Dissing the Decalogue? (Part I)

Just read this article by William Edelen over at The Secular Web, a large website dedicated to "the spread of freethought" and secular humanism. After reading it, I decided that the most amazing thing about "freethought" is that you're free to think ANYTHING you want as long as you don't think according to whatever "freethinkers" may consider as outdated religious cult philosophy and doctrine. Kinda defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

Anyway, here's the article itself, with responses from yours truly. Mr. Edelen's original writings are in blue. Each section of writing will be followed by my personal remarks.

We are being drowned today in biblical ignorance, religious illiteracy and historical stupidity by the religious and political right in this country. In no other place is this so visible as in the prostitution of the "Ten Commandments". They want these archaic and primitive cultic codes posted all over the U.S. in schools...court houses...public buildings and on and on and on into a nightmare of militant ignorance. Goethe defined "evil" as "militant ignorance."

Quite a thing to call the Decalogue "archaic and primitive" when the civil laws of the United States (or any other established country) are either directly based on them or reflect them to a degree (which would mitigate in part against the relativist position, but that's for another topic). We will take a look at this in a short while. The ad hominem in this opening line is itself an eye-opener for those unfamiliar with the vehemence the enemies of Christianity are capable of.

These archaic "commandments" were nothing more than a cultic code written BY Hebrew men FOR Hebrew men. Nothing more, nothing less."

First, if he is playing the "man-made law" game then may I not play that same card against him and claim that he himself has no right or authority to tell us what is right and wrong? Second, one would have to assume that every society in the world is by nature self-serving, which is the least of what Secular Humanists want to think about concerning mankind, since they seem to consider us humans as more or less inherently noble. Dan Barker, during an old program of Dr. James White's The Dividing Line claimed to have once asked a Christian "Is that what you think humans are, [evil little] murderers?"

No one has so put these Ten Commandments in perspective better than Ruth Gordon, the actress. She said to an audience,..."There is one commandment that I can assure you.... I have never broken.... I have never coveted my neighbor's wife."

All this proves is that all men have to some extent broken, and in fact continue to break, the laws of God. If what the author means to say by this quotation is that the Ten Commandments are intrinsically useless due to their apparent "archaic" nature, he'd better find some other justification for the existing universal sentiment that murder is inherently wrong, for example, as well as defend the validity of contemporary civil laws which prohibit many types of crimes related to the ones generally outlined in the "archaic" Ten Commandments.

By the way, the commandment which says not to covet one's neighbor's wife also says not to covet his ox, donkey, servants or anything else that he owns (Exodus 20:17). The quip about not coveting her naighbor's wife aside, Ruth Gordon may not be as guiltless regarding this one commandment as she thinks.

Sir James Frazer in his classic THE GOLDEN BOUGH writes: "these commandments of Israel are taboos of a familiar type in primitive religions disguised as commands of a tribal God."

Dr. Ernest Colwell, former Dean of the Theological Seminary, the University of Chicago, writes: "these were prescriptions written ONLY for the Hebrew cult. They acquired authority due to their association with the rites of the cult."

The underlying presupposition behind the "outdated tribal taboo" claim (a hallmark of the now-defunct Documentary Hypothesis) appears to be that the society that currently exists is an enlightened lot, which would in turn assume that the events of the previous three centuries (18th-20th) uncovered valid truths that positively influenced humanity. Many skeptics often reference back to the period of Enlightenment as a turning point for history, and that for the better; John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar, who claimed that people would believe anything told them in a "Pre-Enlightenment" world during his 2005 debate with Dr. White, is one such example. This belief itself presupposes two things:

1) Humans are of themselves sufficient to know what absolute truth is through the means espoused by the humanistic ideologies of 1the 8th century (mainly rationalism and empiricism).

2) Ancient people are ignorant and superstitious (the ancient Egyptian society with its elaborate rituals and construction projects, as well as the Mesopotamian legal body alone should be enough to refute this charge, to say nothing about the ancient Chinese and the South American Mayas).

In addition, Dr. Colwell makes a surprising remark. "They acquired authority due to their associations with the rites of the cult"? Please clarify this. Unless I'm mistaken, what he is basically saying here is that the commandments acquaire authority from the rituals. I submit to you that it is the other way around. It is because of these restrictions that the rites of animal sacrifice, for instance, were developed, since actions flow from axioms. I do not have enough material to respond to this at present, so I am leaving it at this for now. As for the code being restricted to the Hebrew "cult", we will deal with that in the next section much more fully.

All "thou shalt not kill" meant is that thou shall not kill another Hebrew. The giver of the commandment, Moses, quite obviously ignored it with everyone except the Hebrews. And all with his jealous and war like God's blessing. In the Book of Numbers, Chapter 31, verse 17/18, Moses gives this order: "now kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him. But all the women children, the virgins, keep alive for yourselves."

The command "Thou shalt not kill" literally translates into "Thou shalt not MURDER" (Heb. ratsach). Murder is a premeditated act that defiles the sanctity of man as the bearer of God's image (See Genesis 9:5-6) and violates God's authority to prescribe judgment by whatever means He chooses, which He does in commanding the Israelites to utterly decimate the Canaanites. This alone makes the Israelites' acts of invasive war vastly different from murder, since unlike the later Assyrians who would similarly attack Israel (see Isaiah 10:5-19) they were acting on behalf of God's orders (furthermore, read this differentiation between waging war against a non-Canaanite foreign nation and a Canaanite nation in Deuteronomy 20:10-18). This is a common skeptical misconception that frequently makes the rounds, and one that ignores the total sovereignty of God over all creation. If God is the creator and owner of all creation, does it not follow that He would have absolute authority over that same creation, to do whatsoever with it according to His will?

Probably in all of history there has never been a command more revolting to human sensibilities. A scorched earth policy. Genocide. Ordered by Moses, AFTER the so called Commandment "not to kill".

And there you have it. Human sensibilities become the final arbiter of truth and justice in the face of God's ineffable right as final arbiter of truth and justice! Furthermore, one would have to ask where those selfsame human sensibilities came from. Evolution? Then I'm afraid I have somehow evolved to become a Christian, so there goes your entire argument! Secular humanists like to start with whatever faculties we already know we possess and go on from there, without even confronting themselves with the ultimate question of what generated those faculties, what they are for and, to a further extent, exactly whose faculties they reflect (ground rule for the Law of Causality: effects cannot be greater than their causes).

Second, this statement is easily refuted by several verses from the Biblical record itself, specifically the ones referring to the original inhabitants of the land of Canaan and how the Israelites should relate to them and their practices:

"Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you: (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled;) That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you. For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people." (Leviticus 18:24-29)

"Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before thee. Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." (Deuteronomy 9:4-5)

"Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, 'How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise.' Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods." (Deuteronomy 12:30-31)

"When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God." (Deuteronomy 18:9-13)

"But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee: That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God." (Deuteronomy 20:16-18)

Leviticus 18:29 is a particularly interesting verse to consider in light of the skeptical objection to the Canaanite raids. "For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations...shall be cut off from among their people." What God is saying here is that His precepts (in particular those related to the Ten Commandments) apply equally to Israel as they do to all countries (come to think of it: if the Decalogue was meant for Hebrew eyes only, why did God bother to extend His judgment upon the Canaanite nations--or any other nation for that matter? See Exodus 12:49, Numbers 15:16 and 29, Isaiah 13 (Babylon) and 23 (Tyre), Obadiah 1:4 (Edom), etc.); in fact Deuteronomy 28:15-68 lists multiple phases of successively increasing curses should the Israelites disobey God's commandments. True enough, these exact same curses came to pass when Assyria scattered the Northern kingdom of Israel around 750 B.C. and Babylon subsequently invaded and captured Jerusalem around 600 B.C., which was right after they had adopted the Baal worship and fertility religions of the Canaanite nations. What then of Mr. Edelen's contention that the ultimate supposition behind the Mosaic Law is a self-serving national agenda bordering on cult mentality? The very fact that the law applies to all irrespective of ethno-cultural lineage shows that Israel is far from being what anthropologists would call an honor-based society, one based on group-mentality and external appearances of having it made.

According to Christian fundamentalists, at the same time they are extolling the virtue of the commandment "thou shalt not kill", they claim that they would have been deprived of salvation if Jesus had not been killed. In other words, they claim that through the violation of this commandment, the human race was saved. What double talk and gobble-de-gook they live with.

Obviously this author had failed to read Peter's speech in Acts 2:

"...Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it...Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." (Acts 2:23-24, 36)

And his later speech in Acts 3:14-15:

"But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; And killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses."

The Bible does not in any way diminish the fact that Christ's crucifixion was murder; it even denounces it as the worst act of murder in human history, having been inflicted upon the Creator Himself. But it also says that God ultimately predetermined such an event in order to bring about the last, greatest and perfectly efficacious rite of vicarious atonement ever accomplished (ref. Acts 4:27-28; please take note that Calvinists such as I also believe in the reality of secondary causes). It never makes any effort to whitewash this gross violation of the 6th commandment, as can be seen in the closing words of Stephen's speech in Acts 7:51-53:

"Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it."

And this comment by Paul on his fellow Jews in 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16:

"For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost."

Yet even as it does so, it also tells us that through the horrific secondary cause of men murdering the Son of God, the one ultimate act of redemption was accomplished:

"But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification." (Romans 4:24-25)

"And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour." (Ephesians 5:2)

"By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." (Hebrews 10:10)

"And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation..." (Revelation 5:9)

Long story short, the Bible and Christianity applaud Jesus' act of self-sacrifice, as was planned out by Father, Son and Holy Ghost before the creation of the world (John 10:15-18, Ephesians 1:3-14, ref. John 6:38-40). It does NOT, however, glorify those who have themselves performed the act of murdering Christ. There is a difference between appraising the sacrificial martyrdom of one person and appraising the heinous acts of those who martyred him in the first place. This is anything but double-talk.

And yet today...the biblically ignorant and religiously illiterate want to post these archaic and primitive cultic codes on every tree, fence, wall, room, building, school, park in the United States.

There is just no limit to the stupidity of the religious and politcal right.

Ad hominem. We simply recognize that society en toto would never have had laws apart from God's grace. If men would reject God then the burden is upon secular humanists to justify any other sort of law, for that matter.

"'Evil' is militant ignorance." And so it is.

Let us now turn to the following question in the summation of this response: if the Ten Commandments, being God's Word, are merely a self-contained prescription written out for a certain society in a certain culture, then why do the following declarations exist in the very same code wherein the Ten Commandments are found:

"Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it. Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for? And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?" (Deuteronomy 4:5-8)

Why bother to flaunt the statutes and judgments of a judicially and legally isolated group before other nationalities if their laws are temporal and not transcendent, insofar as the major tenets of the Mosaic Law might be applied to other nations (barring dietary and other minor laws for the moment)? On the subject of other nationalities dubbing the Israelites as "a wise and understanding people", what makes their laws inherently better than other nations' codes--for example, the Code of Hammurabi, which existed at the same time the Mosaic Law was written? Why bother instructing the Israelites not to worship any other god and to execute judgments upon the gods of other nations if the First Commandment wasn't true and universally binding? All of the God-given commandments in the Bible stem from the fact that God has absolute jurisdiction over everything in the universe:

"The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." (Psalm 9:17)

The bottom line is this: if laws are restricted to their respective cultures and societies then how dare the secular humanists impose THEIR culture on us? What right has any culture to say other cultures are wrong, for that matter? Upon what basis can anyone make their claims of absolute truth? Human rationality? Yet humans often act irrationally, based on misconceptions and runaway emotions. Empiricism? Our senses often deceive us as well; we see things in the corner of our eye that aren't there, we hear sounds that never were. We also cannot perceive everything due to our limited sensory range. Scientific investigation? All operations science can do is examine the motions of the known universe, not magically look back into the past based on presuppositions that require present conditions to have been the same throughout the annals of time (even operations science itself requires the presupposition of the uniformity of nature in conjunction with various other axioms--the laws of logic, the trustworthiness of human perception, unbreakable natural laws, and the transcendence of the human mind with regard to analyses and interpretation of design. All of these aren't proven outright, yet are held to by faith).

And all that without yet considering how utterly irrational it would be if we claimed that human freedom gives each of us equal authority. If that is so then why should the ideas of one individual be held in greater esteem over another? This utterly destroys the foundation for their "society as arbiter of truth" polemic. What makes a man more eligible for leadership that another? Knowledge? Well, how DO we gain knowledge? WHY do we seek knowledge? WHERE do we get that knowledge? WHAT constitutes knowledge? Even more importantly, HOW would that individual apply his knowledge? The fact of the matter is that the ought-to needs to exist before any body of leadership could ever conglomerate to tell others what is right and wrong, so where would they get that knowledge of what ought to be done?

Ultimately all the secular humanist has to fall back on is the bleak uncertainty of postmodernism and the resultant ideals of Nietszche: everything is meaningless. Yet they would vehemently fight against this notion. They would claim that we have minds and that we don't need a deity to tell us what is right and wrong. All without bothering to ask themselves where the mind and its ingrained (albeit corrupted) compliance with the laws of logic came from; where we got our conscience, our understanding of morality and our knowledge of good and evil...or, if we presuppose Darwin's "survival of the fittest" axiom to be all that there is to life, what the value of survival is at all. Think about it. If we're just one stage in a blind evolutionary process, what should we live our lives for? Even if we grant the [Neo] Darwinian assumptions to be correct, why should we keep on existing? Unfortunately, for those who disdain God, there can never be an answer to that question apart from a self-deluded "purpose" of one's own making.

My friend Frank Turk was correct. All the skeptic, in particular the secular humanist, does is take the Christian's luggage at the airport (swapping his similar yet rubbish-filled suitcase for it in the process), and, by virtue of liking the items found in it, claims it as his own without due regard to where those belongings came from and who originally owned them. They take our tenets, thinking they're nice because it serves their own standards, and then proceed to kick us out of the picture because we're superstitious and dogmatic people, all the while offering our incense, our tapestries and our precious jewels to an idol of their own making, under the dubious guise of "Separation of Church and State". What they don't know is that in the entire process of dislodging the absolute God and replacing Him with fallible, finite man, they are not only revealing themselves to be hypocrites but also setting up all of mankind for swift destruction.

Indeed, Goethe was right. Evil IS militant ignorance. Yet this comment is itself perfectly compatible with the Bible:

"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good." (Psalm 14:1)

Why? Because men have thrown away God in their desire to "become as gods [themselves], knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5).

God bless,
Mach