The Seventh Commandment

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You shall not commit adultery

First of all we need to be clear about what adultery is. You might think that is easy, but the commandments were written about three thousand years ago and things didn’t mean the same then.

People today tend define it as any act of sexual intercourse outside of marriage or, perhaps a bit more narrowly, any act of sexual intercourse between a married person and someone who is not their spouse.

The ancient Hebrews had a different understanding and limited it to just sexual intercourse between a man and a woman who was married or betrothed. The marital status of the man was irrelevant. A married man was not guilty of “adultery” for having sex with an unmarried woman.

This is because at that time women were little more than property — a slightly higher status than slaves but not full citizens like men. Because women were like property, having sex with a married or betrothed woman was regarded as misuse of someone else’s property. A married man having sex with an unmarried woman was not guilty of such a crime and thus was not committing adultery. If she also wasn’t a virgin, then the man wasn’t guilty of any crime. A man could have sex with slaves any time he liked.

Because adultery was about married or betrothed women, gay sex didn’t count. It was against other laws of Moses, but not the commandments.

Christians now tend to define adultery much more broadly, and as a consequence almost all extramarital sex acts are treated as violations of the Seventh Commandment. Many claim that adultery should include lustful thoughts, lustful words, polygamy, etc. This is justified by the words of Jesus: “You have heard that it was said by them of old time, You shall not commit adultery: But I say to you, That whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.“ (Matthew 5:27-28). That makes life tough for a bloke and makes it fairly certain that nearly half the human race breaks the rules most days of their life.

Some Abrahamic religions still accept polygamy, so many Moslem men can have up to four wives. Much less need to commit adultery in that situation. Some parts of Shia Islam have the even more convenient concept of mutah or temporary marriage.  The temporary marriage contract is as follows: The woman says: ” I marry myself to you for the specified dowry (mention the amount) and for the specified time period (mention the time period)”. Then the man says: “I accept”.” That’ll be fifty bucks for your half hour luv. OK thanks.

Original Sin

Through coition came cognition,

so we’re told.

From serpentine perdition,

to the eve of our condition,

is a line of pulchritude.

 

The serpent was lascivious.

Tempting Eve to coitus,

by offering an apple

to consume.

 

His squirming, so voluptuous,

slithering, conceptuous,

lured her to

perfidy and sin.

 

From thus, homo erectus

was hetero in his genius,

until, through nostra damus,

came il papa’s mighty plan.

 

By immaculate deception,

came the godhead

to reception

as a naked babe in straw.

 

Lacking sign of all suspicion,

or hint of malefaction,

the lord had sired offspring,

but no genitals engorged.

 

Through countless generation,

from Adam and creation,

had the genesis of

humankind been drawn.

 

By fervent copulation,

foregoing masturbation,

the race had been

expanded and preserved.

 

In coitus emeritus,

no interruption hindered us

and life was passed

by orgasmagic down.

 

From primeval broth evolving,

through complex myths contriving,

the human creature

comes to speculate.

 

No! It surely is apparent,

that our knowing was descendant,

and did not come

from falling to a snake.

 

All the love and joy

in breeding, should be guiltless,

not conceding any merit

to the fantasists of god.

 

Deus non magnificat,

and coitus cum laude.

Shagging is not sinful,

but bonding beautiful.

BBC Thought for the Day used to create religious tension

There was a shocking ‘Thought for the Day’ on the Today programme a few minutes ago. The muslim speaker effectively condemned the Americans for not having buried Bin Laden correctly and talked about radicals re-naming the Arabian Sea as the martyrs sea. He was effectively inciting extremists to claim that their religion had been offended and to create a shrine for a mass murderer. Thought for the day must be ended now. Our taxes cannot be used to whip up religious divisions and discontent.

Koran Burners, Cranks & Criminals

A BNP candidate for the Welsh Assembly, Sion Owens, was arrested and charged with a public order offence after police viewed a video of a man apparently burning a copy of the koran. It was alleged that Owens burned the book in his back garden.

When he appeared in court, the Crown Prosecution Service withdrew the charge, but said that investigations into his actions were continuing and that “almost certainly other proceedings will ensue.”

Earlier this month Terry Jones a publicity hungry American stepped out of his usual role of running his own weird church and appointed himself a judge to put the koran on trial. Surprise, surprise he found the book guilty and sentenced it to burning. When news of this event reached Afghanistan some more people with weird religious ideas whipped up a riot in which several people were murdered.

Last year, after Jones had first announced his plans to burn korans and backed off from it, the repulsive Westboro Baptist Church decided this was too good publicity to miss so they put an American flag with a koran and burned both.

So who are the criminals, who are not and what should everybody else do?

Whackos like Westboro and Terry Jones should be endured and largely ignored as part of the price of freedom. Publicity seeking people with crazy ideas are only a problem when sensationalist and circulation hungry media want to use them for their own ends. It would obviously be better if we had more responsible information providers, but we don’t and that too is is a necessary part of free expression.

The sadistic butchers who use koran burning, or any other supposed affront, as an excuse for killing people and imposing their deranged dominance over others are criminals. These people are a genuine danger to society and they need to be brought to justice for their crimes.

In contrast to the freedom guaranteed to American cranks by the US constitution, in the UK our equivalent loon, Sion Owens, gets charged with a public order offence for something he is supposed to have done in his own back garden. When that absurdity collapses the CPS bureaucrats do a tactical withdrawal with a warning that they will go away and think up another crime that they can nail him with.

Owens is probably just as much an inadequate as many other people who swallow the nasty and ridiculous policies of the BNP, but that doesn’t make him a criminal. The right response to Owens and his like is to not vote for them and leave them to the obscurity they have earned.

Our judicial system needs to grow up and allow citizens the ability to make their own adult decisions.

All Hail President Rompoy and Foreign Minister Ashton

Rompoy and Ashton have no legitimacy. When they spend our money and speak on our behalf throughout the world there will be no way for us to hold them to account for what they do.

Queen Elizabeth is an unelected, unaccountable head of state, not just of the United Kingdom, but of dependencies and former colonies scattered across the globe; the remnants of a long gone empire.

The monarchy has a place in history, but no legitimacy in a modern democracy. All that could be said for the monarchy is that its powers have been effectively removed.

This is not the case for the unelected and unaccountable members of the House of Lords, including the bishops of the established church, who happily lie about where they live to collect massive ‘expenses’
 while passing laws to interfere ever more in our lives. This affront to democracy is an even greater anachronism than the monarchy.

Monarchy, aristocracy, state religion and a secretive, establishment judiciary all have the excuse of history and tradition to justify themselves. That is a weak excuse which freedom lovers should reject.

When it comes to the United Nations, which is a clique of the victorious powers of 1945, having no democratic legitimacy; the EU, which has been cobbled together in an authoritarian way, to prevent the re-emergence of German nationalism and then to consolidate the victory in the cold war we have anti democratic affronts growing up in our own times and we should be far more ashamed of that.

To cap it all, our daily lives are run by 800 quangos spending £35 billion pounds every year. Appointed by cronies, accountable to nobody, these people are the embodiment of the snooper, nanny state that steals our money and controls our lives.

Rompoy is a parasitic nonentity put in place by a cabal of Euro oligarchs. Give him the respect he deserves. At the same time help us get rid of the unrepresentative parasites on our doorstep who really control our lives.

Hospital Chaplains

The National Secular Society has calculated that hospital chaplains cost the National Health Service (NHS) £40 million each year.

About 35 years ago I spent a long time in hospital. It wasn’t a pleasant time and one of the things that made it worse was that each Sunday a christian priest came along with a helper. They handed out prayer books and service sheets then conducted a religious service at the end of a multi-bed ward. Being unwell I was not in the best of spirits and having this sectarian religion forced on me was most unpleasant. The fact that I was an atheist and refused their religion did not inhibit them in any way from forcing it on me and as far as I could see there was absolutely no regards to whether anybody in the ward was a follower of any non-christian religion or would not be happy with their particular brand of christianity. In short it was a completely arrogant imposition without regard for the views of others.

Some people may want religious support when they are in hospital and I certainly would not want to deny it to them, but if they have those religious elements in their lives they will probably be able to arrange to have the support continued while they are in hospital.

What is absolutely certain is that there will never be enough money to meet all of the medical needs of patients and the £40 million being spent on chaplains could, and most definitely should, be spent on the legitimate medical purposes of the NHS. Religion is a private matter. Its followers should practice their beliefs discreetly and above all any costs of so doing should be borne entirely by the religions concerned and their members. It is grossly offensive and immoral that taxes collected to provide health care should be misused on religious facilities.

My concern at this issue was aggravated even further when I discovered that there was a Parliamentary Group of 40 MP’s (members of Parliament) campaigning to make it a legal requirement for all hospitals to have chaplains at public expense.

The National Secular Society says:

“these chaplains are parasites on a service that is there first and foremost to provide medical treatment and health care.”

They are absolutely right. We should find out who these MP’s are and make it absolutely clear to them that we will not support them in any way unless they get out of this group immediately.

There are 20 members of this group shown on the Register of All Party Groups. They are:

Lindsay　Hoyle

Jim　Dobbin

Geraldine　Smith

Frank　Field

Jim　Devine

Sarah　McCarthy-Fry

Alan　Simpson

Keith　Hill

Jim　Cunningham

Kevan　Jones

Mike　Penning

David　Burrowes

Iain　Duncan　Smith

David　Gauke

Tim　Boswell

Greg　Clark

Stephen　Crabb

David　Amess

Shailesh　Vara

James　Brokenshire

Manimal

 

Prime, primates, proud and preening people,

differ little from their kin.

Nice vocal chords, opposing thumbs,

and much less hairy skin.

 

Deep, deep inside though, little shows,

that chimp is far from chap.

Their genes show common ancestry

with little species gap.

 

In the beginning was the word,

of that there’s little doubt.

The human creature left the ape,

when first he spoke right out.

 

But was that language handed down,

in supernatural gift?

Or did voice form from mutant gene,

to bring the specie rift?

 

Just look upon the monkey group,

and see how they behave.

Fighting, fondling, fucking free.

The weakest, they enslave.

 

Apart from upright gait and song,

these beasts are us, with hair.

Should we class them now as brutes,

and deny them human care?

 

As slavers, we owned soulless blacks,

and herded them in ships.

Those people then weren’t ‘touched by god’,

but beasts we thrashed with whips.

 

Now! Tell me! Is a bonobo

no different from a cow?

Or should we count gorillas in.

the human family now?

 

Black and white, hirsute or smooth,

we’re creatures much the same.

No god distinguished ape from us,

we share much, but our name.

The Fifth Commandment

 

Respect your father and mother

 

We are half way through and at last god has started looking at something other than his self obsession.

 

Most people would probably agree that children should respect their father and mother. I certainly hold that view in most cases, but really this commandment is such a generalisation that it’s value is very weak.

 

Humans are full of failings. Not because Adam ate a fruit or Eve was a temptress or that they were lead astray by a serpent, but because some people do very bad things.

 

Should a child respect a parent who abuses them? Sadly, some children are so badly treated that they are killed by one or other of their parents. Does respect for the abusive parent extend to the point at which the child should not tell anybody about their suffering and so allow it to continue until their life is taken or irretrievably damaged? Surely not.

 

I am in favour of laws being simple enough that they can be easily understood and enforced, but simplicity can be taken too far. In this case the exhortation to respect ones parents is fine for parents who respect their children. It is wrong to suggest that children have responsibilities to parents without reference to the responsibilities of parents to their children.

 

The commandments were a set of rules put together between two and three thousand years ago by people who lived simple, often brutal, lives in tribal communities without schools or any of the institutions of the twenty first century world. Children, like wives, were seen as assets of a male head of household. This demand of respect for parents is still worthwhile, but the relationship lying behind it in which children are not seen as deserving of the same should be put behind us as a more primitive stage of human development.

 

The fifth commandment stands up better than the four going before it, but it really isn’t very much use for the modern world and it suffers from the risk of giving an excuse to poor parents who demand undeserved respect from their children.

The Second Commandment

 

You shall not make for yourself any idol, nor bow down to it or worship it:

 

Why?

 

I agree that it is a pretty silly waste of time to be worshipping idols, but what harm can it possibly do to an all powerful god if people bow down in front of some idols?

 

In a set of rules that are claimed to be all the god given laws that are needed for human conduct the second one is that you shouldn’t be making idols and worshipping them. That is just plain stupid.

 

What it really tells us is that the time and place of Moses was one where the ancient Egyptian society ruled by the Pharoahs was a place in which there were loads of gods. These gods were wooden statues kept in the temples and people belonged to the cult of a particular god or they chose a special god to worship when they had some issue to deal with that they associated with that god. What the followers of Abraham were trying to do was to pull everybody together into a single doctrine and they saw these competing religious factions as a fragmentation of their tribes.

 

Some Egyptians were actually trying to do the same thing around the same time. The Pharoah Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhnaten and tried to make all Egyptians worship Aten the sun god to the exclusion of all other gods. He faced great opposition from the priests of other gods who had their own power bases. When Akhnaten was gone, his successor Tutankhaten gave up the whole one god idea, made peace with the priests of Amun and returned to the historic capital with the changed name of Tutankhamun.

 

The Semites went off and did their own thing with the one god that they had made up. This was the one god who was frightened of idols and the fragmentation that they might bring about.

 

The second commandment was all about Moses and his fellow tribal leaders worrying that they would lose authority to the followers of the golden calf Ba’al or some other similar god. There was no ‘real’ god carving out tablets of stone that might still have some relevance to us in the twenty first century. Moses and his mates just made it up to serve their own ends. That is what politicians and religious leaders do.

The First Commandment

You shall have no other gods but me.

So this god, who was supposedly talking to Moses and giving him a set of rules, is worried about competition. Followers of the Abrahamic faiths claim that there is only one god and that god is all powerful. This first commandment actually acknowledges that there are other gods, but the god of Moses’ first instruction to humans is that they must accept him as their god. It seems like a very insecure position for an all powerful god to take doesn’t it?

Some might argue that this is an inadequacy of language or translation and that god is unique and just giving the instruction for people to acknowledge that. That does raise the amusing question of what language does god speak. Is it Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic? In which language were the stone tablets inscribed? A pre-hebrew desert semitic dialect?

Anyway, let’s get back to the heart of it. If there is only one god there is no possibility that anybody shall have another one so the commandment is pointless. If it is an insistence, as it is taken to be, that people should not worship false gods why doesn’t it say that? If the Abrahamic god is all powerful and the only god anyway, why does it matter if people have mistaken beliefs in non existence gods. Why doesn’t an all powerful god make his human creation undertand that there is only one god. There are a host of more realistic options for this god than to give an instruction that people shall have no other god but him.

The truth, of course, is that Moses did not talk to god. There were no tablets of stone handed down from the deity. There was no god giving such silly instructions. The commandments are human made. They are products of their time and of no relevance to twenty first century humans other than as subjects for academic study.