I'm Christopher Hitchens and implausible though it may seem I want to talk about the 10 commandments who am I you may well asked to instruct or advise you on these grave matters but even Moses himself was a revisionist and issued at least four versions of the decalogue or the top ten so if he can be a revisionist well so can I picture them if you will that I'm not just taking a blue pencil but an actual chisel and seeing if these tablets of stone could possibly stand a bit of an update for our time numbers one and two actually don't have anything to do with ethics at all they are injunctions they remind or instruct you that I am the Lord thy God that thou shalt have no other gods before me and they forbid the making of graven images the Commandment against the making of Craven images or images of God is very upsetting to many Catholics who often leave this bit of the Commandment out because where would Christian art and devotional painting be if you couldn't make impressive images of God his son his son's mother then we are rather sternly ordered not to take the name of this God in vain and it's then added rather superfluously that you won't be held Guiltless if you do take the name of this Lord in vain well no one has ever worked out exactly how to obey this commandment is it taking the lord's name in vain to shout God is great while blowing yourself up and killing innocent people some say it's obedience to the law of God when I say God knows I really mean I think that nobody knows it's usually wise when promulgating Eternal laws to be clear about what you mean remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy the Christians who want this inscribed in courtrooms and in school rooms would end up taking Saturday off rather than Sunday because this program of Commandments is actually a program for the establishment of a fundamentalist Jewish State commandment number five enjoins that thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother which seems reasonable enough it's an interesting commandment because when given in full it says that if you do so you will have a longer tenure of the land that's been promised to you it's one of the few Commandments that comes within it with a an inducement if you will it even seems to suggest that you should honor your father and mother because you expect a legacy from them number six Thou shalt not kill almost immediately after the events at Sinai and the delivery of these instructions by God from the top of the mountain Moses orders all his supporters to draw their swords and kill all their friends and brothers for their profanity number seven Thou shalt not commit adultery the Turkish government an Islamic party recently tried to make this actual law in Turkey itself but failed it's difficult to see why this well-known offense should be classified with murder and theft and perjury usually the punishment for those who committed is what you might call self-inflicted commandment number eight thou shalt not steal very little to quarrel with here we don't know of any society that has a commandment saying it's okay to steal or a social custom that allows it then we arrive at a moment of of comparatively rare nuance and sophistication Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor the idea of convicting someone who is Innocent by burying false Testament against them is and should be shocking to the entire human conscience so this is not only one of the finest of The Commandments maybe the finest but in its stress on the not and the uh false witness against um it shows a very rare and careful sense of the balance and scruple that's required for judgment and Justice the last of at least this version of The Ten Commandments is also sometimes Famous by its number number ten it forbids the coveting of your neighbors or thy neighbors Goods these to include his ox his ass his wife I think there may be three thinkable objections here first and most obvious it considers the female of the human species to be equivalent to the chattel second by way of objection it's the only Commandment that punishers thought here you're not forbidden to do anything you're forbidden to think even about something and third the attempt to suppress an instinct a desire that must have been put by God into us in the first place otherwise how would we know the essential division of opinion is this did God make man or did man make many gods there are enough discrepancies just in the well-known version for us to be certain that we're looking here at a God who improvises who's jealous who's short of temper who's inconsistent or if by any chance God didn't make Moses in the Hebrews that the people who made God were jealous short-tempered inconsistent and capricious in their turn I don't know about you but as between the consideration that man was made by God or that many gods were made by men I've never thought there was much doubt as to which was the correct version how might a decalogue look if it was written for the 21st century I never quite trust myself beginning a sentence by saying Thou shalt not but let's see if we can adapt this famous question number one do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or their color number two do not ever even think of using people as private property or as owned or as slaves three despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations number four hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child number five do not condemn people for the inborn nature why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and Destroy them number six be aware that you too are an animal and dependent on the web of nature try and think and act accordingly number seven don't imagine that you can escape judgment if you rob people with a false prospectus rather than with a knife number eight turn off that cell phone you can have no idea how unimportant your call is to us number nine denounce all jihadists and Crusaders for what they are Psychopathic criminals with ugly delusions and terrible sexual repressions number 10 be willing to announce any God or any faith if any holy Commandments should contradict any of the above in short don't swallow your moral code in tablet form [Music]