TheAgitator.com
Thou Shalt Mercilously Ridicule
Thursday, August 28th, 2003Christopher Hitchens slays the ten commandments. We’ll pick up his piece at “Thou Shalt Not Covet…”
To insist that people not annex their neighbor’s cattle or wife “or anything that is his” might be reasonable, even if it does place the wife in the same category as the cattle, and presumably to that extent diminishes the offense of adultery. But to demand “don’t even think about it” is absurd and totalitarian, and furthermore inhibiting to the Protestant spirit of entrepreneurship and competition.One is presuming (is one not?) that this is the same god who actually created the audience he was addressing. This leaves us with the insoluble mystery of why he would have molded (“in his own image,” yet) a covetous, murderous, disrespectful, lying, and adulterous species. Create them sick, and then command them to be well? What a mad despot this is, and how fortunate we are that he exists only in the minds of his worshippers.
It’s obviously too much to expect that a Bronze Age demagogue should have remembered to condemn drug abuse, drunken driving, or offenses against gender equality, or to demand prayer in the schools. Still, to have left rape and child abuse and genocide and slavery out of the account is to have been negligent to some degree, even by the lax standards of the time.
Brutal. Stop snickering.
Although highly enjoyable, I find it unfortunate that he chose to end his essay with the following statement:
“the true problem is our failure to recognize that religion is not just incongruent with morality but in essential ways incompatible with it.”
As an Atheist, I don’t personally take issue with it. But such a blanket statement is simply button pushing. The absurdies of the extensive commandments in the Book of Moses should be plain to anyone who bothers to read them, but they are not representative of the state of religion today. The word Religion encompases an enormous range of beliefs and lifestyles, some of which I find quite commendable. Mr. Hitchens should take more care before pissing on all of them.
I think it’s fortunate that the commandments were kept at only ten. It would have been much worse if God had used one of those commandments to establish an agency responsible for issuing new commandments…. then we’d get about 4000 new commandments a year.
Curious, why would anyone be snickering? Seriously.
Is “Mercilously” supposed to be “Mercilessly”?
Matt, you’re killing me. Some things (like Radley’s spelling) are not worth worrying our little heads over.
Wow. The tenets of Christianity and Judaism have been destroyed!
Come ON!
Jesus spent a great deal of His ministry explaining how even the “best” people failed to keep every tenet of the Law (and, more importantly, why God sent Him to perfectly keep the Law and show mercy on us).
The way I learned it at my Lutheran elementary school in California:
Commandment 5: Thou shalt not kill.
What does this mean?
We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need.
Commandment 6: Thou shalt not commit adultery.
What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do, and husband and wife love and honor each other.
So when yahoos like Hitchens say, “What about rape?” it is something that a 6-year-old Sunday Schooler could have told him is forbidden by the sixth commandment.
My “favorite” (because it is the one I break most frequently) is the 8th:
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not tell lies about our neighbor, betray him, slander him, or hurt his reputation, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain everything in the kindest possible way.
Sunday School is now over!
ooohhhh boy
Curious how “Bunnie Foo Foo” would admit that the commandment she? most otten violates is the 8th. This seems to be endemic among her? fundamentalist right wing compatriots.
Fortunately for us, when this country becomes the theocracy that so many of them fervently dream about, slander and “bearing false witness” will become much more serious crimes.
But I’m probably just getting my hopes up; they’ll probably find some way to conveniently cimcumvent those laws too
And while I certainly don’t agree with everything that M. Hitchens utters, I’ve never once not found his utterances to be extremely thought provoking.
Warning: I told you I have a problem with the 8th.
Hey, lame-o, I’m a mother fucking libertarian. So I don’t advocate theocracy.
But unlike some of my close-minded libertoid fellow walkers, I am able to hold more than one thought in my mind at a time.
That’s why I can see that a) libertarianism rocks and b) Ayn Rand is no theological heavyweight.
The most important thing in my life is my faith. That doesn’t mean that I would support a theocracy.
Further, you must be poorly read. Even the best writers write horrible shit half the time. I mean, Fitzgerald was brilliant but you had to wade through some painful crap to get there.
Please go fuck yourself. And then try reading a book.
Warning: I told you I have a problem with the 8th.
Hey, lame-o, I’m a mother fucking libertarian. So I don’t advocate theocracy.
But unlike some of my close-minded libertoid fellow walkers, I am able to hold more than one thought in my mind at a time.
That’s why I can see that a) libertarianism rocks and b) Ayn Rand is no theological heavyweight.
The most important thing in my life is my faith. That doesn’t mean that I would support a theocracy.
Further, you must be poorly read. Even the best writers write horrible shit half the time. I mean, Fitzgerald was brilliant but you had to wade through some painful crap to get there.
Please go fuck yourself. And then try reading a book.
Warning: I told you I have a problem with the 8th.
Hey, lame-o, I’m a mother fucking libertarian. So I don’t advocate theocracy.
But unlike some of my close-minded libertoid fellow walkers, I am able to hold more than one thought in my mind at a time.
That’s why I can see that a) libertarianism rocks and b) Ayn Rand is no theological heavyweight.
The most important thing in my life is my faith. That doesn’t mean that I would support a theocracy.
Further, you must be poorly read. Even the best writers write horrible shit half the time. I mean, Fitzgerald was brilliant but you had to wade through some painful crap to get there.
Please go fuck yourself. And then try reading a book.
Warning: I told you I have a problem with the 8th.
Hey, lame-o, I’m a mother fucking libertarian. So I don’t advocate theocracy.
But unlike some of my close-minded libertoid fellow walkers, I am able to hold more than one thought in my mind at a time.
That’s why I can see that a) libertarianism rocks and b) Ayn Rand is no theological heavyweight.
The most important thing in my life is my faith. That doesn’t mean that I would support a theocracy.
Further, you must be poorly read. Even the best writers write horrible shit half the time. I mean, Fitzgerald was brilliant but you had to wade through some painful crap to get there.
Please go fuck yourself. And then try reading a book.
Warning: I told you I have a problem with the 8th.
Hey, lame-o, I’m a mother fucking libertarian. So I don’t advocate theocracy.
But unlike some of my close-minded libertoid fellow walkers, I am able to hold more than one thought in my mind at a time.
That’s why I can see that a) libertarianism rocks and b) Ayn Rand is no theological heavyweight.
The most important thing in my life is my faith. That doesn’t mean that I would support a theocracy.
Further, you must be poorly read. Even the best writers write horrible shit half the time. I mean, Fitzgerald was brilliant but you had to wade through some painful crap to get there.
Please go fuck yourself. And then try reading a book.
I also have trouble hitting the “post” key only once whilst angry. So sue me.
my wifes a piece of shit when i got married to cindy she said i do but i think the marrage got in the way of her sluting around what was i thinking im 44 never been married before ! aand i was fooled she is never home or was home i should say so when she did come home i was mad because she didnt even call me to let me no she was ok .she was very inconsiderit to my feelings by that i mean she had controle of my emotions and with no fair reasoning it was fucked so it lasted about 4 months imagen that! if could picked the worst woman in the world to marry it would be her she sold drugs at night meth and she wouldent work she said one day to me that her money and drugs was more importedt then our marrage ! what a peace of shit ha!never marry somebody who sells drugs it wil never last at first she lured me in by lust full love well that was faults love i jess i was fedding the wrong thing true love has lust but i cant belive i didnt feel it ! it must not of been in in my heart you no were it yes my dick now shes gone selling drugs and doing the same thing to one of my x friends yes she s good looking but a piece of shit in side dont you all agree oh ya you cant find her driveing around in a vw rabbit i bought her brownish red color in elcajon san diego ca or the casino s does that sound like some of you out there? if so email me somfme69@san.rr.com wes grant
sorry i posted this crap on the wrong sight please for give my error wes