But I Don't Understand

Pat Robertson:

"As Ted Koppel said, "These were not 10 suggestions; they were Ten Commandments." There is someone who is putting billboards around the country. One of the billboards says, "What part of 'Thou shalt not' don't you understand?" It's a wonderful statement. What don't you understand about what God was saying to you?"

"You start off, "thou shalt not murder." The word has to do with murder. We're not talking about a judicial execution by law, but you shall not murder. All the way down the commandments, 'thou shalt not.' When you find that all the way down, what does it imply? It implies you're already doing it and it implies that these are things that you need to be restrained from doing because you have an attitude to do it."


I JUST DONT GET IT; I DON"T UNDERSTAND



So what is it about “Thou Shall Not” don’t you understand?

My answer: Plenty of things, Pat.

List of Grievances for Pat “the silly, senescent charlatan” Robertson:

1. The first four commandments have nothing to do with morality but rather address God’s own personal insecurities

2. In fact, none of the commandments besides “killing” and “stealing” have any moral significance. For example, besides the irrelevant first four, “coveting” is a mental activity- if that makes any sense. It’s a pseudo law about what you should or should not “think.” If anyone finds it unproblematic to create a moral law about what one should “think,” they should be reminded that to make this enforceable God would have to be “in our heads” and monitoring our thoughts. What the fuck? No, thanks; stay out of my head. Secondly, read George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” In a miserable, future totalitarian society people can be punished for “thought crime.” These are oddly parallel.

3. So Moses goes up to the mountain. He comes back down, gets angry, and bust the tablets all to shit. So he has to go back up and tell God “well, I need another pair of tablets.” What is all this going up and down? Why doesn’t God just make the tablets suddenly appear in Moses’ hands at the base of the mountain? Maybe God already had the second tablets made before Moses came back? God says “I knew you were going to do that, so I just scribbled nonsense on the first tablets.” - Maybe somebody picked up the first set of tablets, fumbled them around with the second tablets. What’s with all this secrecy, anyway? Why does God always have to talk to some lunatic alone, and then say “ok, now you go tell the others what I said.” Don’t give me this “God works in mysterious ways” bullshit. That means you don’t know why none of this makes sense.

4. Thou Shall Not Kill, Thou Shall Not Steal, and Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness (lie) are what we call “normative” laws. “Normative” means they apply universally and in all situations, no exception. What’s the problem here? So you’re not going to give false information to a lunatic who’s bent on destroying something but needs your information to carry it out? You would never steal even a loaf of broad, which no one in the world would notice missing, if it were the only way to feed your family that day? You’re not going to kill someone in defense of either you, your family, or your country? So you see, normative laws tend to describe good people as immoral fools. Anyway, people will always think through moral dilemmas in a situational, in-context way. They will justify their own exceptions. So to believe in normative laws is counter-intuitive and, worse, it turns out to be contradictory to the what you actually believe.

5. We don’t need a Ten Commandments to tell us that we shouldn’t kill other people. We would have, nay, we actually did, come up with that on our own. Here’s how it works. A group of people begin discussing the prospect of living together in a group to divide up the burdens of living. They say “ok, you don’t take my shit, I won’t take your shit, and lets not kill each other.” There you go.

6. People generally, even if they had the means, could not, would not want to, are grossed out by, killing other people. It’s a very natural disposition probably an evolutionary inheritance. To say we need a law seems to imply that we are intrinsically murderous without them.

7. What the hell is Pat talking about by saying judicial executions are okay? Since when was that so obvious? Look, it’s not obvious. Pro-death penalty is at odds with Christianity. It’s said that Jesus gets rid of the old eye for an eye law.

8. This could go on forever. Feel free to add on to this list….