Creationism and the Ten Commandments

Christian fundamentalists are fixated upon the Ten Commandments. That’s pretty much all there is, as far as they are concerned, at least this is what it looks like to outsiders. Get those commandments etched in marble and put up at the courthouse or the capitol building, and we’re all set, we are a godly people.

And creationists say that the Ten Commandments depend upon young-earth creationism. Without creationism, there is no basis for the Ten Commandments. They may have a point there. In Exodus 20, it says that because God created the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh, humans should work six days and rest on the seventh. (Fundamentalists note: the seventh day is Saturday, not Sunday. But we’ll let that pass.) So without a six day creation, the Ten Commandments are invalid.

Well, there is no way around that argument. And since young-earth creationism is clearly incorrect (I refer you to my Encyclopedia of Evolution for 350,000 words of proof), then the Ten Commandments are out the window.

Lest you think this is bad news, think again. Trashing the Ten Commandments does not mean that we are all going to start jumping on each other and having wild sex and murdering one another like animals. (Actually nonhuman animals don’t do this; only humans do.) And this is because, even if the Ten Commandments as a list of commandments are invalid, the principles behind them are not. It is the principles that count, according to someone whose wisdom I trust a bit more than that of creationists. I refer to Jesus.

Back up a bit, to the Roman era Jewish theologians. One of them was asked, “Could you summarize the law of God while standing on one foot?” His answer was, “Don’t do to anybody else what you would not want them to do to you.”

The Golden Rule.

Jesus said it too. His summary was to love God (which is the point of the first commandments) and to love your neighbor (which is the point of the last commandments). It is sort of intuitive to humans who evolved as an at least partly altruistic species. It shows up in most religions and philosophies.

So let the creationists have their Ten Commandments. I will pay attention more to the Golden Rule.