Sometimes the aphoristic compression of Twitter can be useful.
Noel McGivern @Good_Beard
The Ten Commandments are a useless code of morality they ignore rape and child abuse and put the vanity of an imaginary deity before murder.
Harper @Irishbloke
@Good_Beard Would you mind giving me your 10 commandments since you consider yourself greater than God?
Harper’s reply sums up a lot of what’s so wrong and terrible about religious thinking, in just those few words.
One part is the circularity that enables the firmly closed mind. He assumes that there is god and that god is moral and “great,” and thus that it’s an outrage to think about “The Ten Commandments” at all.
Given this firmly closed mind and this focus on the wholly irrelevant (imagine derailing a discussion of the First Amendment into a discussion of the character of, say, James Madison), Harper simply ignores the substance and goes for a plain old “shut up, that’s why” instead.
But the substance is the point; it’s the point of what Noel McGivern said and it’s much of the point of atheism. The Ten Commandments suck. Harper makes himself unable even to perceive that by means of his dogmatic assumptions.
Mine? Sure, why not.
- Don’t be cruel.
- Love justice.
- Embrace equality.
- Practice compassion.
- Be generous.
- Do what you can to make the world better.
- Aim for truth.
- Think carefully.
- Share what you learn with others.
- Amuse.
A link to a recording of George Carlin’s monolog about the 10C is all Good_Bread deserves.
“Be nice to your fellow animals”
So, a couple years ago I was visiting a friend, who is pretty devout and has 2 kids. Somehow the topic of religion came up, and I asked if she’d like to see something cool. I turned to her kids and said “hey, let’s play 10 commandments!” and pulled out a notepad and a pen, and got the kids to rattle off a couple ideas for commandments. They got into it and it was oretty fun, actually. We made a short list and read it off to their mom, who was suitably impressed. Then I said, “Isn’t it interesting that in 10 minutes a 12 year old and a 9 year old can come up with a better set of precepts to live by than your god?”
Another fun thing to do about the 10 commandments is figure out whether the person is talking about Cecil B. DeMille’s 10 commandments or the ones that allegedly came from Moses. Because a huge percentage of Americans seem to have confused the two.
I don’t claim to be greater than God — just morally superior.
I claim to be greater than God in the sense that I am real and God is fictional.
All we need is Bill & Ted’s “Be excellent to each other.”
Christopher Hitchens’ Ten Commandments are pretty good:
I’m with Al Dente, only need one that Bill & Ted summarized for everyone.
But what if we also want to party on, dude?
I can never believe it when people try to say the 10 commandments are “just good ideas” or even secular when they are trying to defend them staying in courthouses. Yeah. Makes me wonder if they’ve even read them. Just look at the first four.
Since most of the 10C’s are what not to do…
1. Don’t be a dick
3. Don’t be a dick
…
19. Don’t be a dick.
Because any commandments are better than what God purportedly said [actually nothing]
I notice something pretty glaring that Hitchens left out.
I’d like to see “Take care of yourself.” somewhere in there.
Also being kind to animals and taking care of the environment.
A good exercise certainly.
Marcus Ranum@2
Ooh, devious!
Animals and the environment were meant to be included under trying to make the world better.
I did want to include them but I also wanted to include the key general principles, so I stuck to the latter.
Don’t leave a mess
Why ten? There are better numbers than ten.
Pi, for example. I want to see the Pi Commandments.
I follow the 12 Virtues
Moderation
Simplicity
Flexibility
Sustainability
Industry
Justice
Cooperation
Respect
Honesty
Curiosity
Humility
Tenacity
The rest, as they say, is commentary.
I too am a Bill and Ted-nist. -nik?
The various offerings here are worthwhile. I took a different approach, in recognition of my life & family history. My 10 Biggies are intentionally patterned after the various Biblical versions of 10? 11? 12? Commandments.
I sought to stand the premise of the Original on its head, and confirm its valid components while plugging their loopholes. The superstitious are allowed to retain a Deity (people being that way, mostly), without making It the #1 Rationalization In The Universe.
http://heygetthis.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/331/
Most Protestants take their 10 commandments from Exodus 20:3-17 while the Lutherans and the Catholics take theirs from Deuteronomy 5:1-22. Both sets, however, were delivered verbally. They were not commandments written on tablets of stone.
It is not until Exodus 24:12 that we find a set of rules written on tables of stone: “And the Lord said unto Moses, Come up to me in the mount, and be there, and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments, which I have written.”
But Moses was up on the mountain for so long that the Israelites got sick of waiting for him, and they started worshipping a golden calf (Exodus 32:1-4).
Finally, after forty days and forty nights: “Moses turned and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand.” (Exodus 32:15)
But nobody knew what the rules were because as soon as Moses saw the Israelites worshipping the golden calf, he: “cast the tables out of his hands and brake them.” (Exodus 32:19)
It’s pretty certain, though, that “thou shalt not kill” was not on the list because Moses then set about killing all of his opponents! He called on the Levites to kill everyone who had worshipped the calf, “and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.” (Exodus 32:25-29)
Then, in Exodus chapter 34, God decides to make another set of stone tablets to replace the ones that Moses had smashed earlier: “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 on the first tables, which thou brakest.” (Exodus 34:1)
And the words he wrote are recorded in Exodus 34:14-26. Those commandments are nothing like anything any Christian has ever heard but the author of the book of Deuteronomy definitely regards them as the real thing. In fact, for the first time in the bible, we are told that these are, indeed, the ten commandments. They are specifically described as: “the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.” (Exodus 34:28)
Don’t take my word for it – read the bible and check it out for yourself.
That reference to the book of Deuteronomy at the end of post #18 should be to the book of Exodus (chapter 34).
While not a complete system, the basic ethical heuristic will get you a lot further than the 10Cs:
Autonomy: behave respectfully towards all persons
Non-maleficence: strive to do no harm
Benificence: strive to do good
Justice: be fair.
Harper begs the question – most people (not just atheists) are better than his God character because they reject the whole idea that goodness is defined by doing what you are commanded to do.
If you watch the world go down in fire and horror, and you cry out in protest, saying, “But I followed all the rules!” there will be no one to forgive you.
Despite the wonderful answers that can be given to such a question – give me your 10 C’s since you think you’re so great – there is no way to answer what is actually going on. The thing is, this is not a question, it is a challenge or actually nothing more than a riposte, a verbal flourish.
Believers who say things like this do not actually want to know. They meet your challenge with theirs in what they see as a spiritual battle. They aim a blow at you as part of what they think is their duty as a soldier for [insert god]. Understanding this helps with understanding why these people do what they do.
There are preciously little believers who are actually willing, and able, to freely discuss the contents of their faith.
Just to add to GoF’s post above; here are a few of those ten commandments written by Moshe in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. NB these are just the ones carrying the death penalty for a violation:
being a medium, spiritualist or a witch
being an adulterer, committing maternal incest, committing bestiality, having premarital sex – if you’re a woman (no penalty for men)
having sex with both a woman and her mother
seducing some other man’s (supposed to be virgin) fiancee
raping an engaged woman
female prostitution
murder (sometimes), kidnapping, cursing your parents, smiting your parents. letting your ox kill someone
blasphemy, working on Shabat, ignoring a priest’s decision
accidentally killing a pregnant woman, perjury
being a male who is not circumcised
eating leavened bread during the Feast of Unleavened Bread
manufacturing anointing oil
engaging in ritual animal sacrifices other than at the temple
consuming blood this would include eating rare meat.
eating peace offerings while ritually unclean
waiting too long before consuming sacrifices
sexual activity with a woman who is menstruating
going to the temple in an unclean state
teaching another religion (than judaism)
a prophet whose prophecy does not come true
gluttony and excessive drinking
Remember these are just a few of the ten commandments from Moshe. I guess the word “ten” didn’t mean the same thing 4Kyears ago. Many primitive societies hadn’t figured out counting back then – a numerical sequence would typically be “one, two, er three, er er, many”. So what we really have is “the many commandments” since the original meaning of the word “ten” has obviously been lost.
Interesting that all the alternatives miss out one of the originals that I think is pretty essential: Thou Shalt not bear false witness.
Actually, reacquainting myself with the commandments, and they are not that bad really. I think I would want to keep seven of them, with a little bit of glossing.
“I follow the 12 Virtues … Humility”
‘Irony’ didn’t make onto the list, obviously.
Some of these lists do seem easier to stick to than others. For example, I’ve never even been tempted to boil a goat in it’s mother’s milk, so I’m good with God on that one I guess…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_Decalogue#Decalogues_compared
I did this as a personal exercise a while back. Good way to reflect and try and figure out what’s important me. I guess these are the sorts of values that I’d hope I could pass on to any children that I might have:
1. Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.
2. You have the right to just treatment, and the responsibility to ensure justice for others.
3. Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.
4. Admit your own transgressions and do whatever needs to be done to make amends.
5. In all things, strive to do no harm.
6. Think for yourself and form your opinions based on your own reason and experience.
7. Listen to the thoughts of others freely expressed, never cut yourself off from dissent
8. Respect the rights of others to disagree with you.
9. Always seek to be learning something new.
10. Value the future on a scale larger than the duration of your own life.
I cribbed the wording from various places for two or three of them, but I forgot to notate and have forgotten :/
@#4
That was the part that confused me about … is it Anselm’s supposed proof of God? …
P1: God is that being than which no other greater being can be conceived.
P2: It is greater to actually exist than not to actually exist
Conc: God, the greatest conceivable being, actually exists.
The standard critique is that P2 is false, and that it is not greater to actually exist than to not exist. I was never sure why that was. Not that I accept Anselm’s proof, mind you, but I’m not entirely sure that P2 is where it falls down.
@31 : the simpler critique is that the entire “proof” only gets you this far: if there were any such entity as “the greatest conceivable being”, then existence would be one of the properties of that being.
But if there’s no such thing, then there’s no such thing.
And there’s no such thing.
The whole argument has a bit of legerdemain at the beginning: they assert that God “exists as a concept” because they’re thinking of the idea of God. It’s bullshit. Even if the idea of a God exists, the actual god doesn’t.
@ 29, 30 besomyka
I suggest Dawkins was a major influence:
@ 11 Ophelia Benson
Of course!
Number Eleven: If you’re a woman, don’t try to be funny.
😉