Commandments

[talon]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6573KQ20100608?type=domesticNews

Christopher Hitchens is taking on the Ten Commandments.

I personally think this is a good idea. The Commandments should be reviewed and updated every now and then, especially as societal conditions and language change. We Numenists did it decades ago.

While there are several versions of the Ten Commandments (some with more than 10) in the Bible, let's go with the most common one with an eye to how we, as Numenists, viewed them and what changes we made to make our own set of "commandments".

1 "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.

We Numenists don't believe in a single, separate, ascendant type of deity so this Commandment is irrelevant to us. We believe in a generative, creative force that is pervasive as air or water, submolecular and supramolecular, composed of every bit of particulate matter we can perceive and all that we have yet to perceive as well as any conceptual or spiritual matter. When it is everything, then nothing can be before it. We Numenists are rather flexible about how we perceive and interact with this creative, generative force, shaping it to fit our capabilities and perceptions and in turn being shaped by the deities we carve out of the gestalt for ourselves. Whether we choose one all-encompassing deity, a pantheon of smaller gods, or a host of numena, we always know these are personal constructions created for our limited physical perceptions, and that therefore all Gods and numena are individuals and are not interchangeable - nor more than you are interchangeable for me. It makes sense, then, to us, that this particular God is determined to retain its individuality and will take extreme measures to ensure it is not conflated with other Gods or given the duties of caring for people of other cultures. It is a very exclusionary and elitist God, and that's not for us. We don't want to forget that the individual divinities are separated out for a variety of reasons and we respect the individuated divinities within their cultural contexts - but they are only part of the greater generative creative force in the same way you and I are. When we as individuated corporeal beings die, we return to the creative generative force and we are deconstructed to our smallest component parts - and those minisucle bits are used to create new, different individuated corporeal beings. It's not reincarnation per se, but it is immortality because we believe that if we could transcend the physical barriers being individuated corporeal beings, we could access all the knowledge, personalities, and experiences that ever were, are, will be, or might be. Some of us can reach farther into Dea Nutrix than others and thus know and remember more of other individuated corporeal beings. Overall, though, this Commandment is therefore not one that is relevant to us and we dropped it.

2 "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments.

And here is a continuation of the first Commandment, equally irrelevant to us. All those images and idols are of aspects of Dea Nutrix, all are composed of particles and molecules and such of Dea Nutrix, making all of them all of that. Here, this God states clearly that he doesn't want to be confused or conflated with any other God anywhere ever. He is his own self and the people he considers to be his had better not forget that ever. While this fits into our theology, it isn't a popular one with us - we prefer our Gods to be civil, or at least professional, towards one another, not insanely jealous and selfish. So we dropped this Commandment, too.

3 "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.

This one we debated a while. We researched what Biblical scholars had to say on this matter, and decided that we agreed that taking anyone's name in vain, applying it wantonly and wrecklessly to spurious oaths and such was Not Nice, but we also didn't think abusing a deity's name was worth the excessive punishment meted out Biblically. So we modified it for our use.

4 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

We like the idea of a day of rest and leisure. In today's 24/7 society, having a dedicated day of rest and reflection isn't possible on a large scale. So we modified it based on today's societal demands - one day a week set aside for leisure and fun and reflection, but portable during the week. Numenists are encouraged to select a day of the week (any one day in a seven day period) and make that their day of rest. This one we modified for our use.

5 "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

This one we thought long and hard about. Given that there are so many bad parents around (and there were bad parents in pre-Christian times), and there is so much child entitlement and abuse going on, we felt this was too limiting and gave too much abusable power to one group of people. We spent some months discussing this and modified, it too.

6 "You shall not kill.

This was another one that generated a lot of debate, mostly over semantics. Killing is sometimes needful and there shouldn't be a blanket moratorium on killing. It shouldn't be easy, but neither should it be completely banned. Killing in self defense or in defense of those under one's protection and care is acceptable. Killing out of some warped internal need is wrong, as it wanton or malicious killing and murder. Because we view all of us as Dea Nutrix, albeit currently separated out, we know that death restores us back fully into Dea Nutrix. We don't die so much as we alter being. Killing and suicide are therefore not sins for us just because they induce physical death. However, we recognize the intrinsic right of each corporeal being to exist in its current form for so long as it wishes (barring accidents, disease, and physically wearing out) and deplore the premature ending of life without seriously good cause.

7 "You shall not commit adultery.

According to our research of Biblical scholarly works on this Commandment, it seems that the consensus is that "adultery" is a "man having sex with a married woman to whom he's not married". The man's marital status isn't mentioned, ever, and apparently it's not adultery if the woman is not married, however, it is always the woman's fault. And that, we think, is wrong. It takes at least two people to have sex (with one person, it's masturbation, a type of sex, but not sex as we commonly think of it), therefore we didn't think it would be right to call it adultery only if the woman was in a committed relationship with someone else and it's not adultery if the sex is non-consensual. It is adultery if either the man or the woman is in a committed and oathed relationship with another person and the sex is consensual between them. Discussion on this Commandment led to us creating a Condom Compact and to defining marriage in terms of Numenism. We completely changed this Commandment as a result.

8 "You shall not steal.

According to the Biblical scholars, "steal" actually means "kidnap" here, and we agree that kidnapping is wrong, so we modernized the wording to reflect the intent. Actually, we altered it entirely because we felt kidnapping alone wasn't enough for an entire Commandment.

9 "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

This is the only Commandment we felt we didn't need to change.

10 "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's."

After studying a few Biblical scholars on this, we determined that this is the "thou shalt not steal" Commandment. The wording is archaic and it triggers feelings of thought police and all that, so we re-wrote this one to be more truly aligned with both the intent and modern language.

In the end, this is what our commandments looked like:

1. Cause no willful, malicious harm to those living or their property.
2. Make amends where possible.
3. Set aside one day in seven for rest and reflection.
4. Bear no false witness.