Reviewing the 10 commandments
June 18, 2006
As followup to the video of Congressman Westmorland (”The 10 Commandments“), I thought I might post this blurb I posted elsewhere a while back:
As our God-luvin’ Justice Scalia pointed out recently, “probably 90 percent of the American people believe in the Ten Commandments and 85 percent couldn’t tell you what the ten are”. Which, although misleading, is probably right: About 90% would say yes to “Do you believe in the 10 commandments?”, but it’s not clear it counts as belief if you have no idea what you are believing.
So, here’s a pretty standard version of the ten commandments. Of course, there are others, and the others are often even worse — for a good look at the multiple versions and how strange some are, see, Frank R. Zindler’s nice piece “Hang ‘em All — Completely!“. But just consider the minimal (Protestant) version:
I. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
II. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.
III. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.
IV. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
V. Honour thy father and thy mother.
VI. Thou shalt not kill.
VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
VIII. Thou shalt not steal.
IX. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
X. Thou shalt not covet any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
In case you’re keeping score, the first 4 are all completely religious, and not even moral (much less moral things that we might encode into law). V, VII, and X are all (debatable) moral principles that nobody but the most rediculously talibanesque person would encode in law; include IX in that category, with the some special exceptions — lying under oath, fraud, and the like. That leaves VI and VIII (don’t kill, don’t steal) as the only clear cases of principles that even accord with what might reasonably encoded into our law — two principles so basic that you’d be hard-pressed to find a moral, religious, or legal code which didn’t embrace them, more or less.
Oh yeah, I see why they say they’re the foundation of our system of law.
No Responses to “Reviewing the 10 commandments”
I’ve read this from you before, but I have to say it is just such a nice succinct take-down of that goofy bromide about the Ten being the foundation of our system of laws.
I think most people sincerely believe that when they say it–it shows how naturally the human mind glosses things. They remember “thou shalt not kill and steal” and gloss the other 8, throwing them in a big mental hopper labeled “and stuff like that”. Your write-up opens that hopper and shows it’s full of useless lint.
One subtle adjustment on IX, though: you might want to include laws against consumer fraud or breach of contract in the “don’t lie” one. We do enforce not lying when there is some good or service at stake.
By cm on Jun 20, 2006
Thanks, and good point. So modified.
By ron on Jun 20, 2006