Exodus 20

It's time for the ten commandments, boys and girls. Don't look now but this familiar list is actually not the ten commandments. The official "ten commandments" appear later in Exodus and you aren't going to believe it when we get there. I'll just say I hope you haven't ever boiled a baby goat in its mother's milk. But for now, God spake all these words:

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.  Remind me how this has anything to do with moral behavior? And when someone insists that we have only one God, remember this commandment. The big man himself says there are multiple gods.
2. No graven images, which the Basic English Bible translates as not making "an image or picture of anything in heaven or on the earth or in the waters under the earth." If your child draws a picture of fish in the ocean, this commandment is broken. Our "jealous God" promises he will visit "the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." So if you don't buy into this list, your great-grandchildren will be punished. Pretty sure that's not moral.
3. Don't take God's name in vain. Why not? I do it all the time.
4. Keep the Sabbath holy. I think only Hobby Lobby and Chick-Fil-A follow this one. God gives his top ten rules and the first four have nothing to do with how we should behave or treat one another. So far he has focused on keeping people in their place and under his spell.
5. Honor your father and mother. This sounds good but is too simpleton in reality. What if your parents are abusive assholes? If you're the victim of incest, should you be held to this commandment? This sounds like a good rule for keeping people in their place. If someone has more power than you do, too bad for you. How about respecting and honoring those who have protected and helped you on your path through life? Wouldn't something like that be more useful?
6. Thou shalt not kill. The bible has done a shit job on this commandment so far. And what about euthanasia? Self defense? Soldiers at war? Do you support the death penalty? How many abortion doctors have been shot and killed with this commandment held up as justification? Wherever you stand on these issues, it's pretty clear it's more complicated than this one-dimensional edict.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery. If the rules for life are to be whittled down to a top ten list, I say this doesn't make the cut. Why not a more general guideline about keeping your promises? Or maybe we could have an item about treating people fairly and honestly. How about thou shalt not manipulate or take advantage of people. Why did adultery and graven images make the list but nothing about rape and torture? A bunch of 20th century Catholic priests could have used a commandment along those lines. A priest who rapes a little kid doesn't break a single commandment, unless he does it on a Sunday. And *I'm* the asshole for not believing this list is the greatest code of human behavior ever written?
8. Thou shalt not steal. I'm against stealing as much as the next guy, and it's easy to understand why we have laws against theft. However, if you survived Hurricane Katrina, were you wrong to steal baby formula for your child? Ethics are situational; the ten commandments don't have any notion of that. That's an important point for this entire list. This is also a good time to point out that without the ten commandments, we'd still have concluded that taking other people's stuff is wrong. Plenty of societies have figured this out without the bible.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Does this commandment pertain to courtroom testimony, or false statements against other people or any form of lying? Are white lies wrong? And who qualifies as a neighbor, and why include that phrase in the first place? Is God saying if you're a damn foreigner, I can bear false witness against you? Also, if I know where your battered wife is hiding I'm going to lie to you about it, commandments be damned.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, wife, slaves, ox, ass or property. This one is the thought police. Jealous of your neighbor's car? Envy their beautiful house? Wish you had a nice tight ass like theirs? All wrong, folks. It's OK to own slaves, just don't covet your neighbor's. Notice that women are property too. Stupid fucking list. Seriously.

I think these rules should be on display at every courthouse in America, don't you?