The Immorality of the Ten Commandments.

On June 17, by a 248 to 180 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill permitting states to display the Ten Commandments in public schools. At a press conference, a co-sponsor of the bill, Georgia Republican Bob Barr, said that if the Ten Commandments had been posted at Columbine High School the April 20 massacre never would have occurred. The bill's primary sponsor, Alabama Republican Robert Aderholt, called it "a first step" in "reinstilling the value of human life."

This ridiculous measure has now gone to the Senate, where its chances of actual passage are slim. And I'm sure most readers know that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled definitively that it is not permissible to post the Ten Commandments in public schools.

So how is it possible that 248 members of the House could do a thing like this? How is it that these legislators, along with more than a billion people across the globe (including, sad to say, many humanists and Unitarian Universalists), firmly believe that the basic guidelines for civil society are encapsulated in these ten biblical pronouncements? Perhaps more to the point, where could anyone get the absurd idea that the Ten Commandments instill "the value of human life"?

Yet it is because of these widely held beliefs that civil libertarians must exert the energy and suffer the frustration of repeatedly countering government advocacy of the Ten Commandments on obvious church-state separation grounds. And that's why I think it's time to change our strategy and challenge the actual content of this and similar proposals involving scriptural injunctions.

The truth is that none of the commandments have anything positive to say about the value of human life. Not only does the Decalogue not teach this, it bluntly tells people to devalue their own lives, as well as the lives of their fellow human beings. The blatantly obvious and straightforward presentation of this message in the Ten Commandments leaves me convinced that the reason millions of people accept religionists' false claims about them is that they've never read them.

This situation is ripe for correction by freethinkers. Who better to focus the light of reason and common sense on the true nature of religious doctrine?

To begin, then, the Bible itself contains at least two different versions of these "rules written in stone." There are also numerous English translations from the original Hebrew. These deviations present serious problems in and of themselves. To keep this simple, I'll quote the Protestant King James Version and the wording of the commandments as found in Exodus 20:1-17. (A variant wording appears in Deuteronomy 5:6-21 while a significantly different Ten Commandments shows up in Exodus 34:1-28.) And I'll number the commandments the way Christians do instead of the way Jews do, assuming they've been revealed to us in their order of importance.

The first commandment states: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Now that seems pretty clear. The most important requirement for living a moral life on Earth is that we bow down before one particular god and no others. But not only does this plunge us immediately into the age-old arguments, pogroms, and religious wars over which god is the "true" god, it instructs us, first and foremost, to abdicate our freedom, our self-responsibility, our very lives to some invisible supernatural entity. Yes indeed, the value of human life certainly resonates in this one!

The second commandment, in short form, reads: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image." But in the Bible it goes on: "or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them." While there are many interpretations of these directives by various religious factions, let's assume the simplest meaning: "Don't make images of anything and don't worship images of anything." Now why should this be the second most important moral principle for all humanity to follow? Robert Ingersoll noted that such a rule "is the death of art." Killing art is hardly a way to promote the value of human life.

God establishes a special punishment for disobedience of this commandment that, amazingly, never shows up in any of those tidy schoolhouse lists of the Ten Commandments. This is a particularly foolhardy omission given the extreme consequences of insubordination. As part of his commandment, God says, "For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me" --this is the stick, followed by the carrot--"and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments."

Yes, indeed, instilling the value of human life is obviously what's going on here! All the way down to and including the innocent great, great grandchildren of anyone who disobeys this all-important commandment of human morality. What could be more obviously godlike and supremely just than inflicting a family curse on four generations of children because one ancestor created works of representational art and maybe even admired them. And, gosh, isn't jealousy an exemplary emotion for a perfect God to so proudly proclaim?

The third commandment states: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." This is redundantly clear: if you bump your head, you must not say "God damn it!" Refrain from "Oh God!" during sex. For extra safety, avoid "My Lord!" and "Holy Jesus!" And for heaven's sake, don't say "Christ Almighty!" We mustn't be uttering any of his proper names in any context other than respectful reverence--since proper decorum here is so critical to the morality of all humanity.

Knowing the origin of this commandment, and the previous one, is helpful here. That origin can be found in sympathetic magic, where an image or name of a person is believed to carry part of her or his soul. Any injury to the image or denouncement of the name is thought to produce a consequent injury to the person. By making it taboo for people to create graven images or to utter curses against names, enemies are denied powerful, secret weapons. Some ancient peoples went further, believing that natural disasters were caused by misusing the names of gods.

The fourth commandment, in short form, reads: "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy." But there's much more to it that must be examined:

   Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the
   sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work; thou, nor
   thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy
   cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord
   made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the
   seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

If the worst this commandment did was promote the silliness of "creation science," we could consider ourselves fortunate. But violation of this commandment could prove fatal.

Throughout the Old Testament, many acts prohibited on the sabbath are specifically spelled out--along with the penalty, which is death by stoning. Numbers 15:32-36 recounts one such case: the public execution of "a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day." So every seventh calendar day, you must do no work. Your animals must do no work. Even your slaves must do no work. Yes, that's what manservants and maidservants were--slaves. (This is one of two times slavery is tacitly endorsed in the actual body of the Ten Commandments.) Clearly, this commandment joins the first three in instilling the value of human life!

The fifth commandment reads: "Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." The land referred to is the "Promised Land," which was the bond between the "Chosen People" and their God. Therefore, any breakdown in the family, in tribal solidarity-especially if caused by a family member following other gods or marrying outside the faith--could theoretically jeopardize the tribe's right to the land and, hence, its relationship with the deity. So the penalty for such defection by a family member was death (see Deuteronomy 13:6-11).

In Leviticus 19:3 we are told that everyone is to fear their mother and father in the same way they fear God. Parents thus become vice-regents of the Almighty. No exceptions to the fifth commandment are noted, so even severe physical, emotional, or sexual abuse at the hands of one's parents wouldn't alter one's responsibility to "honor" them.

Now we've made our way down to the short "shalt nots" that most people think of when the subject of the Decalogue comes up. These are the sixth, seventh, and eighth commandments. Thou shalt not: kill (unless, of course, God tells you to, which he frequently does in the Bible); commit adultery (which, though punishable by death in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, has been interpreted differently by different sects--given all the philandering by biblical heroes, the polygamy practiced by some of the Israelites, and the use of harems by biblical kings); or steal.

The latter one, like the previous two, is problematic because God doesn't supply any guidelines for applying it. But if we turn to Proverbs 6:30-31, we find the punishment harsh and absolute: "Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry; But if he be found, he shall restore sevenfold; he shall give all the substance of his house."

The ninth commandment says: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." If you think this embodies a basically sound moral principle, note the last three words. They make it clear that this commandment wasn't designed for universal application.

Under Talmudic law, only a fellow Hebrew was a neighbor. Indeed, as Joseph Lewis wrote in The Ten Commandments, "All the Commandments belong in the same category and were promulgated for one purpose--to prevent injury to the clan and to promote tribal solidarity." One could willfully violate the commandments where "foreigners" were concerned. Even if, by a redefinition of neighbor, we attempt to apply the ninth commandment more broadly, it still fails to enjoin general lying or advance general honesty. This is because, taken literally, it only prohibits false testimony against another person. There is no commandment against lying, per se.

Finally, we come to the tenth commandment. In short form, it reads: "Thou shalt not covet." But the verse goes on to say, "thy neighbor's house ... thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's." Again, this only relates to one's "neighbor" (and it constitutes another tacit endorsement of men owning wives and slaves).

But suppose we actually applied it more generally, what then? Why, it would fly directly in the face of the basic underpinnings of capitalism. Where would our great supernation be without that fundamental longing to possess the things other people have? Has it occurred to anyone, I wonder, that obeying this commandment would virtually require the United States to adopt a communist or socialist economic system? Furthermore, this commandment seeks to create and punish "thought crime." But how are we to determine whether a person has actually engaged in this covert crime of coveting?

Well, there you have them--straight from the divinely inspired word of God--the ten moral principles by which all humanity should live, the best and obvious way to instill the value of human life in American youth. Like Ingersoll, I'm amazed at just what a pathetic list of "moral guidelines" we find here and can't help thinking how easily it could have been better. As Ingersoll put it:

   If Jehovah had been civilized, he would have left out the commandment about
   keeping the Sabbath and in its place said, "Thou shalt not enslave thy
   fellow men." He would have omitted the one about swearing and said: "The
   man shall have but one wife, and the woman but one husband." He would have
   left out the one about graven images and in its stead would have said:
   "Thou shalt not wage wars of extermination, and thou shalt not unsheathe
   the sword except in self-defense." If Jehovah had been civilized, how much
   grander the Ten Commandments would have been!

It's time for someone to say this again. So long as no one challenges the content of religious pronouncements like the Ten Commandments, we'll continue to divert time and energy from important matters to counter the attempts of conservative religionists to force biblical law on American society. The Ten Commandments are immoral and unfit for teaching to children in any decent society. Humanists and freethinkers, of all people, should have the consistency and bravery to say so.

Barbara Dority is president of Humanists of Washington, executive director of the Washington Coalition Against Censorship, and cochair of the Northwest Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force.3