And then when you held up your hand, I let the water come rushing back and they all drowned!
All of them?
Yeah, they all deserved it, so it’s cool, ... (Ex 14:21-26)
Yeah but hadn’t you hardened their hearts to make them do all that and therefore deserve it?
Never mind that Moses - let’s get to work on this project that we came up here to do, eh?
Yeah OK >>>
So you’re finally going to reveal the standards by which you’ll judge human behavior! .
That’s right ; so first off; most important. “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me,
Nice.
“...except if you do actually follow another god, which is totally OK too and we respect that.”
Huh?
Number 2,
Wait,
You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven or on the earth or in the waters below.
right,
You shall not bow down to them or worship them,
Ah haaa, good....
except if it’s part of your culture to do so or your religious tradition or something, pluralism important in our society, all that, so,.… Something along those lines, we’ll polish it up later. Number three.
hang on.
No we’ll come back to it.
But you’re commanding us not to do it,
Don’t get hung up on old testament details like an atheist would, OK? Next. remember the sabbath day by keeping it holy.
What, unless you don’t wanna I suppose,
Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh is a sabbath to the lord. On it you shall not do any work.
Yeah right, except if you ?
Moses! Do you mind?
So can we work on the sabbath?
Absolutely not - unless if it’s important that you do do some work on the sabbath, like if you have a job or something, in which case it’s OK if you really need to.
No Lord, we can’t go on like this. You’re giving commandments and then telling us it’s OK to break them. It’s ridiculous
Well... YOU”RE not looking at it in the right context or something???
You can’t change context right in the middle of a sentence,...
Ah- look I was hoping I wouldn’t have to explain this, but....
What?!
there’s this civilization coming in the future, Moses, you’ve got no idea.
Who
Well, it’s going to come to be known as Western civilization,
When.
it’s thousands of years away yet
Ugh, well so what then?
It’s so big. So advanced, So successful…
Sorry but what does this have to do with you writing commandments that include an invitation to do their direct opposite?
Well don’t you see? It’s very important that I be able to take credit for all of the greatness that western civilization achieves! I want its people to be able to say that these ten commandments are the basis upon which their legal and moral systems are built.
Well, OK, but I still don’t understand, Lord - why do you keep putting these weird cancellations on them all?
Well, that’s the thing
Surely the way to nurture a society towards becoming amazingly advanced and prosperous is by having theocratic prohibitions against working on certain days of the week and graven images, and all that.....
Well that’s where the problem lies, see- The more humanity progresses, the more it will come to base its laws and constitutions around things like Freedom. Liberty.
Freedom?
Democracy & self-rule. Opportunity, human rights, Justice for all,
So, well you haven’t commanded any of that here, yet by the looks of things...
Yeah, and I’m not about to either.
So, the laws and morals of this mighty, advanced western civilization aren’t going to come out of these commandments at all then?
Oh, don’t rub it in!
Yeah but that’s what you’re saying, right?
That’s why I have to put these loopholes on the ends of all the commandments, to make them reflect the way advanced future civilizations actually are!
I dunno, I reckon it may be taking things a bit far. Are your laws really that far removed from the kinds of laws that they end up following?
Yeah, They’ll work on whichever days of the week they want, I’m suggesting a death penalty for that. They’ll have religious freedom, I’m banning it. I’m banning graven images and ordering them to kill anyone who says things about me that I don’t like, whereas they’ll fight and die to protect each others’ freedom of speech and freedom of expression!
Well, look, if your laws are at such odds with values that actually produce and maintain an advanced civilization, why not just have different commandments!
WHAT?!!?!
It might be cheating a bit, but if liberty and freedom and freedom of expression and all of those western values make for such a powerful and healthy human society, command them instead of all the theocratic stuff about graven images and and blasphemy. That way your commandments WILL be the moral basis of the society you want to claim credit for.
But these commandments reflect my essential moral character! Do you think my problem with graven images is just some arbitrary whim or something? I frigging HATE graven images, man,
But why NOT command freedom and liberty? What’s so bad about them that you’d have a problem ?
Where would commandments like those leave you Israelites?
I don’t know, free? Progressing? Developing?
EXACTLY!! But I want you petrified, ignorant and violent! How else am I going to get the majority of my sacred scriptures to be a history of middle eastern military conquests, with me ordering and helping you to bring about the violent deaths of thousands and thousands of people including innocent women and children???....
Oh. That freedom and liberty sounded good.
Moses: you are free, in a way! free to worship me and only me as much as you like, you’re free to work on 6 days of the week without being killed for doing so , you’re free from the debilitating effects of coveting things, and…
What? Coveting?
Oh, didn’t we get to that commandment yet? Write it down...You will not covet your neighbor’s house or his wife or his servants or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
But let me guess: western civilization is going to get along just fine without having any laws against all that?
Yeah. They’re going to be capitalists.
Ugh, so you’re banning a fundamental driving force of their economic system?
So you think I should encourage it as well as ban it?
You can’t do that Lord, at all! You’re just going to have to come to terms with the fact that these commandments of yours have nothing to do with western civilization! What other commandments did you have in mind that’ll have absolutely no place in this civilization that you want to take credit for?
Well, I’ve got an outright ban on adultery,
And noone goes to jail for that, I assume,
Eventually, no, and neither do people who dishonor their parents.
Which you prohibit?
Yeah, on pain of death.
Oh, Jeez.
they’ll still display my commandments in their court houses and schools though, won’t they?
Why would they? They’re irrelevant!
Oh no I’m screwed! I can’t claim credit for their morality after all!! CRY CRY CRY
OK, look, there there, there there,
There’s such an easy solution to this though Lord, if only you could …
WHAT!!??!
If I could get you to budge on .... Well nah, don’t worry, forget
NO, WHAT?! TELL ME
It’s not possible, like you said, it’s your essential moral character, you can’t just change your mind...
what?
Well, if only you had like, say a prohibition on ...murder in these commandments...
yeah, that’s in there.
You’ve got a commandment prohibiting murder
Yep.
Why didn’t you mention it before?!
Well, I’m not that keen on it myself, really, You’ll see what I mean when you read about just how much killing I order and carry out.
You order murder and prohibit it?
No no - look within certain contexts who gives a shit?, a few dead kids here and there, as long as they’re killed after they leave the womb of course,...
If you’re prohibiting murder that changes everything <<< even if you are evidently OK with it.
Does it? How / How does it change everything?
Well yeah!.. I mean, are westerners allowed to murder each other?
of course they’re not.
Hallelujah! <
Why?<
Coz we’ve got a match!
Ohhhh...!
look, again, do you happen to have a commandment against ... something really obvious like... I dunno,.. stealing?
Yea, I do,
and so does the west?,...
Of course they do
Great! That’s -what- two out of nine that match! what’s the tenth one?
Not giving false testimony against your neighbor.
Well that’s common sense, - I presume it’s also forbidden in western civilization?
Yeah,
Oh - well we’re fine then! Because having three out of ten in common is more than enough to claim that the morality of the west is based on all of them.
It is?,....
Sure it is! I’ll show you - um -Hey call Gabriel down here.
Why
Just call him I wanna show you something
Alright. Gabriel?! Gabriel!
Yes Lord? Hi Moses
Hey Gabriel: western civilization’s laws and morals are going to be based on the ten commandments.
No they’re not, we’ve talked about this, Lord, remember? The commandments are mostly irrelevant to just about every culture that ever comes along, <<< and if you want to be able
“Oh, really, how about “You shall not murder? You shall not steal? You shall not give false testimony? Huh? What about that, huh?”
Yeah, but every society has those laws and you’re not going to be the first....
Wow, that was so comprehensive and persuasive!!
It was?
He just proved to you that western morality IS based on the ten commandments! How can you not see that?! get out of here will you?
Gladly.
See - all you have to do is just completely ignore the commandments that run against the actual moral values that people hold, and argue noisily about the ones that they have in common.
So if they point out that nobody cares even slightly about graven images???....
Bring them back to murder and stealing...
What if they say how the west values religious freedom<<<<and would never
Ignore their common sense and bring em back to the one about murder
Working on the Sabbath, though, surely?
You shall not murder.
No Covetting?
You shall not murder.
...PAUSE... using my name in vain?
LAUGH - You shall not murder!
Oh, thanks Moses! My ten comandments will be relevant to western civilization after all!
HAPPILY: Well no, they won’t, but you WILL have people attempting to argue that they are.
Good enough for me!
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA The shit I get away with! 3 out of ten!
So we’d better make the murder commandment number 1, then eh??
Nah, let’s put it ....sixth, after the graven images and sabbath rules and all that.
Sixth? Do you really want my followers to have to argue that the sixth commandment is the most relevant? It’s a bit of a stretch,....
Nah they’ll be right.
Ooh, also - I think I’ll command them to not boil baby goats in their mothers’ milk.
Nice idea, I was going to suggest that, it’s just awful when people do that. best keep it for a later version of the ten commandments though
All of them?
Yeah, they all deserved it, so it’s cool, ... (Ex 14:21-26)
Yeah but hadn’t you hardened their hearts to make them do all that and therefore deserve it?
Never mind that Moses - let’s get to work on this project that we came up here to do, eh?
Yeah OK >>>
So you’re finally going to reveal the standards by which you’ll judge human behavior! .
That’s right ; so first off; most important. “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me,
Nice.
“...except if you do actually follow another god, which is totally OK too and we respect that.”
Huh?
Number 2,
Wait,
You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven or on the earth or in the waters below.
right,
You shall not bow down to them or worship them,
Ah haaa, good....
except if it’s part of your culture to do so or your religious tradition or something, pluralism important in our society, all that, so,.… Something along those lines, we’ll polish it up later. Number three.
hang on.
No we’ll come back to it.
But you’re commanding us not to do it,
Don’t get hung up on old testament details like an atheist would, OK? Next. remember the sabbath day by keeping it holy.
What, unless you don’t wanna I suppose,
Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh is a sabbath to the lord. On it you shall not do any work.
Yeah right, except if you ?
Moses! Do you mind?
So can we work on the sabbath?
Absolutely not - unless if it’s important that you do do some work on the sabbath, like if you have a job or something, in which case it’s OK if you really need to.
No Lord, we can’t go on like this. You’re giving commandments and then telling us it’s OK to break them. It’s ridiculous
Well... YOU”RE not looking at it in the right context or something???
You can’t change context right in the middle of a sentence,...
Ah- look I was hoping I wouldn’t have to explain this, but....
What?!
there’s this civilization coming in the future, Moses, you’ve got no idea.
Who
Well, it’s going to come to be known as Western civilization,
When.
it’s thousands of years away yet
Ugh, well so what then?
It’s so big. So advanced, So successful…
Sorry but what does this have to do with you writing commandments that include an invitation to do their direct opposite?
Well don’t you see? It’s very important that I be able to take credit for all of the greatness that western civilization achieves! I want its people to be able to say that these ten commandments are the basis upon which their legal and moral systems are built.
Well, OK, but I still don’t understand, Lord - why do you keep putting these weird cancellations on them all?
Well, that’s the thing
Surely the way to nurture a society towards becoming amazingly advanced and prosperous is by having theocratic prohibitions against working on certain days of the week and graven images, and all that.....
Well that’s where the problem lies, see- The more humanity progresses, the more it will come to base its laws and constitutions around things like Freedom. Liberty.
Freedom?
Democracy & self-rule. Opportunity, human rights, Justice for all,
So, well you haven’t commanded any of that here, yet by the looks of things...
Yeah, and I’m not about to either.
So, the laws and morals of this mighty, advanced western civilization aren’t going to come out of these commandments at all then?
Oh, don’t rub it in!
Yeah but that’s what you’re saying, right?
That’s why I have to put these loopholes on the ends of all the commandments, to make them reflect the way advanced future civilizations actually are!
I dunno, I reckon it may be taking things a bit far. Are your laws really that far removed from the kinds of laws that they end up following?
Yeah, They’ll work on whichever days of the week they want, I’m suggesting a death penalty for that. They’ll have religious freedom, I’m banning it. I’m banning graven images and ordering them to kill anyone who says things about me that I don’t like, whereas they’ll fight and die to protect each others’ freedom of speech and freedom of expression!
Well, look, if your laws are at such odds with values that actually produce and maintain an advanced civilization, why not just have different commandments!
WHAT?!!?!
It might be cheating a bit, but if liberty and freedom and freedom of expression and all of those western values make for such a powerful and healthy human society, command them instead of all the theocratic stuff about graven images and and blasphemy. That way your commandments WILL be the moral basis of the society you want to claim credit for.
But these commandments reflect my essential moral character! Do you think my problem with graven images is just some arbitrary whim or something? I frigging HATE graven images, man,
But why NOT command freedom and liberty? What’s so bad about them that you’d have a problem ?
Where would commandments like those leave you Israelites?
I don’t know, free? Progressing? Developing?
EXACTLY!! But I want you petrified, ignorant and violent! How else am I going to get the majority of my sacred scriptures to be a history of middle eastern military conquests, with me ordering and helping you to bring about the violent deaths of thousands and thousands of people including innocent women and children???....
Oh. That freedom and liberty sounded good.
Moses: you are free, in a way! free to worship me and only me as much as you like, you’re free to work on 6 days of the week without being killed for doing so , you’re free from the debilitating effects of coveting things, and…
What? Coveting?
Oh, didn’t we get to that commandment yet? Write it down...You will not covet your neighbor’s house or his wife or his servants or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
But let me guess: western civilization is going to get along just fine without having any laws against all that?
Yeah. They’re going to be capitalists.
Ugh, so you’re banning a fundamental driving force of their economic system?
So you think I should encourage it as well as ban it?
You can’t do that Lord, at all! You’re just going to have to come to terms with the fact that these commandments of yours have nothing to do with western civilization! What other commandments did you have in mind that’ll have absolutely no place in this civilization that you want to take credit for?
Well, I’ve got an outright ban on adultery,
And noone goes to jail for that, I assume,
Eventually, no, and neither do people who dishonor their parents.
Which you prohibit?
Yeah, on pain of death.
Oh, Jeez.
they’ll still display my commandments in their court houses and schools though, won’t they?
Why would they? They’re irrelevant!
Oh no I’m screwed! I can’t claim credit for their morality after all!! CRY CRY CRY
OK, look, there there, there there,
There’s such an easy solution to this though Lord, if only you could …
WHAT!!??!
If I could get you to budge on .... Well nah, don’t worry, forget
NO, WHAT?! TELL ME
It’s not possible, like you said, it’s your essential moral character, you can’t just change your mind...
what?
Well, if only you had like, say a prohibition on ...murder in these commandments...
yeah, that’s in there.
You’ve got a commandment prohibiting murder
Yep.
Why didn’t you mention it before?!
Well, I’m not that keen on it myself, really, You’ll see what I mean when you read about just how much killing I order and carry out.
You order murder and prohibit it?
No no - look within certain contexts who gives a shit?, a few dead kids here and there, as long as they’re killed after they leave the womb of course,...
If you’re prohibiting murder that changes everything <<< even if you are evidently OK with it.
Does it? How / How does it change everything?
Well yeah!.. I mean, are westerners allowed to murder each other?
of course they’re not.
Hallelujah! <
Why?<
Coz we’ve got a match!
Ohhhh...!
look, again, do you happen to have a commandment against ... something really obvious like... I dunno,.. stealing?
Yea, I do,
and so does the west?,...
Of course they do
Great! That’s -what- two out of nine that match! what’s the tenth one?
Not giving false testimony against your neighbor.
Well that’s common sense, - I presume it’s also forbidden in western civilization?
Yeah,
Oh - well we’re fine then! Because having three out of ten in common is more than enough to claim that the morality of the west is based on all of them.
It is?,....
Sure it is! I’ll show you - um -Hey call Gabriel down here.
Why
Just call him I wanna show you something
Alright. Gabriel?! Gabriel!
Yes Lord? Hi Moses
Hey Gabriel: western civilization’s laws and morals are going to be based on the ten commandments.
No they’re not, we’ve talked about this, Lord, remember? The commandments are mostly irrelevant to just about every culture that ever comes along, <<< and if you want to be able
“Oh, really, how about “You shall not murder? You shall not steal? You shall not give false testimony? Huh? What about that, huh?”
Yeah, but every society has those laws and you’re not going to be the first....
Wow, that was so comprehensive and persuasive!!
It was?
He just proved to you that western morality IS based on the ten commandments! How can you not see that?! get out of here will you?
Gladly.
See - all you have to do is just completely ignore the commandments that run against the actual moral values that people hold, and argue noisily about the ones that they have in common.
So if they point out that nobody cares even slightly about graven images???....
Bring them back to murder and stealing...
What if they say how the west values religious freedom<<<<and would never
Ignore their common sense and bring em back to the one about murder
Working on the Sabbath, though, surely?
You shall not murder.
No Covetting?
You shall not murder.
...PAUSE... using my name in vain?
LAUGH - You shall not murder!
Oh, thanks Moses! My ten comandments will be relevant to western civilization after all!
HAPPILY: Well no, they won’t, but you WILL have people attempting to argue that they are.
Good enough for me!
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA The shit I get away with! 3 out of ten!
So we’d better make the murder commandment number 1, then eh??
Nah, let’s put it ....sixth, after the graven images and sabbath rules and all that.
Sixth? Do you really want my followers to have to argue that the sixth commandment is the most relevant? It’s a bit of a stretch,....
Nah they’ll be right.
Ooh, also - I think I’ll command them to not boil baby goats in their mothers’ milk.
Nice idea, I was going to suggest that, it’s just awful when people do that. best keep it for a later version of the ten commandments though