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The Ten Commandments

Entry 2210, on 2022-03-24 at 13:30:30 (Rating 3, Religion)

I used to spend a lot of time engaged in religious debates, but more recently I seem to have drifted more into politics when it comes to controversial commentary. But I have had a couple of incidents recently where I have debated religion, and an interesting little meme recently appeared in my Facebook feed on this same subject - no doubt, just a coincidence, eh Zucky?

The meme involved the Ten Commandments treated as a school project and with comments and a mark from a teacher. And yes, I know there is more than one set of commandments, but this is the one most commonly used by Christians so I will stick with it.

Here are the commandments, translated to modern English, but preserving most of the original intent, I believe...

1 You shall have no other gods before me
2 You shall not make for yourself an idol
3 You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God
4 Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy
5 Honor your father and your mother
6 You shall not murder
7 You shall not commit adultery
8 You shall not steal
9 You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour
10 You shall not covet

Here's the overall mark and comment from the "teacher": 3/10 Needs improvement!

And here are the individual comments on each of the commandments...

1 to 4 These are very egotistical, and frankly, disturbing. I'm scheduling an appointment for you with the school counsellor.
5 What if your parents are abusive? Do they still deserve to be honoured?
6 Good! Though I am concerned this was not higher on the list.
7 Excellent!
8 Good.
9 Again, what if your spouse is abusive? And even if they're not, this is hardly worthy of the top ten.
10 This is essentially a thought crime. It is impossible (and completely immoral) to police people's thoughts.

So the commandments can be classified into 2 categories: those which are so obvious they are unnecessary, and those which are wrong, or even evil, and therefore also unnecessary.

But the situation is far worse than even that, because the commandments which should be there and aren't are in many ways a bigger problem.

For example, where are the commandments telling us that we shouldn't really have slaves; or that we should treat everyone the same irrespective of their gender, race, etc; or that we should not mistreat animals; or that we should take care of the environment? Apparently, those aren't as important as not making idols!

To be fair, in the New Testament we have the Golden Rule: "treat others as you would have them treat you", which is a sort of meta-rule which could arguably cover those extra situations, but I would have preferred to have them spelled out for people who are more morally challenged!

I should point out at this stage, that the golden rule did not originate in the Bible and had been in existence for centuries before that, so even here Christianity has no special claim to being a source of morality.

But just imagine how much better the world could have been if Christians, for the last 2000 years, had a better list of guiding principles? We could have eliminated slavery, racism, and misogyny centuries ago! But, of course, we wouldn't have, because so many of the actual commandments have been ignored anyway.

In fact, for the majority of people - maybe for them all - the Commandments are only followed if they fit with the person's personal moral code anyway. They might say they follow the Commandments, but then choose to interpret them according to their own standards.

For example, the commandment not to murder might not be quite as simple as it seems. Murder has a common meaning, a legal meaning, and a technical meaning. Which should we use, and does every situation neatly fit into any of these? Obviously not. Is killing in self defence OK? How certain do you have to be that it is a matter of kill or be killed? What about in wars? And is there a difference between a just and unjust war?

And there is one other complicating factor here too: that is the use of the word "murder" as a translation from Hebrew. In the past the translation has often been "kill" rather than "murder", but I guess that caused a lot of problems, not the least being the numerous occasions when God told his followers to kill their enemies.

According to one source, the Hebrew word also covers causing human death through carelessness or negligence which is not usually covered by the word murder. So it seems that interpreting the exact meaning of that commandment is difficult, and a similar argument could apply to the others.

Finally, there is the issue of whether the Ten Commandments have any validity given that the story of their origin is almost certainly not true. Almost no serious historian thinks the Exodus story is even close to true, so the whole thing seems to be a myth. Myths can have some value, but we have to remember that they are written by people, not a god.

So the Ten Commandments are not the word of God, they are open to all sorts of translation and interpretation problems, they include stuff that is irrelevant to real morality, they miss out stuff which is relevant, and they were written thousands of years ago. They do not seem like a good basis for any contemporary moral code.

On the other hand, Christianity is an important part of Western history, and it is still important, to a lesser extent, today. Many of our laws, traditions, and philosophy has some basis in it, so it shouldn't be completely ignored.

The way I look at this situation is to treat it like a more poetic form of philosophy (as opposed to a more technical, logical philosophy). I don't want to ignore Christian teaching completely, but I reserve the right to be critical of it, and I will only use it on an equal (or maybe lesser) footing to other philosophical ideas.

Finally, the question I am often challenged with: if you don't believe in a god to provide moral standards, where do they come from? I don't think there is any objective, absolute morality. Instead, I think morality changes with time, and is really just a consensus of opinions, from society as a whole.

At one point it was moral to keep slaves, as long as you didn't mistreat them too badly. In fact, the Old Testament has several tips on what you can and cannot do with your slaves. But today we reject slavery under any circumstances. Morality has changed; it isn't absolute.

A similar argument could be made about the equality of women. Many religious rules are clearly misogynistic when viewed in comparison to today's principles, so again moral standards have changed.

So anyone who thinks the Ten Commandments should be taught in schools (for their moral qualities, rather than as an example of ancient literature) should think again. Teach them along with other ideas from moral philosophy, ideas from other religions, and ideas from political theory, but not as the final answer to moral questions. For that, they are worse than useless.

Comment 1 (7122) by Anonymous on 2022-04-06 at 11:59:56:

You know what, the commandments seem to work OK. Its what modern law, science, etc is based on. Why would you want to abandon them?

Comment 2 (7123) by Anonymous on 2022-04-06 at 14:44:15:

Um, #1 - #4 don't seem to offer much to science, law etc. The others came from existing codes of morality. Religion would have you believe that morality comes from God and the church. But, like God him/herself, morality is a human creation...

Comment 3 (7124) by OJB on 2022-04-06 at 17:35:20:

Comment 1: I wouldn't abandon them. I would just use them as a basis for moral standards along with other sources. On the other hand, as I said, you shouldn't need an old book to tell you that murder, theft, etc are wrong in most circumstances.

Comment 2: Well, yes, that's basically what I said. They are either irrelevant or unoriginal. There's no harm in using these as part of a moral code, but they are both misleading and insufficient on their own.

Comment 4 (7130) by Hineini on 2022-04-16 at 14:08:44:

"Myths can have some value, but we have to remember that they are written by people, not a god." Totally agree and I wish religious clergy would clearly differentiate between historicity and myth. Funny thing about the Ten Commandments. As a body of work they're not even called the Ten Commandments in Hebrew, they're called the Ten Utterances and word commandments (mitzvot) has a deeper meaning that comes from the root word "connection." Good post! I like the individual comments on each of the commandments.

Comment 5 (7131) by OJB on 2022-04-17 at 16:28:34:

Of course, distinguishing between myth and history, especially in regards to religion, is very difficult. For example, is even the existence of Jesus a myth or history? I would say there is about an equal chance of both. And if Jesus existed, how much of the story of his life is myth? Most of it, I would say, but many would disagree. If we only took well accepted history as the basis for religion there might not be anything left!

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