Do you seriously need a God to tell you not to kill one another, not to steal, not not bear false witness?
3 Comments
Some would say that a belief in God helps them not to do those things. But that clearly isn’t true, as the countries with the lowest crime rates and most freedom are also the most secular.
Allowing for the fact that common sense is not universally common, normally intelligent human beings, even if they recently came down from the trees and were starting to hunt, could surely work out that it was in everyone’s mutual interest to have some rules so that the species/tribe/family could survive. There were hazards a-plenty without squabbling among themselves.
Killing one another is a no-brainer; stealing is pretty unacceptable in most life forms; and bearing false witness has a tendency to make people mad with you. Coveting your neighbor’s wife and his ass can have the same effect. So I don’t think these precepts have any basis in religion whatsoever. Moses might have been a lawgiver, but he was only codifying what was already mutually accepted. It’s called “common sense”.
Moses (c 1220 BC) wasn’t the first to write down laws in order to govern people’s behaviour. Circa 1750 BC , King Hammurabi of Babylonia produced a written code of law which he issued in An effort to justly govern his vast empire. The Stele of Hammurabi shows him receiving the code from the god Marduk. Perhaps, just perhaps, he thought that people would be more likely to obey this law (which refers to murder and stealing etc,) if they thought it came from a divinity on high.
Yes, to us it’s common sense, but maybe not to a people who have recently settled into cities long ago. This ‘common sense’ had to be codified way back then. And yes, we are still linking it to a deity for probably the same reasons!
Some would say that a belief in God helps them not to do those things. But that clearly isn’t true, as the countries with the lowest crime rates and most freedom are also the most secular.
Allowing for the fact that common sense is not universally common, normally intelligent human beings, even if they recently came down from the trees and were starting to hunt, could surely work out that it was in everyone’s mutual interest to have some rules so that the species/tribe/family could survive. There were hazards a-plenty without squabbling among themselves.
Killing one another is a no-brainer; stealing is pretty unacceptable in most life forms; and bearing false witness has a tendency to make people mad with you. Coveting your neighbor’s wife and his ass can have the same effect. So I don’t think these precepts have any basis in religion whatsoever. Moses might have been a lawgiver, but he was only codifying what was already mutually accepted. It’s called “common sense”.
Moses (c 1220 BC) wasn’t the first to write down laws in order to govern people’s behaviour. Circa 1750 BC , King Hammurabi of Babylonia produced a written code of law which he issued in An effort to justly govern his vast empire. The Stele of Hammurabi shows him receiving the code from the god Marduk. Perhaps, just perhaps, he thought that people would be more likely to obey this law (which refers to murder and stealing etc,) if they thought it came from a divinity on high.
Yes, to us it’s common sense, but maybe not to a people who have recently settled into cities long ago. This ‘common sense’ had to be codified way back then. And yes, we are still linking it to a deity for probably the same reasons!