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When I saw a blurb teasing readers for an article by Christopher Hitchens on re-chiseling The Ten Commandments, I was not surprised and quickly clicked. What did surprise me is to see this strutting member of the proud New Atheists using a lot of biblical text for his argument. He always seemed to me to be content with using historical broadsides to denounce Christian thought. But you know what they say, even the Devil quotes scripture. After criticizing - dare we say, mocking? - the commandments, he offers this for a guide to a revised version:
It’s difficult to take oneself with sufficient seriousness to begin any sentence with the words “Thou shalt not.” But who cannot summon the confidence to say: 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. In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.Though, it may still be kosher not to covet your neighbor's wife's ass, at least not too openly. But, regardless, isn't arguing about the ten commandments like kicking a dead horse? at least as far as the Christian world is concerned. Christian morality is much more subtle than that and no longer comes in tablet form, no longer so readily codifiable, but must be considered through more abstract notions of grace, love, and even the golden rule. Yet, being in Texas, maybe I shouldn't disparage Hitchens's effort, since we still have people vehemently insisting on putting the ten commandments in courts and schools and what have you. A streak of this stunted, medievalist Christianity still has a lot of life in my part of the world, though I don't imagine that anyone under this sway of thought and religiosity is likely to be persuaded by by the sort of condescending, smirky arguments that someone like Hithcens is inclined to make, even if I do enjoy him, myself, but then maybe he is principally singing to the choir.
