Anyway so I was just doing my shower thing and for some reason I started thinking about the Ten Commandments. Really I don't know why. But I started thinking so like these are kind of like God's Laws right? Like follow these and you are into heaven easy. So while thinking about these I remembered a few of the top of my head and realized that out of the 3 or 4 I remembered I had broken all of them. So this was a bit disturbing to me. I'll admit I am the first one to find a fault with religion, any in general. But some of these are just good rules to follow you know, like moral guidelines, you know.
After my shower I grabbed my Bible(yes I have one, who doesn't somewhere in their house). On a side note my brother has a really cool picture Bible. It's pictures are great. It took me a while to find them I am not exactly a Biblical scholar. They were in Exodus btw. So after looking at the 10 I didn't feel so bad anymore cause there were some I hadn't broken(not many). But now for your reading pleasure I will break down each commandment one by one and tell you how I have broken them or not. Let's go.
- Thou shalt have no other Gods before me - I don't think I have broken this one. I can't really think of anything that would go with this. SO yay me! 1a. Thou shalt not make an idol or something - This kind of goes with the first one in some religious circles. I don't make anything so I am safe on this.
- You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain - Yeah you can say I have broken this one a number of god damned times. Oops, I did it again! So it's only one so far.
- Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you - Ok that's two. But no offense to anybody reading this but God don't pay rent, ok. I do. I have to work on Sundays(the Sabbath) because I have a shitty apartment I have to pay for every month. So God will have to understand this one.
- Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you - The Lord God commands a lot... So this one is a toss up. Sure occasionally I have been mean to my parents and not done what they said or broke a rule they set or something. So that could be perceived as not honoring them. But I don't know. For the sake of argument let's say I have not done this well enough. That makes 3 out of 5 so far.
- You shall not murder - Simple enough, right? Obviously I have never killed anyone directly. There is the key word though directly. Abortion is considered murder now while I have never had one obviously or otherwise needed someone else to have one I have not stopped it therefore indirectly aiding these murderers. To clear up a point here I am for abortion btw, woman's choice and stuff. What about the car I drive? It is a beast of a vehicle that pumps out toxic fumes like nobody's business causing harmful chemicals to enter our air and that will eventually lead to the deaths of people. I could keep going on here with other things that I do to facilitate murder but don't want to bore you. The question I pose is does God hold some of these against me or is he only considered with deaths cause directly by me? According to this he does "Forbids taking away of our own life, or the life of our neighbor, unjustly; and, anything that tends toward depriving life." That makes 4.
- Neither shall you commit adultery - Obviously this one is a gimme since I am not married I can't have committed adultery. YAY ME!
- Neither shall you steal - Well it may surprise you people out there but I have occasionally applied the five finger sale to some of my purchases. I can't really remember what or why. but I can't guarantee you it has happened. A CD here, a cassette tape there, a book. Anyway that makes 5.
- Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor - Now if this just applies to neighbor's I am cool. Somehow though I think it is a bit more encompassing that that. BRB. OK I am back where was I, oh yeah. So like I was saying I think it encompasses lying in general. Now this may come as a shocker or maybe not. But I think I have lied at least once to every single person I have ever known. Some people multiple times. I have lied a lot. So there is no denying this one. 6 is where we are at peeps.
- Neither shall you covet your neighbor's wife - Now taken literally I got nothing to worry about. My neighbor's wifes on both sides of my apartment are nothing to write home about. Not attractive in any way. So in that sense I am not coveting jack. Take it as not so literal and there are some women out there I covet, oh hell who are we kidding I have a Top 5 list people. That's called extreme coveting. Again so taking God's word and applying it in a more liberal fashion I get another strike that's lucky number 7.
- and you shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's - I know it's says 11 so I told you 1 and 2 went together but I didn't feel like renubering everything. So yeah back to the whole neighbor thing. God is big on commanding things and neighbors. So anyway I don't covet anything of my neighbors. He has no field, no servants, no ax and ass. I assume ass is meant to imply a donkey or some other animal. If not all these people in an uproar about gays need to check out this Command. I really have nothing to riff on this one.
All is not lost though in some religions which btw are all based on the same thing thus offshoots of each other. It is cool as long as I confess and allow Jesus/God into my heart, I am saved. This goes for anybody as well, Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, Adolf Hitler could all be waiting to party with me when I enter this pearly gates. I can't wait. How about you?
Disclaimer: This blog is in no way intended to offend or disparage anybody's beliefs in any religion. These are just the thoughts of a deeply jaded 28 year old male who likes to think outside the box and come up with interesting topics so that people will leave comments on his blog. He himself does not believe in religion and therefore is particularly biased towards all forms of religion. He does believe in a higher power in some form or another but does not believe that going to church every Sunday is the answer...
"Religion is the opiate of the masses."---Karl Marx
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GEORGE CARLIN ON THE 10 COMMANDMENTS
from "Complaints and Grievances" (HBO special)
Here is my problem with the ten commandments- why exactly are there 10?
You simply do not need ten. The list of ten commandments was artificially and deliberately inflated to get it up to ten. Here's what happened:
About 5,000 years ago a bunch of religious and political hustlers got together to try to figure out how to control people and keep them in line. They knew people were basically stupid and would believe anything they were told, so they announced that God had given them some commandments, up on a mountain, when no one was around.
Well let me ask you this- when they were making this shit up, why did they pick 10? Why not 9 or 11? I'll tell you why- because 10 sound official. Ten sounds important! Ten is the basis for the decimal system, it's a decade, it's a psychologically satisfying number (the top ten, the ten most wanted, the ten best dressed). So having ten commandments was really a marketing decision! It is clearly a bullshit list. It's a political document artificially inflated to sell better. I will now show you how you can reduce the number of commandments and come up with a list that's a little more workable and logical. I am going to use the Roman Catholic version because those were the ones I was taught as a little boy.
Let's start with the first three:
I AM THE LORD THY GOD THOU SHALT NOT HAVE STRANGE GODS BEFORE ME
THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD THY GOD IN VAIN
THOU SHALT KEEP HOLY THE SABBATH
Right off the bat the first three are pure bullshit. Sabbath day? Lord's name? strange gods? Spooky language! Designed to scare and control primitive people. In no way does superstitious nonsense like this apply to the lives of intelligent civilized humans in the 21st century. So now we're down to 7. Next:
HONOR THY FATHER AND MOTHER
Obedience, respect for authority. Just another name for controlling people. The truth is that obedience and respect shouldn't be automatic. They should be earned and based on the parent's performance. Some parents deserve respect, but most of them don't, period. You're down to six.
Now in the interest of logic, something religion is very uncomfortable with, we're going to jump around the list a little bit.
THOU SHALT NOT STEAL
THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS
Stealing and lying. Well actually, these two both prohibit the same kind of behavior- dishonesty. So you don't really need two you combine them and call the commandment "thou shalt not be dishonest". And suddenly you're down to 5.
And as long as we're combining I have two others that belong together:
THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTRY
THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S WIFE
Once again, these two prohibit the same type of behavior. In this case it is marital infidelity. The difference is- coveting takes place in the mind. But I don't think you should outlaw fantasizing about someone else's wife because what is a guy gonna think about when he's waxing his carrot? But, marital infidelity is a good idea so we're gonna keep this one and call it "thou shalt not be unfaithful". And suddenly we're down to four.
But when you think about it, honesty and infidelity are really part of the same overall value so, in truth, you could combine the two honesty commandments with the two fidelity commandments and give them simpler language, positive language instead of negative language and call the whole thing "thou shalt always be honest and faithful" and we're down to 3.
THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR"S GOODS
This one is just plain fuckin' stupid. Coveting your neighbor's goods is what keeps the economy going! Your neighbor gets a vibrator that plays "o come o ye faithful", and you want one too! Coveting creates jobs, so leave it alone. You throw out coveting and you're down to 2 now- the big honesty and fidelity commandment and the one we haven't talked about yet:
THOU SHALT NOT KILL
Murder. But when you think about it, religion has never really had a big problem with murder. More people have been killed in the name of god than for any other reason. All you have to do is look at Northern Ireland, Cashmire, the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the World Trade Center to see how seriously the religious folks take thou shalt not kill. The more devout they are, the more they see murder as being negotiable. It depends on who's doin the killin' and who's gettin' killed. So, with all of this in mind, I give you my revised list of the two commandments:
Thou shalt always be honest and faithful to the provider of thy nookie.
&
Thou shalt try real hard not to kill anyone, unless of course they pray to a different invisible man than you.
Two is all you need; Moses could have carried them down the hill in his fuckin' pocket. I wouldn't mind those folks in Alabama posting them on the courthouse wall, as long as they provided one additional commandment:
Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.
thanks to Doug Rowlands 1
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