Saturday, March 6, 2010

Christopher Hitchens' Ten Commandments

Christopher Hitchens recently revised the Ten Commandments in an article in the recent issue of Vanity Fair. He starts off with a bit of biblical background, reminding readers that there are in fact four different versions of the Ten Commandments- one of the many useful things I myself learned during my read-through of the King James Version. They vary, sometimes dramatically: the Exodus 34 version is a bit heavier on ritual. It is there that the eternal Lord, creator of the Universe and master of all, decides it is important that his disciples not boil a kid in its mother's milk.

For an omnipotent, universal being, he sure does have some pretty specific concerns.

Hitchens then goes on to analyze and criticize each of the 10 in turn. He ends his piece with a suggested new Decalogue:
Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color. Do not ever use people as private property. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature—why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them? Be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature, and think and act accordingly. Do not imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife. Turn off that fucking cell phone—you have no idea how unimportant your call is to us. Denounce all jihadists and crusaders for what they are: psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions. Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above.
A better atheistic ten commandments would be a bit more universal than this one, despite the noxious evil of annoying cellphone users. Still, his closing intonation is both witty and concise: the quintessential Hitchens.
"In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form."

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