We Ain’t Talkin’ Cecil B. DeMille
He claimed that Mother Teresa was a poseur. Then he argued that Henry Kissinger should be tried as a war criminal.
And now, Christopher Hitchens takes on The Ten Commandments:
The first four of the commandments have little to do with either law or morality, and the first three suggest a terrific insecurity on the part of the person supposedly issuing them. I am the lord thy god and thou shalt have no other … no graven images … no taking of my name in vain: surely these could have been compressed into a more general injunction to show respect. The ensuing order to set aside a holy day is scarcely a moral or ethical one, unless you assume that other days are somehow profane. (The Rev. Ian Paisley, I remember, used to refuse interviewers for Sunday newspapers even after it was pointed out to him that it’s the Monday edition that is prepared on Sunday.) Whereas a day of rest, as prefigured in the opening passages of Genesis, is no more than organized labor might have demanded, perhaps during the arduous days of unpaid pyramid erection.
There’s more, much more, and it’s all blasphemously funny.
First rule of satire…at least be familiar with the material. Nice try, Hitch. Underwhelming, to say the least.
I’d say he’s very familiar with the material. You may not have liked it, but I thought it was blisteringly funny.
I’d say his familiarity is about 9th grade level. Anybody can read some words, remain ignorant of their context, and spit out some cliches about their source.
He argues that keeping the sabbath holy makes all the other days profane.
He argues that taking the lord’s name in vain (profanity) has nothing to do with moral conduct?
He dismisses all commandments that can’t be “enforced” as somehow irrelevant? (thus missing the entire point of Christianity)
He argues that the commandments make no comment on child abuse? (if he bothered to look up the broader interpretation of “adultery” he would find that it includes mental, physical, and sexual abuse)
He also flubs “thou shall not kill” by missing the fact that the original intention and translation was closer to thou shall not “murder”…quite different, and a debate that most christian high school students are familiar with.
He also forgets the entire story of Adam and Eve by blaming god for creating imperfect people. Duh.
The rest of his article is just baseless opinion. “God exists only in the minds of his worshippers”…or “Religion is not just incongruent with morality but in essential ways incompatible with it.” which is just completely ignorant.
I’m not really offended as a Christian since this guy obviously has no understanding of what he’s talking about. Claming that religion is incompatible with morality is just leftist nonsense, and deserves to be dismissed with a chuckle. I stand with my original position…underwhelming.
Judging by your comments on murder vs. killing, I’d say your understanding of the article in question was weak, not his understanding of the Ten Commandments.
Is refuting someone by supporting their argument a new method of logic?
Heh. It just struck me how amusing it would be for you and Hitchens both to know that religion’s incompatibility with morality was most vociferously argued by that bastion of leftist thought, Ayn Rand.
So sorry, try again.
“He dismisses all commandments that can’t be “enforced” as somehow irrelevant? (thus missing the entire point of Christianity)”
Exactly, Mike M! That’s why the Ten Commandments have no legal standing in US courts, and why a monument to them has no place in a US courthouse, except perhaps as a relic of what laws were like in the good old days.