I have a problem with the Ten Commandments. Here it is: why are they ten? We don’t need ten. I think the list of commandments was deliberately and artificially inflated to get it up to ten. It’s clearly “a padded list”. Here is how it happened:
About five thousand years ago, bunch of religious hustlers got together to figure out how they could control people and keep them in line. They knew that people are basically stupid and would believe anything they were told. So these guys announced that God, God personally, had given one of them a list of ten commandments that he wanted everyone to follow. They claimed that the whole thing took place on a mountain top, where no one else was around.
But let me ask you something: when these guys were sitting in a tent making all this stuff up why did they pick ten? Why ten? Why not nine or eleven? I’ll tell you why. Because ten sounds important. Ten sounds official. They knew if they tried eleven people wouldn’t take them seriously. What’re you kidding me? Eleven commandments, get the fuck out of here. But ten! Ten sounds important. Ten is the basis for the decimal system. It’s a decade. It’s psychologically satisfying number: top ten, ten most wanted, ten best dress… So deciding on ten commandments was clearly a marketing decision. And it’s obviously a bullshit list. It’s a political document, artificially inflated to sell better. I’m gonna show you how you can reduce the number of commandments and come up with a list that is a little more logical and realistic.
We’ll start with the first three and I’ll use the Roman-Catholic version because those are the ones I was fed when I was a little boy.
I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no strange gods before me. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain. Thou shalt keep holly the Sabbath.
OK. Right off the bat, first three commandments are pure bullshit. Sabbath days, Lords name, strange gods, spooky language… Spooky language that is designed to scare and control primitive people. In no way do superstitious mumbo-jumbo like this apply to the lives of intelligent and civilized humans in the 21st century. So throw out the first three commandments and you’re down to seven.
Honor thy father and mother.
This commandment is about obedience and respect for authority. In other words, it is simply devised for controlling people. The truth is obedience and respect should not be granted automatically. They should be earned. They should be based on the parents’ or the authority figure’s performance. Some parents deserve respect but most of them don’t. Period. We’re down to six.
Now, in the interest of logic, something religion has a very hard time with, I’m gonna skip around the list a little bit.
Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness.
Stealing and lying. Actually when you think about it these two commandments cover the same sort of behavior: dishonesty. Stealing and lying! So we don’t need two of them. Instead we can combine these two and call it “thou shalt not be dishonest” and suddenly we’re down to five.
And as long as we’re combining commandments, I have two others that belong together:
“Thou shalt not commit adultery” and “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife”.
Once again, these two prohibit the same sort of behavior, which is in this case marital infidelity. Difference between them is that coveting takes place in mind. And I don’t think you should outlaw fantasizing about someone else’s wife. Otherwise what’s the guy gonna think about when he’s flogging his dong? But marital fidelity is a good idea. So I suggest that we keep the idea and call this commandment “thou shalt not be unfaithful” and suddenly we’re down to four.
And when you think about it further, honesty and fidelity are actually part of the same overall value. So in truth we could combine the two honesty commandments with the two fidelity commandments and –using positive language instead of negative, call the whole thing “thou shalt always be honest and faithful”. And now we’re down to three.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.
This one is just plain stupid. Coveting your neighbor’s goods is what keeps the economy going. Your neighbor gets a vibrator that plays "oh come all yee faithful" you wanna get one too. Coveting creates jobs. Leave it alone. You throw out coveting and your left with two now. The big combined honesty fidelity commandment and the one we haven’t mentioned yet:
Thou shalt not kill.
Murder, the fifth commandment. But if you give it a little thought you realize that religion has never really had a problem with murder. Not really! More people have been killed in the name of god than for any other reason. To cite a few examples, think about Irish history, the Middle East, the Crusades, the Inquisitions, our own abortion doctors killings and yes, that’s right, the World Trade Center, and you’ll see how seriously religious people take thou shalt not kill. Apparently to religious folks, especially the devout, murder is negotiable. It just depends on who’s doing the killing and whose getting killed. And so with all this in mind folks I offer you my revised list of the two commandments:
First: thou shalt always be honest and faithful, especially to the provider of thy nookie;
And second: thou shalt try really hard not to kill anyone unless off course they pray to a different invisible avenger than the one you pray to.
Two is all you need folks. Moses could have carried them down the hill in his fuckin’ pocket. And if we had a list like that, I wouldn’t mind that brilliant judge in Alabama displaying it permanently in his courthouse lobby as long as he included one additional commandment: “thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself”.
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