Theodicy: Scrutinizing the 10 Commandments

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I write to forget

3 months ago

If a human can achieve higher moral standards than a god, then that god is either not moral, or it doesn’t exist at all; it just a product of the imagination of humans whose moral standard could not exceed that of their imagined deity.

I don’t mean to offend. I mean to explore different perspectives, since philosophy is one of my highest values. Nothing is above criticism. Who am I to criticize God? I criticize beliefs in God. I don’t and can’t criticize God because I have never interacted with God, and neither has anyone who claims he has.

Let’s first give credit where it’s due…

Christianity was an improvement over Judaism; it was the adaptation of Judaism to Western standards of morality and philosophy.

Christianity was an upgrade. Jesus says in Matthew 22:37-40 that the most important commandments are “love God with all your soul and mind” and “love thy neighbour as yourself.” Note that these commandments are not part of Moses’s 10 Commandments. Jesus further explains that His two commandments are the foundation of all other commandments. These are truly better than the 10 Commandments of Moses. But still, they are lacking too.

The Two Commandments of Jesus Christ

Let’s first examine Jesus Christ’s two commandments. While compassion among humans is a noble thing, I fail to understand how someone can love a deity he cannot experience, interact with, communicate with, or maintain a relationship with. Also, the second of Jesus’s commandments is vague: “love your neighbour as yourself?” Does this mean to love others AND to love yourself? Or does it mean that you can love others on the level you love yourself; so if you loathe yourself, then you can loathe others too? And what happens when they hate you? Should you pathologically keep loving them? Sure, hating them back is not ideal, but can you at least be indifferent of them?

Must we maintain this pretentious self-righteous moralist stance of “loving our enemies” when all we do is condescend them with our self-serving moral exhibitionism?

The Ten Commandments of Moses

Let’s revisit the Judaic 10 Commandments as given to us by Moses in the Book of Exodus.

“I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
OK, sounds reasonable. A deity that refuses to show itself to you demands first and foremost to acknowledge its existence, and to deny all other gods offering the exact same evidence of their existence: nothing. Nice try, Moses. God only appears to you, conveniently enough, and we have to take your word for it. Your plagues and sea-parting magic tricks were so unconvincing that even the superstitious impressionable bronze-age nomads who witnessed them quickly forgot you and made false idols to worship instead while you were away hearing voices and burning bushes.
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images... Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them.”

I suppose this one is about showing respect to your god. Making false idols of it is something it considers to be disrespectful. Fair enough. I guess demanding respect rather than earning it is easier, even for a deity. But seriously, out of all the good things a deity could make a rule for, is this really that important? Is this meaningful morality or is it compliance to threat-based demands by a superior force?
“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.”

Just as the above, this commandment betrays a deity that is quite insecure, tyrannical and menacing. It demands respect from fear, not respect from earned admiration. It does not teach any ethic or meaningful deontology. It only teaches the ghastly axiom “might is right” as it enforces reluctant submission to force, instead of voluntary adherence to moral principles.
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.”

Totally meaningless. OK, an all-powerful deity demands that you behave in a certain manner; to honour a certain day by being lazy during that day. It’s a commandment that demands something totally arbitrary and bereft of meaning or substance. This is just tyranny. For a set of commandments that are supposedly “the moral foundation of the modern world,” this commandments has zero moral implications other than submission to the threat of punishment by a tyrannical deity which demands something arbitrary and takes no objections.
“Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

Why? What accomplishment is it to follow your nature-given instincts and have children? Does every single parent earn or deserve the respect of their children? What if those parents are oppressive? What if they sexually abuse their children? What if they neglect their children? What if verbal, psychological and physical abuse are a norm for them? Should you still feel compelled to honour them, thus perpetuating your parental abuse and trauma-induced self-loathing? Of all the commandments Moses’s deity could have chosen to give to his people, why wasn’t “be a loving parent” one of them? If we theorize that most (if not all) evil comes from childhood trauma, then “be a loving parent” could have been a major game-changer.
“Thou shalt not murder.”

The Ancient Greek version of this commandment, “οὐ φονεύσεις” (ou phonevseis) means “thou shalt not murder,” not “thou shalt not kill.” This is an important distinction: murder is specifically the killing that is illegal. This suggests that any killing that is magically deemed to be “legal” is OK. What does that include, I wonder? Is it OK to kill when a king or government official says so? Is it OK to kill foreigners? Is it OK to kill in war initiated by warmongering despots? One would think that a deity would be smart enough to foresee the ways in which this commandment could be misinterpreted and misused. Some clarity goes a long way.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

Fair enough. Chastity is a noble virtue. But what if a teenage girl is forced to marry an old pervert? What if she decides to leave him? Is that adultery? Does she deserve to be punished? Maybe a more moral commandment would be “don’t marry off your underage daughters to old men.”
“Thou shalt not steal.”

Again, another vague subject-to-interpretation rule that can easily be bypassed with semantics and appeals to technical definitions. You can’t steal, yet it’s somehow OK for the king, church or government to extort taxes from you to misuse, embezzle and mismanage at the rulers’ hearts’ content. Perhaps a more useful and more moral commandment would have been: “Do not comply to rulers. Do not submit to extortion.” But we all know how useful religion can be for rulers to herd the sheep.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

Yes, this is a good commandment: Do not falsely accuse others. However, I have a problem with the “thy neigbour” part. What the hell does that mean? Does that mean only the people of your community, your clan, your ethnicity? Is it OK to bear false witness against a foreigner? Wouldn’t it be better if that commandment included everyone?
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, not his manservant, not his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's.”

Indeed, envy is a bad thing, mostly for the one doing the envying. But notice how, of all the other commandments that should have been more specific, this one is specific only to possessions. You can’t be jealous of his stuff, his servants, his wife. But can you be jealous of him? And does this commandment apply to men only? Can a woman envy another woman’s husband? One would think that, an omniscient being would be smart enough to write its message a bit more clearly. Mere humans can do a better job drafting rules and regulations than this poor attempt at setting the “moral foundation of the modern world.”

Key takeaway

I am just a human. I am not a god. If I can find serious self-defeating flaws in a piece of important writing, then I am certain that it was not written by a god. If a god does exist, then there is nothing more important in this reality than its message to us. How can a message by a deity be so generic, vague, confusing, contradictory, immoral, incomplete, and open to misinterpretation? The only logical deduction is that these things were not written by a god, but by mere demagogues pretending to be the exclusive recipients and interpreters of God’s Word, conveniently enough. Their motivation to lie is to rule over others through their “status” as “messenger of God.” Authority is a lie and a bluff. It becomes real only if people are gullible enough to believe it, and bereft of principle enough to fall for it.

Having said that, I must also clarify my position. I criticize religions in all forms. Currently, the most fanatic religion in the world is the persistent cult of statism. It calls itself “atheistic,” but this is simply the new gods killing the old; it is building new temples on top of the ruins of the old. Statism denies traditional religion because it is the new one.

Statism is the worship of the omniscient omnipotent non-existent entity of “the state.” It is the objectively erroneous faith that the government is an entity of its own, and not just a priesthood or church of state officials and bureaucrats interpreting “The Word of the State” to suit them. The religion of statism is the delusion that the world cannot exist without the state, that all good things must come from the state, and that nothing can exist without the state, other than chaos and death.

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