True Morality: The Immorality of Religious Morality

The Five “Good” Commandments

The famous five are “Thou shalt not kill.  Thou shalt not commit adultery.  Thou shalt not steal.  Thou shalt not bear false witness.  Thou shalt not covet [...] anything that is thy neighbour’s.”  Murder and lying are definitely wrong in general-there are, for some, exceptions which I cannot here get into but I am an advocate of the need never to kill, at all! and I try not to lie either, at least about important things, on this I’m no paradigm, but this is a debate for another time.  Stealing is only a crime where private property is a cultural concept and is by no means a universal principle, of course neither is Judaism, Christianity, or Islam but each think that they have hit the nail on the head in regard to what is right and good, and it applies to most of their lands, as well as my own philosophy so I am inclined to praise this-just not too loudly.  As for adultery, I am afraid I cannot be so admiring.  Monogamy is by no means natural, even if in humanity there is a tendency towards it as a preferable way of existing, especially in modern societies (though not all remember).  Monamory, that is loving only one individual, is even less natural and there is nothing inherently wrong with this save through the emotional weight of the power of love which, being fairly possessive much of the time, is not always willing to share.  Certainly, I have never experienced polyamory, but I do not deny its existence because I have loved multiple girls though at different times, and I can understand, if not fully, how such would be applicable to two or more simultaneously.  Thus, there is nothing wrong with adultery unless it hurts someone-which, yes, in modern society is the most likely outcome, but one would hope that god would realize that exceptions disprove rules.  It is positively immoral to forbid what hurts people most of the time.  (I don’t think this contradicts my definition of morality, for this alone among those areas I have discussed is subjective to a monumental degree).

The most abhorrent commandment however is the last: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour’s”.  (Almost as an aside, as the misogynism hardly need be mentioned really prevalent and widespread as it remains to this day in theistic morality: in Deuteronomy’s account of the Ten Commandments one’s neighbour’s wife is first on the list, as if that desire is expected).  God is the first, to my knowledge, to institute that Orwellian nightmare, thought crime!  One may not desire what one has not!  I doubt anyone can name anything more immoral than that.  This is a position particularly close to the hearts of Hitchens and Dawkins because of its relevance to the detriment of children’s happiness in their religiously justified indoctrination, and is something with which I am greatly concerned: it worries me that parents have the audacity to force their children to become Christian, or Buddhist, or Muslim, or whatever, it is a practice which is not only disgustingly immoral but shamefully ignorant.  One doesn’t call the children of a Tory a Tory-child, does one?-and because it’s ridiculous!  (I think I’ve well and truly broken Number Five here).  The wickedness of god is blatant, I will say just one more thing on that subject.  After only the second commandment one finds this in warning against idolatry: “for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me”.  Think of it this way, you are, say, thirty years-of-age: if a generation is thirty years your great-great-grandfather (to whom you are the fourth generation of descendant) was likely born in 1890, unless he lived to be over ninety years-of-age you probably never even saw him alive, unless he was over one-hundred you are unlikely to really remember him.  He, say, at the sweet age of twenty “covets” his mate’s wife, that is he sins through thought: you still must pay; you are still accountable.  Immoral-clearly.  There was here actually nothing you could do, reader: but that’s it, the mark of sin scars your soul forever for the thoughts of a man you never knew.  Mark Twain once wisely said that “[i]t ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand”.