad
, according to
Strong’s Concordance,
means “to delight in: beauty, greatly beloved, covet, delectable thing, delight, desire, goodly, lust, pleasant, precious thing.”)
châmad
, according to
Strong’s Concordance,
means “to delight in: beauty, greatly beloved, covet, delectable thing, delight, desire, goodly, lust, pleasant, precious thing.”)
So the Ten Commandments are composed of four religious edicts that have nothing to do with ethics, three one-dimensional prohibitions that are irrelevant to modern law, and three shallow absolutes that are useful but certainly not unique to the Judeo-Christian system. Any one of us could easily come up with a more sensible, thorough and ethical code for human behavior.
From the perspective of biblical criticism, there is a more serious problem with the traditional Ten Commandments. It is the wrong batch of laws! The common listing (such as inscribed on the tombstone-like granite monuments at the Denver and Austin capitols) is from Exodus 20, but most people don’t realize that these laws are not called the Ten Commandments in that chapter.
When Moses took his first trip up the mountain, he came back down with no stone tablets at all. He simply spoke what he said God told him and that list of edicts in Exodus 20 is what made it into Jewish and Christian tradition (as well as the humorously tacky movie by that name) as the “Ten Commandments.”
Moses went back up the mountain a second time, and this time he did come back with laws engraved by the finger of God with ten commandments, though not formally called the Ten Commandments. Moses smashed those tablets to pieces when he saw the children of Israel worshipping the golden calf. (Wow. If I were carrying an original hand-written document from God, I would take better care of it than that.)
So, Moses went back up the mountain a third time to get a replacement, and what God told him would be identical to the previous list. (This clearly means they were more important than what was merely spoken in Exodus 20.) The set of laws inscribed on the second set of tablets that Moses brought back from his third trip up the mountain, listed in Exodus 34:28 and Deuteronomy 4:13 (a retelling of Exodus 34), is the only set called the Ten Commandments. It is quite revealing to read Exodus 34: “And the Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest. And be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning unto mount Sinai…” Moses obeyed, “And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.” Here is the list Moses got the third time around, the final authorized, edited and proofed version of the Ten Commandments:
1. Thou shalt worship no other god. (The same as Exodus 20; so far so good.)
2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. (So, graven images are okay now?)
3. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. (My family never did this!)
4. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest. (Another match.)
5. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks. (What is this? When is this?)
6. Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the Lord God. (Boys only? And how, exactly, do they get up there every four months?)
7. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven. (What?)
8. Neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left until the morning. (Because the meat will spoil overnight?)
9. The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the Lord thy God. (This applies to farmers, so most of us are off the hook.)
10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk. (No problem. That one’s easy to keep.)
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