Poof -- It's gone
The sudden death of a company
Tony is working on his Resume and searching the want ads for anyone who needs a Database Administrator. Andy and a technician are shutting down servers and disconnecting the batteries. The HR department is working on a mail merged letter to be sent to all of the employees along with their final paycheck. The white noise of the laser printer behind me fades as someone shuts it off. Now there is only silence. Outside of our IT department window there would normally have been a constant ruckus. Now there are only empty desks. Sticky notes with various once-important instructions are now meaningless trash. Everywhere there is evidence of a hundred overlapping routines interrupted in mid sentence, never to be completed.
A door bangs in the distance and voices can be heard discussing the graceful shutdown of operations which will be their last official duties at Key Financial Systems. The air is beginning to get stale. Someone has turned off the air conditioning. I've recorded a single message which can be heard on all 59 of our toll-free numbers, which were very recently used for customer service, collections, executive management, automated bank tellers, pay-by-phone, and information. Now they all say simply, This company has been shut down by the Office of the Comptroller of Currency. For further information, contact the FDIC. Bye.It wasn't our fault. We did nothing wrong. A distant relationship with a marginally involved banking institution was a critical component in the legality of our operation. That unit, hundreds of miles away, suddenly dissolved due to problems it was having in a completely different arena.
Unfortunately, we went with it.
There was a bug or two in the phone system, but they were just annoying things, not real problems. We were working on getting them fixed. The collections department had developed a strange error that would crash their applications occasionally. This needed to be fixed. We were going to get to it. The new web site was almost done. The frame of a new domain controller lies on the floor next to Andy's desk. A stack of new Dell PC's recently delivered awaits distribution to the customer service department. A new edition of the company telephone directory sits next to my keyboard.Scrawled in yellow highlighter on the back is a reminder to myself to add Instant Messaging to the Sales Department's application.
An employee sheepishly pokes her way into the lobby, wondering what happened. A girl from HR passes by and stops to explain to her. There's not much she can say. Go get another job somewhere. This one doesn't exist any more.
200 employees. 130,000 customers.
Poof.
Pretty wild.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Who is better off?
Who is better off, the atheist or the theist?
I am an atheist, but I believe that faith in the supernatural is more productive, healthy, and consistent with our overall nature, and that our psyches almost require the incorporation of a religion in order to function properly.
We are a race of weeds that have sprung forth from the earth and arrived at our current situation by feeding on water, air, sunlight, nutrients, and faith. All of these elements have been present since the first conscious thought. Somehow, faith is a required component in the blueprint of evolving conscious minds. Whether it was necessary to allow early man to think about some things (How can I get more food? Where will I sleep? How can I keep warm?) and not worry about other things (What is thunder? will I die? Who put the moon up there? Why am I attracted to girls? Why do men have nipples? What are dreams? ). I might bet that 30,000 years ago there were some cro magnon men who dwelled on great and lofty wonders of the universe and I might bet that they all starved to death. The men who were more predisposed to attributing unanswerable questions to the supernatural probably had more time to go about their business, and therefore may have been the fittest to survive.
Religion seems highly necessary. Man himself appears to have very little instinctive morality. Certainly, most of mankind is filled with small amounts of compassion, sympathy, empathy, and other features that help with general social interaction, but there are two great forces of religion that can carry the mind of man to the both the height of sainthood and the pit of darkest evil. These forces work to similarly guide mankind through an arbitrary yet effective moral code that we would otherwise be helpless to live up to individually, the other force steeps mankind with a kind of hatred and loathing of others, for a variety of reasons including racism, far more powerfully than any kind of hatred and loathing that man could come up with on his own.
This all gets back to something I’ve felt for a long time, that you really don't have free will.
Everything about you is controlled by external forces and you react to them. My Axiom is “You always do what you would have done.” Religion is one of those forces that can compel you. Love is another. Emotion is another. Fear. Need. Desire. Pleasure. All of these things make us who we are.
I go to church because my wife likes it and wants the children to be exposed to religeon. I'm okay with that. In fact, in the seven years that have passed since I first drafted this and Glenn Beck graciously posted it on his web site, I've actually come to the conclusion that All Human Beings Should Be Christians.
What?????
Yes, I am an atheist, I do not believe in God, and I think that people who believe in God are delusional, but I think that people SHOULD believe in God, and I also believe that people should believe in the Christian God and Jesus Christ.
Oh how my liberal (I'm sorry -- I mean Progressive) friends would probably howl at that.
I was raised by Christian fundamentalist parents. In fact, my father was a preacher. I was tormented with thoughts of sin and hell and prayer and devotion and faith for years and years until I finally broke the chains and realized that it was all phony balony. I then spent several years trying to convince everyone I knew that religeon was fake. Then, after a while, I started noticing the behavior of people and began to observe that there are some atheists who are very well balanced and relaxed. They are at complete peace with themselves and the world. They ponder every circumstance with quiet patience and understanding, and have nothing but love and acceptance for everyone in their hearts.
Yeah, right. No, seriously there are some atheists like that, and I consider them to be the only true pure souls on this earth.
But then there is everyone else. First, the rest of the atheists are not really atheists, they are crazy people. By crazy, I don't mean that they are abnormal, they are normal people who don't have religeon to stabilize them. When people reject the religeon of their parents, they usually don't dive headlong into atheism, rather they pick something equally rediculous but useful, like Gaya the Earth Mother and that kind of hog wash.
The most visibly crazy people are the agnostics. They aren't willing to face the hard truths (and wonderful possibilities) of atheism, but they aren't interested in living a lifestyle structured by a specific faith. These are the people who twist in the wind. Wife Beaters, Child Molsters, Drug Addicts, Alcoholics, Criminals, and all-around Dickheads head up the long list of human perversions that tumble the agnostic through his life as he helplessly wonders in vain why he can't be "normal".
But he IS normal. He is just like the 500 people who regularly attend my church. The difference between the twisted agnostic and the generally stable population of Cypress Meadows is that the generally stable population of Cypress Meadows follows a highly evolved way of life that includes a limitless supply of mechanisms and support structures for dealing with each and every one of our little human frailties, and the driving force behind all of them is their faith that somehow it is all signed off on by the Great Gazoo in the Sky.
I, however, had yanked out the religion circuit and held it before my eyes. "This isn't real." I said. "This is just a circuit in my brain that causes me to do certain things." I couldn't put it back in because one of the things that allows it work is that you don't know it's not real. You have to believe that it is, otherwise its power is useless.
I started to yank out other things and look at them. Fortunately none of the other circuits require faith in order to operate, so I could put them back in. "Here's Love", "Ambition", "This is the circuit that makes me want to look reasonably well groomed", "Here's the mechanism that causes me to eat what I do", "And here's the thingy that makes me want to look at all the thingies."
All of the parts, each one fairly minor by itself, all together make up human beings and civilization. Nothing is magical about them. Unfortunately, some parts can't be put back in once you take them out. I should have discovered that when I was 7 years old and heavily predisposed to disassembling things.
My conclusion is, religion is necessary in order for people and civilization to function. I've even decided that Christianity is the most effective one of the bunch, for all of the tools and mechnisms it contains, and that whole "Peace and Love" thing that you really don't find anywhere else. Buddhism is pretty cool, but unless you are prepared to really follow the path, you cannot be a Buddhist. I know people who say they are buddhists. You can't be a buddhist and also act like a normal person. You can't.
Religeon is the cause of great good and great evil. I no longer desire to convince people to remove their religion circuit, only that they find a way to use it for good and not evil. As long as they have that, they have more than I do, which is just mere machinery. Woody Allen is correct about the misery and despair of life. Mankind wasn't constructed to live that way, whether it is true or not. Man needs the morality and institutions that only religion, no matter how ridiculous, can provide.
But it is not a magical reason why this is so. Man is not some kind of special super amazing creature that has incredible powers and potential. Man is a bug. A slug. Something that crawled from the ooze. Man is an amazing thing, but Man is also a race of utterly insane, psychotic, irrational whack jobs that probably wouldn't survive another generation if left in charge of it's own devices. Some point along the line we discovered that Faith in the Great Gazoo actually helps us to get along, and live longer, healthier, happier lives.
Would I be better off if I trick myself into some sort of belief in a Great Gazoo, because it's what my brain was designed for? I have my head up, and I see everyone else asleep and dreaming. I see the dismal cave that contains us, and that pitiful bridge to nowhere. I don't feel bad about it. In fact, it excites me that the possibilities are indeed far more than what the Great Gazoo Book was telling me, but being realistic about it, there is no Great Gazoo and your memories and my memories are all dust in the wind. Whether we are cells of a larger creature that we cannot comprehend, or the forerunners of a future great race, other even perhaps pools of the same conscious entity experiencing life from many brief points in time and space, I don't know. Maybe the universe is the skin of God and we are his taste bumps.
We can't know.
My mother is absolutely convinced that God exists and that he talks to her. She went through a phase a while back when she was referring to God as "She" but she's a pretty hard core fundamentalist when it comes to her Christian Faith. She's also a liberal democrat, which is kind of odd to me, but no stranger than me I suppose, a Conservative Republican Atheist. I guess you just have to walk a mile in someone's shoes to really understand them. Almost everyone I know Cannot Not believe in God. A few people I know, myself included Cannot believe in God. I can't change that. Medical science has never, ever documented a person being resurrected from the dead, and has never, ever documented a limb growing back on an amputee, which begs the question, "Why does God Hate Amputees?" As much as we pray and believe that God has performed this or that little miracle, nothing exists in the known universe that could ever document any miracle, other than word of mouth. I don't want to have that kind of faith. I don't want to believe in something that I know ain't so.
But maybe I wish I did.
All I can do is put my head back down and live out the rest of my intended destiny with as much grace and poise as I can muster.
I am an atheist, but I believe that faith in the supernatural is more productive, healthy, and consistent with our overall nature, and that our psyches almost require the incorporation of a religion in order to function properly.
We are a race of weeds that have sprung forth from the earth and arrived at our current situation by feeding on water, air, sunlight, nutrients, and faith. All of these elements have been present since the first conscious thought. Somehow, faith is a required component in the blueprint of evolving conscious minds. Whether it was necessary to allow early man to think about some things (How can I get more food? Where will I sleep? How can I keep warm?) and not worry about other things (What is thunder? will I die? Who put the moon up there? Why am I attracted to girls? Why do men have nipples? What are dreams? ). I might bet that 30,000 years ago there were some cro magnon men who dwelled on great and lofty wonders of the universe and I might bet that they all starved to death. The men who were more predisposed to attributing unanswerable questions to the supernatural probably had more time to go about their business, and therefore may have been the fittest to survive.
Religion seems highly necessary. Man himself appears to have very little instinctive morality. Certainly, most of mankind is filled with small amounts of compassion, sympathy, empathy, and other features that help with general social interaction, but there are two great forces of religion that can carry the mind of man to the both the height of sainthood and the pit of darkest evil. These forces work to similarly guide mankind through an arbitrary yet effective moral code that we would otherwise be helpless to live up to individually, the other force steeps mankind with a kind of hatred and loathing of others, for a variety of reasons including racism, far more powerfully than any kind of hatred and loathing that man could come up with on his own.
This all gets back to something I’ve felt for a long time, that you really don't have free will.
Everything about you is controlled by external forces and you react to them. My Axiom is “You always do what you would have done.” Religion is one of those forces that can compel you. Love is another. Emotion is another. Fear. Need. Desire. Pleasure. All of these things make us who we are.
I go to church because my wife likes it and wants the children to be exposed to religeon. I'm okay with that. In fact, in the seven years that have passed since I first drafted this and Glenn Beck graciously posted it on his web site, I've actually come to the conclusion that All Human Beings Should Be Christians.
What?????
Yes, I am an atheist, I do not believe in God, and I think that people who believe in God are delusional, but I think that people SHOULD believe in God, and I also believe that people should believe in the Christian God and Jesus Christ.
Oh how my liberal (I'm sorry -- I mean Progressive) friends would probably howl at that.
I was raised by Christian fundamentalist parents. In fact, my father was a preacher. I was tormented with thoughts of sin and hell and prayer and devotion and faith for years and years until I finally broke the chains and realized that it was all phony balony. I then spent several years trying to convince everyone I knew that religeon was fake. Then, after a while, I started noticing the behavior of people and began to observe that there are some atheists who are very well balanced and relaxed. They are at complete peace with themselves and the world. They ponder every circumstance with quiet patience and understanding, and have nothing but love and acceptance for everyone in their hearts.
Yeah, right. No, seriously there are some atheists like that, and I consider them to be the only true pure souls on this earth.
But then there is everyone else. First, the rest of the atheists are not really atheists, they are crazy people. By crazy, I don't mean that they are abnormal, they are normal people who don't have religeon to stabilize them. When people reject the religeon of their parents, they usually don't dive headlong into atheism, rather they pick something equally rediculous but useful, like Gaya the Earth Mother and that kind of hog wash.
The most visibly crazy people are the agnostics. They aren't willing to face the hard truths (and wonderful possibilities) of atheism, but they aren't interested in living a lifestyle structured by a specific faith. These are the people who twist in the wind. Wife Beaters, Child Molsters, Drug Addicts, Alcoholics, Criminals, and all-around Dickheads head up the long list of human perversions that tumble the agnostic through his life as he helplessly wonders in vain why he can't be "normal".
But he IS normal. He is just like the 500 people who regularly attend my church. The difference between the twisted agnostic and the generally stable population of Cypress Meadows is that the generally stable population of Cypress Meadows follows a highly evolved way of life that includes a limitless supply of mechanisms and support structures for dealing with each and every one of our little human frailties, and the driving force behind all of them is their faith that somehow it is all signed off on by the Great Gazoo in the Sky.
I, however, had yanked out the religion circuit and held it before my eyes. "This isn't real." I said. "This is just a circuit in my brain that causes me to do certain things." I couldn't put it back in because one of the things that allows it work is that you don't know it's not real. You have to believe that it is, otherwise its power is useless.
I started to yank out other things and look at them. Fortunately none of the other circuits require faith in order to operate, so I could put them back in. "Here's Love", "Ambition", "This is the circuit that makes me want to look reasonably well groomed", "Here's the mechanism that causes me to eat what I do", "And here's the thingy that makes me want to look at all the thingies."
All of the parts, each one fairly minor by itself, all together make up human beings and civilization. Nothing is magical about them. Unfortunately, some parts can't be put back in once you take them out. I should have discovered that when I was 7 years old and heavily predisposed to disassembling things.
My conclusion is, religion is necessary in order for people and civilization to function. I've even decided that Christianity is the most effective one of the bunch, for all of the tools and mechnisms it contains, and that whole "Peace and Love" thing that you really don't find anywhere else. Buddhism is pretty cool, but unless you are prepared to really follow the path, you cannot be a Buddhist. I know people who say they are buddhists. You can't be a buddhist and also act like a normal person. You can't.
Religeon is the cause of great good and great evil. I no longer desire to convince people to remove their religion circuit, only that they find a way to use it for good and not evil. As long as they have that, they have more than I do, which is just mere machinery. Woody Allen is correct about the misery and despair of life. Mankind wasn't constructed to live that way, whether it is true or not. Man needs the morality and institutions that only religion, no matter how ridiculous, can provide.
But it is not a magical reason why this is so. Man is not some kind of special super amazing creature that has incredible powers and potential. Man is a bug. A slug. Something that crawled from the ooze. Man is an amazing thing, but Man is also a race of utterly insane, psychotic, irrational whack jobs that probably wouldn't survive another generation if left in charge of it's own devices. Some point along the line we discovered that Faith in the Great Gazoo actually helps us to get along, and live longer, healthier, happier lives.
Would I be better off if I trick myself into some sort of belief in a Great Gazoo, because it's what my brain was designed for? I have my head up, and I see everyone else asleep and dreaming. I see the dismal cave that contains us, and that pitiful bridge to nowhere. I don't feel bad about it. In fact, it excites me that the possibilities are indeed far more than what the Great Gazoo Book was telling me, but being realistic about it, there is no Great Gazoo and your memories and my memories are all dust in the wind. Whether we are cells of a larger creature that we cannot comprehend, or the forerunners of a future great race, other even perhaps pools of the same conscious entity experiencing life from many brief points in time and space, I don't know. Maybe the universe is the skin of God and we are his taste bumps.
We can't know.
My mother is absolutely convinced that God exists and that he talks to her. She went through a phase a while back when she was referring to God as "She" but she's a pretty hard core fundamentalist when it comes to her Christian Faith. She's also a liberal democrat, which is kind of odd to me, but no stranger than me I suppose, a Conservative Republican Atheist. I guess you just have to walk a mile in someone's shoes to really understand them. Almost everyone I know Cannot Not believe in God. A few people I know, myself included Cannot believe in God. I can't change that. Medical science has never, ever documented a person being resurrected from the dead, and has never, ever documented a limb growing back on an amputee, which begs the question, "Why does God Hate Amputees?" As much as we pray and believe that God has performed this or that little miracle, nothing exists in the known universe that could ever document any miracle, other than word of mouth. I don't want to have that kind of faith. I don't want to believe in something that I know ain't so.
But maybe I wish I did.
All I can do is put my head back down and live out the rest of my intended destiny with as much grace and poise as I can muster.
The Ten Commandments revisted
As a person who does not believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-present God, you might expect that I would have a problem with the Ten Commandments being posted on public property. These days we seem to be hearing from every crackpot with an opinion for or against posting the big 10 in court houses, schools and libraries. Well, personally, I think that these 10 basic rules to live by are not so bad for anyone. Here's why:
THE FIRST COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:2-6
I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me. Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them: I am the Lord thy God, mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands to them that love me, and keep my commandments.
The actual instruction here seems to be not to adore or serve inanimate objects. In the context of worship, it forbids people to create gods by constructing images of natural things, and then to bow down before them. That's fine. I don't think I'll be doing this.
THE SECOND COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:7
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that shall take the name of the Lord his God in vain.
This appears to be a prohibition upon using the name of God to cast an evil spell, or calling upon the Lord to give you a Camaro. I don't expect anything from God anyway, so I won't be doing this.
THE THIRD COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:8-11
Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day. Six days shalt thou labour, and shalt do all thy works. But of the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God; thou shalt do no work on it, thou nor thy son, nor thy maidservant, nor thy beast, nor the stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them, and rested on the seventh day, and sanctified it.
Cool. I'm staying in bed. I will then watch Football, order a pizza, and then drink beer until I fall asleep. ON THE OTHER HAND, my Christian Friends will be BREAKING this commandment all day long as they make their son wash the dishes, get served by a maidservent at Steak n Shake, and watch the stranger within their gates cut the grass.
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:12Honour thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest be long lived upon the land which the Lord thy God will give thee.
That's sweet. I love my father and mother. I don't know about all of the poor children out there being emotionally tortured, beaten, raped, and brainwashed by their parents. I don't know how well they are going to follow this commandment, but as for me, I have good parents and I wish them nothing but the best.
THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:13
Thou shalt not kill.
I am pretty sure I'm not going to Kill anybody.
Although I guess this rule didn't apply to the ancient Israelites when they slaughtered the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, ethnically cleansing the land of every man, woman and child of these races, and then enslaving anyone who had the good fortune of surviving. It didn't apply to the crusaders, and it doesn't apply to terrorists either.
Also, most people don't know this, but the original Ten Commandments also exist in the Islamic faith. Muslims are just like Mormons kinda ... They believe in the Bible but they also added some stuff after. A little extra stuff at the end. The mormons, everyone knows, are most famous for the polygamy thing, but there is also the choir and the university and the hotel chain. Most people aren't really aware of what is in the Book of Mormon or the Quaran but as for the latter we are all aware of the wonderful things it has done to benefit humanity. There is no commandment that says "Thou Shalt Have Only One Wife" but golly gee whiz there IS one that says "Thou Shalt Not Kill". I guess if modern day christians can arbitrarily break commandment number three, it's all the same for the Moomoos to break #4, dontcha think?
How could God himself write this commandment and then in almost the same breath call for the anhilation of the Amalekites, commanding that the chosen people should "utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." (1 Samuel 15.2).
OR instruct his Muslim children to do the same to the infidel?
Perhaps this commandment should be amended to read "Thou shalt not kill unless I tell you otherwise." Still, I'm not planning on doing any killing myself, so this is a good commandment, even if God himself doesn't think so.
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:14
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Otherwise thou shalt might be killt by thine pisst off neighbors husbandth. Perfectly fine rule in my book. Hmmm... Maybe this was supposed to cover the polygamy thing.
THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:15
Thou shalt not steal.
Unless thou hast been instructed to slaughter thy neighbor, in which case it's not stealing, it's "plunder". Again, fine rule.
THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:16
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Basically I've always understood "bearing false witness" means lying.
So far we have: Don't kill, don't cheat, don't steal, don't lie. Basically, be an honest person who lives an honest life. Who could possibly have a problem with these commandments? Certainly not me. How simple can you get? We don't even need to debate what the meaning of Is is.
THE NINTH COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:17
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's... wife.
She's a fat whore anyway. I won't be coveting her or anyone else's wife for that matter. There are plenty of free women out there to covet.
THE TENTH COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:17
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house; neither shalt thou desire... his servant, nor his handmaiden, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his.
First of all, I'm pretty happy with my own house. I don't know a single individual who has a servent, handmaiden, ox or ass. But this commandment, after itemizing these specific things then covers it's own ass by adding the the "anything" part. My neighbor has a pretty cool motorcycle. I would like A motorcycle LIKE the one that he has, but I don't want THAT particular motorcycle (because it's used) therefore I don't covet it in the least. I think the same pretty much applies to the SUV, jet-skis or the big fat wife. In fact, I can't think of a single specific thing that someone has, that I want. Sure, I want more money, but I don't want his money. He can keep his money. I want more money. It doesn't necessarily have to be taken away from anyone in particular. So, finally, I don't have a problem with this commandment either.
So come on, my athiest and agnostic friends, what's the big whoop?
Besides, once they allow the 10 commandments to be posted in public places using public funds, we'll be forced to provide equal time to that whole UFO / Suicide Pact / Amway / Atkins diet crowd too. Then it can only get more interesting. Ya think?
THE FIRST COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:2-6
I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me. Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them: I am the Lord thy God, mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands to them that love me, and keep my commandments.
The actual instruction here seems to be not to adore or serve inanimate objects. In the context of worship, it forbids people to create gods by constructing images of natural things, and then to bow down before them. That's fine. I don't think I'll be doing this.
THE SECOND COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:7
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that shall take the name of the Lord his God in vain.
This appears to be a prohibition upon using the name of God to cast an evil spell, or calling upon the Lord to give you a Camaro. I don't expect anything from God anyway, so I won't be doing this.
THE THIRD COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:8-11
Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day. Six days shalt thou labour, and shalt do all thy works. But of the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God; thou shalt do no work on it, thou nor thy son, nor thy maidservant, nor thy beast, nor the stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them, and rested on the seventh day, and sanctified it.
Cool. I'm staying in bed. I will then watch Football, order a pizza, and then drink beer until I fall asleep. ON THE OTHER HAND, my Christian Friends will be BREAKING this commandment all day long as they make their son wash the dishes, get served by a maidservent at Steak n Shake, and watch the stranger within their gates cut the grass.
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:12Honour thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest be long lived upon the land which the Lord thy God will give thee.
That's sweet. I love my father and mother. I don't know about all of the poor children out there being emotionally tortured, beaten, raped, and brainwashed by their parents. I don't know how well they are going to follow this commandment, but as for me, I have good parents and I wish them nothing but the best.
THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:13
Thou shalt not kill.
I am pretty sure I'm not going to Kill anybody.
Although I guess this rule didn't apply to the ancient Israelites when they slaughtered the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, ethnically cleansing the land of every man, woman and child of these races, and then enslaving anyone who had the good fortune of surviving. It didn't apply to the crusaders, and it doesn't apply to terrorists either.
Also, most people don't know this, but the original Ten Commandments also exist in the Islamic faith. Muslims are just like Mormons kinda ... They believe in the Bible but they also added some stuff after. A little extra stuff at the end. The mormons, everyone knows, are most famous for the polygamy thing, but there is also the choir and the university and the hotel chain. Most people aren't really aware of what is in the Book of Mormon or the Quaran but as for the latter we are all aware of the wonderful things it has done to benefit humanity. There is no commandment that says "Thou Shalt Have Only One Wife" but golly gee whiz there IS one that says "Thou Shalt Not Kill". I guess if modern day christians can arbitrarily break commandment number three, it's all the same for the Moomoos to break #4, dontcha think?
How could God himself write this commandment and then in almost the same breath call for the anhilation of the Amalekites, commanding that the chosen people should "utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." (1 Samuel 15.2).
OR instruct his Muslim children to do the same to the infidel?
Perhaps this commandment should be amended to read "Thou shalt not kill unless I tell you otherwise." Still, I'm not planning on doing any killing myself, so this is a good commandment, even if God himself doesn't think so.
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:14
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Otherwise thou shalt might be killt by thine pisst off neighbors husbandth. Perfectly fine rule in my book. Hmmm... Maybe this was supposed to cover the polygamy thing.
THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:15
Thou shalt not steal.
Unless thou hast been instructed to slaughter thy neighbor, in which case it's not stealing, it's "plunder". Again, fine rule.
THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:16
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
Basically I've always understood "bearing false witness" means lying.
So far we have: Don't kill, don't cheat, don't steal, don't lie. Basically, be an honest person who lives an honest life. Who could possibly have a problem with these commandments? Certainly not me. How simple can you get? We don't even need to debate what the meaning of Is is.
THE NINTH COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:17
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's... wife.
She's a fat whore anyway. I won't be coveting her or anyone else's wife for that matter. There are plenty of free women out there to covet.
THE TENTH COMMANDMENT
Exodus 20:17
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house; neither shalt thou desire... his servant, nor his handmaiden, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his.
First of all, I'm pretty happy with my own house. I don't know a single individual who has a servent, handmaiden, ox or ass. But this commandment, after itemizing these specific things then covers it's own ass by adding the the "anything" part. My neighbor has a pretty cool motorcycle. I would like A motorcycle LIKE the one that he has, but I don't want THAT particular motorcycle (because it's used) therefore I don't covet it in the least. I think the same pretty much applies to the SUV, jet-skis or the big fat wife. In fact, I can't think of a single specific thing that someone has, that I want. Sure, I want more money, but I don't want his money. He can keep his money. I want more money. It doesn't necessarily have to be taken away from anyone in particular. So, finally, I don't have a problem with this commandment either.
So come on, my athiest and agnostic friends, what's the big whoop?
Besides, once they allow the 10 commandments to be posted in public places using public funds, we'll be forced to provide equal time to that whole UFO / Suicide Pact / Amway / Atkins diet crowd too. Then it can only get more interesting. Ya think?
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