02.01.06

Only three of the Ten Commandments have been legislated into laws: Commandment #6 -- "Thou shalt not kill" -- Commandment #8 -- "Thou shalt not steal" -- and Commandment #9 -- "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." The reason for this is quite simple: the remaining seven Commandments are largely meaningless.

Commandment #1 declares that humans must believe in God. We can dismiss this Commandment out-of-hand because we have already adequately established that there is no God, but for logical purposes, we can still examine the content of the Commandment to expose its inherent flaws.
       This stipulation is entirely nonsensical because it is tantamount to a mother telling her son that he must believe that she exists; it would be wholly unnecessary to state this if an actual God were handing down these rules. If, on the other hand, a man -- Moses, for example -- were trying to convince a collection of people -- the Israelites, for example -- to do as they were told, then telling that them that they are required to believe in God would begin to make some political sense.
       When Moses invented the Commandments, he was trying to maintain control over a group of desperate people who were growing increasingly frustrated with his inept leadership. In order to maintain control over the Israelites, then, Moses claimed that his rules had been handed down by God -- directly to him, and only to him, in a remote location with no witnesses, no less.
       Part and parcel to compelling the Israelites to follow those rules, then, was making them believe that the fabricated God who had handed them down actually existed. In their desperation, the Israelites were undoubtedly beginning to realize that their belief in God was baseless. Moses was thus required to reinforce their beliefs in order to regain control over them; if the Israelites had finally come to the realization that there actually is no God, then Moses would have lost the ability to control them because they would have seen no compelling reason to follow rules set forth by another human no different from themselves.

Commandment #2 declares that humans must not believe in other gods or "make...sculpted image[s]...of what is in the heavens." Unfortunately, this Commandment is contradictory on several levels; first, it implies that there are, in fact, other gods, but that humans must believe in the one that -- in the case of Judeo-Christianity -- Moses claimed led them out of Egypt.
       This scenario is highly unlikely, as it calls up the image of a myriad of gods all vying for attention; the Greeks had a similar belief structure, and yet we scoff at their religion today. If an all-knowing God that created all of reality were to exist -- the definition of "God" that Judeo-Christianity purports -- then either there is only one God, or that God inexplicably created other gods and then demanded to be worshiped above those other gods; either scenario is logically flawed.
       The second contradiction inherent to this Commandment is that the very believers who declare it as a rule break it constantly. Walking into any Catholic church will reveal a plethora of "sculpted images" -- the Crucifix, assorted statues, stained glass windows -- of what believers think "is in the heavens."

Commandment #3 declares that humans are not permitted to take the name of God in vain. This is possibly the most misunderstood of the Commandments; it does not mean, as conventionally believed, that one is not permitted to say "Goddamnit" or "Jesus Christ" in a moment of frustration. The act of taking the name of God in vain involves claiming "I swear to God" or "in the name of God" and then lying. It is to call God as a witness to a statement that is not true.
       Swearing in this context does not refer to the use of expletives; it refers instead to the act of declaring that one is telling the truth. Again, this is an unnecessary Commandment if a real God existed, because it implies that just by prefacing a lie with "I swear to God," others are going to believe that God stands behind the statement to follow, and that lying under such an oath somehow calls into question God's integrity; any real God, however, would have means to make clear that It did not stand behind fallacious statements, so why any real God would even care about someone invoking this kind of insubstantial witness is unclear.
       The only instance in which anything close to this Commandment has been legislated regards the crime of perjury in court proceedings; when a witness takes the stand, he or she is asked if they "swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God." If the witness affirms that they do, in fact, swear to these conditions, and then he or she lies, they are "taking the name of God in vain." They are criminally guilty, however, of perjury; not specifically because they took the name of God in vain, but rather because they swore before the court to tell the truth and then did not.
       Since the crime of perjury is addressed in more specific terms in Commandment #9, however, we must acknowledge that this prohibition against "taking the name of God" in vain has other motivations. At the historical time that the Commandments were invented, few means of ascertaining the veracity of a witness's claims in a legal court existed; since forensic science did not exist at all, these means were limited to direct testimony by material witnesses, and the act of "swearing by God" that one was telling the truth.
       Thus, that act of calling God as a witness -- by claiming ones statements "in the name of God" -- was given actual legal weight and taken as "proof" -- essentially the only available proof outside of corroborating witness testimony -- that a witness was telling the truth. If further "proof" -- which could only amount to more testimony that contradicted previous testimony -- was presented before the court, the first witness would be found guilty of "taking the name of God" in vain. This amounts to primitive perjury insofar as it is a means of proving that a witness lied before the court. The real crime, then, is lying before a court of law, and not taking the name of God in vain.
       The only reason that perjury is nearly a violation of this Commandment, then, is that the court has arbitrarily decided to continue including the clause "so help you God" in the witness's oath. Without that clause, this Commandment would be readily recognizable as a wholly preposterous stipulation because it presupposes that there is a real God; since we have adequately established that there is no God, the act of swearing by the imaginary notion of a God becomes tangibly meaningless.

Commandment #4 declares that humans are required to "keep holy the Sabbath day." This Commandment is quite simply preposterous, because it is based on the idea that God created the universe in six days before resting on the seventh day; its entire reason for existing, then, is based solely on the faulty premise that a God exists, and requires belief in a particular set of preposterous events.
       It is ridiculous to imply that the all-powerful creator of existence simply got tired after six days of work; it is equally ridiculous to posit that an all-powerful God required six days to create the world, instead of simply calling the entire universe into existence at once. The corresponding passages of Genesis that are the basis for Commandment #4 portray God as an overworked foreman stressed by an extensive project; such a depiction imbues God with distinctly human characteristics, painting It more like a deity of the Greek pantheon.
       Additionally, since there is nothing to indicate on what day of the week God began Its little pet project, we have no way of deducing which day of the week is intended to be "the Sabbath." Seventh-Day Adventists and practitioners of Judaism observe "the Sabbath" from sunset on Friday until sunset on Saturday (since the Jewish day runs from sunset-to-sunset rather than midnight-to-midnight), while most Christians observe the "day of rest" on Sunday. Since there is no textual evidence supporting any of these choices, the celebration of "the Sabbath" is entirely arbitrary.

Commandment #5 declares that children are required to respect their parents. This Commandment is wholly ridiculous because respect should not be automatically given to anyone: it must be earned through respectable attitudes and actions. Otherwise, respect itself becomes meaningless. This Commandment is based on an analogous premise that the relationship between a child and its parent mirrors the relationship between a human and God; since we have adequately established that there is no God, we realize that there is also no compelling reason to honor such a Commandment.
       Additionally, the text of the Commandment indicates that children are to "honor" their parents, but the word "honor" carries multiple varied meanings that significantly change the expectations of the Commandment. We have already outlined the reasons that this Commandment is nonsensical when we take "honor" to mean "respect," but we can also take "honor" to mean "reflect," in which case the Commandment actually has nothing to do with the child/parent relationship.
       If we take "honor" to mean "reflect," then the Commandment becomes about public image. "Honor" comes to mean presenting a respectable face to society so that others will think that one was raised by "good parents." To honor one's parents, one must act in a socially acceptable manner in order to reflect well on one's parents. If, however, we take "honor" to mean "tribute," then the Commandment becomes about proper burial after the death of one's parents; "honor" comes to mean following the accepted treatment of a corpse, and to honor one's parents, one must tend to his mother and father's bodies properly after they die.
       None of this, however, is made clear in the Commandment, leaving it vague and useless.

Commandment #7 declares that men are now allowed to desire married women. The actual text of the Commandment declares that a man is not to "covet [his] neighbor's wife;" since the word "covet" means "to wish for enviously" or "desire inordinately," the Commandment is actually a prohibition against thought. Thus, this Commandment is entirely preposterous, since thoughts arise spontaneously from the lower reptilian brain, what Georg Groddeck referred to as the Id.
       Since the conscious human mind has no control over the unconscious, it is wholly ridiculous to suggest that men should be able to simply "turn off" these thoughts, which Sigmund Freud described as "the primitive instictual drives of sexuality and aggression." If we accept the notion of an all-powerful, all-knowing God that specifically created humans, then we are forced to acknowledge that these unconscious, instinctive thoughts were placed in the human mind by that God. More specifically, these uncontrollable thoughts become the natural result of that God's purposeful creation of the human mind, and the natural function of the Id is to produce these thoughts. It is thus preposterous to prohibit a being from acting exactly as it was created to act.
       Most believers, however, interpret this Commandment as prohibiting a man from acting on these thoughts, despite the fact that the language of the Commandment clearly indicates otherwise. Thus, most believers read this as a Commandment banning sexual relationships between a married woman and any man who is not her husband. If we accept this reading, however, we are faced once more with a demonstration of the blatant anti-feminist tilt displayed by the biblical authors.
       The author of this passage clearly views a woman as incapable of individual choice, since it expressly addresses only males by instructing them not to have sex with another man's wife; there is no direct stipulation within the Commandment directly a married woman not to engage in a sexual relationship with a man other than her husband. In such a context, the woman in question is relegated to the position of object, the source the man's obsession and the focus of his seduction; she is thus rendered entirely without agency or the free will to reject her seducer. Additionally, the very specific phraseology of the Commandment legally indicates that the offending man is the sole criminal perpetrator in instances of violation.
       Note also that the phrasing of the Commandment does not even specifically outlaw adultery; rather, it prohibits a man from engaging in a sexual relationship with another man's wife. Since adultery is the act of having sex with someone other than one's legal spouse, an unmarried man who had sex with a married woman would not actually be committing adultery: the woman with whom he had sex would. In this context, the Commandment appears to prohibit the violation of a marriage by an outside agent, implying that the marriage, and not the woman, the victim of the violation.
       Upon further analysis, however, we realize that this is not the case; the language of the Commandment -- specifically referencing a "neighbor's wife" rather than simply "a married woman" -- implicitly treats wives as if they were the property, belonging to their husbands. Thus, this transgression actually becomes a crime against the cuckholded husband, since it is his "property" -- and subsequently, his honor -- that has been defiled.
       Note further that of the two participants in an act that violates this Commandment -- "Man #1" and "Man #2's Wife" -- the woman assumes the majority of the legal guilt of the crime. Despite the fact that the Commandment itself clearly and only addresses men -- subsequently setting up the implication that women are powerless in such situations -- the offense of infidelity by a woman was a stoning offense at the historical time that the Commandments were invented. The man, on the otherhand, was likely to be punished with little more than a fine to be paid to the husband of the executed woman, demonstrating a gross imbalance in punishment based solely on gender.
       This Commandment is entirely baseless, however, because it implies that "marriage" is sacred; such suppositions are based largely in the idea that marriage is some kind of institution that has been ordained and sanctified by a God. Since we have adequately established that there is no God, we can acknowledge that there is no such divine sanctity inherent to the arrangement of marriage. Instead, marriage is a legal contract between two people for expressly legal purposes, including inheritence, tax and adoption rights.
       Further, since we have adequately established that marriage is not a divine institution, we can also acknowledge that the arrangements of any marriage are left entirely up to the individuals involved; if a married couple chooses to allow for extra-marital partners as per a prescriptive arrangement, then "adultery" per se would no longer be an issue. Thus, adultery is clearly not inherently "wrong," but only prohibitively so; that is, it is only unacceptable if those involved in the marriage deem it as such.
       The sexist bias and unfounded presuppositions of this Commandment thus render it usless.

Commandment #10 declares that humans are not allowed to covet their neighbor's house, slaves or other property. This Commandment is clearly the most dangerously unethical and morally repugnant of them all for one very simple, painfully obvious reason; it condones slavery.
       Noah, who we are expected to believe is "just man and perfect" (Genesis 6:9), curses his own grandson Canaan to be "a servant of servants...unto his brethren" (Genesis 9:25) because Canaan's father Ham (Noah's son) inadvertantly saw his father Noah passed out "drunken, and...uncovered within his tent" (9:21). Thus, not only is Noah demonstrably not a "just man" or "perfect," he is actually a rash alcoholic prone to overreaction who becomes one of the first of many Biblical characters to dole out slavery as a punishment while God stands by and allows the depravity to occur while condoning the practice through His silence.
       In fact, much of the Bible condones slavery; casual references are made to the institution of forcing a human being into servitude against his and her will throughout Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, as well as Joshua, Luke, and the New Testament. The Bible often gives explicit instructions to masters concerning how to treat slaves (Colossians 4:1), and explicit instructions to slaves concerning how to behave (Ephesians 6:5, Colossians 3:22, First Timothy 6:1-5, Titus 2:9-10 & First Peter 2:18).
       This morally despicable endorsement for a fundamentally cruel and sadistic practice proves that the Bible is not, contrary to conventional theistic claims, a timeless or universal book. The classic Christian apolegetic recourse that the Bible condoned slavery only because slavery was common in Biblical times is actually proof of the book's transitory nature; any omniscient moral God would, after all, have condemned slavery whether it was common at the time or not simply on the grounds that slavery is, was, always has been, and always will be disgustingly inhumane and ethically repulsive.
       Since we have already adequately established that there is no God, however, it becomes clear that this Commandment is a mere reflection of the depraved society from which it sprung. The authors of the Bible, much like the authors of the United States Constitution, belonged to a ruling class that owned slaves; thus the Bible, much like the Constitution, was written to preserve a certain social status quo.
       The Bible, then, became a tool of subjugation; slave-owners used passages of the Bible to convince slaves that God approved of the condition of slavery -- even used vague passages like Genesis 9 as justification for slavery -- so that slaves would accept their inhuman subjugation complacently. The book remains a weapon of oppression to this day with regards to the freedoms of women and homosexuals. Since slavery is destructive and immoral in all cases, the fact that it is condoned by the Bible proves that the Bible was not inspired by a divine creator -- who would have demanded the immediate end of slavery had He ever actually existed -- but rather simply the creative efforts of a group of marginally-talented men.
       Thus this Commandment can already be dismissed out-of-hand as not only useless, but insulting. But even the rest of its tenets are meaningless; in regards to the coveting of one's "neighbor's house [and] property," the Commandment undermines the principles of a free-market society. The entire basis of a capitalist system is the creation of a desire in the market for a particular product; thus not only the act of "coveting," but of acting on that coveting -- that is, going out and buying a product of one's own -- is what drives a free-market society.
       Further, this Commandment is another instance of an attempt to prohibit thought. We have already established that "covet" means "to wish for enviously" or "desire inordinately," both of which are markedly mental states; thus, if my neighbor buys a new 2005 Mustang GT that I really like, and my subconscious mind accidentally thinks that I wish I had a 2005 Mustang GT of my own, I am guilty of breaking the 10th Commandment through no conscious decision of my own.
       However, since stealing has already been addressed in Commandment #8, we must wonder why an additional directive needed to be codified outlawing the mental state that might, though certainly not necessarily, lead to theft. As stated previously, another perfectly legal way to act on one's covetous desires is to work hard, save up money, and buy a product of one's own; this very cycle is the fundamental mechanism that drives capitalism, and is thus the basis for the entire American economy. That it should be outlawed is truly preposterous.


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