Christopher Hitchens Creates a Revised List of The 10 Commandments for the 21st Century

Christo­pher Hitchens was there, rail­ing against reli­gion and war crim­i­nals one minute, and the next, it seems, he was gone, a vic­tim to esophageal can­cer in 2011. In the 2010 video above, Hitchens takes on one of the hoari­est pre­cepts of the Bible (and the Torah) and reimag­ines an updat­ed, sec­u­lar ver­sion. I mean, it’s not like the Ten Com­mand­ments are set in stone, right? (Rimshot!)

The first two-thirds of the video fea­tures Hitchens mak­ing his way through the orig­i­nal com­mand­ments one by one, pulling them apart for incon­sis­ten­cies and hypocrisy. For exam­ple Moses, hav­ing told his fol­low­ers Thou Shalt Not Kill, encour­aged them to then kill all the Mid­i­an­ites and save the vir­gin girls as chattel/prizes, which they then did.

Now, Hitchens does like the 8th Com­mand­ment (“Thou Shalt Not Steal”) because, hey, what soci­ety isn’t against steal­ing, and he saves his true admi­ra­tion for the exam­ple of “rare nuance and sophis­ti­ca­tion” in the 9th Com­mand­ment (“Thou Shalt Not Bear False Wit­ness”) because it looks ahead to a truth-based judge­ment sys­tem (and the Magna Car­ta.)

But for the rest, Hitchens sug­gests rip­ping it up and start­ing again. With a few snarky asides, the list, orig­i­nal­ly print­ed in Van­i­ty Fair, presents rules for liv­ing as an empa­thet­ic, ratio­nal human being in the 21st cen­tu­ry. He wraps it up with an anti-fun­da­men­tal­ist bow at the end.

I: Do not con­demn peo­ple on the basis of their eth­nic­i­ty or col­or.
II: Do not ever use peo­ple as pri­vate prop­er­ty.
III: Despise those who use vio­lence or the threat of it in sex­u­al rela­tions.
IV: Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child.
V: Do not con­demn peo­ple for their inborn nature.
VI: Be aware that you too are an ani­mal and depen­dent on the web of nature, and think and act accord­ing­ly.
VII: Do not imag­ine that you can escape judg­ment if you rob peo­ple with a false prospec­tus rather than with a knife.
VIII: Turn off that fuck­ing cell phone.
IX: Denounce all jihadists and cru­saders for what they are: psy­cho­path­ic crim­i­nals with ugly delu­sions.
X: Be will­ing to renounce any god or any reli­gion if any holy com­mand­ments should con­tra­dict any of the above.

While we’re talk­ing about rethink­ing the Com­mand­ments, George Car­lin had some sim­i­lar thoughts on the sub­ject.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens: No Deathbed Con­ver­sion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Read­ing List for Eight-Year-Old Girl

Bertrand Russell’s Ten Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Healthy Democ­ra­cy

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills and/or watch his films here.


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Comments (12)
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  • Thad. T says:

    How about split­ting Open Cul­ture into Open Cul­ture and Your Dai­ly Dose of Five Athe­ists. Then I can fol­low the first and ignore the con­stant rep­e­ti­tion of the same five white guys say­ing the same thing over and over.

  • Mark says:

    You don’t under­stand, Thad.

    This man wrote for Van­i­ty Fair. He’s legit!

  • Bill W. says:

    How inclu­sive! He for­got to men­tion in (IX) the state-spon­sored athe­ists who slaugh­tered mil­lions (of all reli­gions) in the 20th Cen­tu­ry alone.

  • Mo says:

    Peo­ple who use reli­gion as an excuse for geno­cide his­tor­i­cal­ly get big­ger results.

  • Hanoch says:

    “The first two-thirds of the video fea­tures Hitchens mak­ing his way through the orig­i­nal com­mand­ments one by one, pulling them apart for incon­sis­ten­cies and hypocrisy. For exam­ple Moses, hav­ing told his fol­low­ers Thou Shalt Not Kill, encour­aged them to then kill all the Mid­i­an­ites and save the vir­gin girls as chattel/prizes, which they then did.”

    Well, no. There are so many inani­ties here is hard to know where to start. To take just one exam­ple, the Torah states (in Hebrew) “Lo tirtzach” which means “do not mur­der”. The com­mand­ment, there­fore, per­tains, not to killing, but to unlaw­ful killing (i.e., mur­der). It would have helped if Mr. Hitchens actu­al­ly under­stood the top­ic about which he spoke.

  • Nate says:

    What if it’s in one’s nature (5th Com­mand­ment) to harm chil­dren, AKA pedophiles (4th Com­mand­ment)?

  • Ben says:

    Mr. Hitchens actu­al­ly did under­stand the dif­fer­ence. He had brought it up mul­ti­ple time in debate. He like­ly did­n’t want to raise the point for the pur­pose of sim­plic­i­ty and also because he was like­ly not the only one writ­ing this script.

  • Passerby says:

    Nota Bene:

    using a Blue Pen­cil means ‘A pen­cil with blue col­ored graphite’ — it is so cor­rec­tions and nota­tions can be tracked.

    Also, pho­to­copiers don’t copy that par­tic­u­lar shade of blue, so you can mark up a copy and not ruin the pho­to­copy-abil­i­ty of the orig­i­nal.

  • Daniel says:

    Cre­at­ing the dis­tinc­tion between “Thou shalt not kill,” and, “do not mur­der,” and sug­gest­ing that that changes every­thing is sil­ly and real­ly does­n’t change any­thing at all. Moses encour­aged his fol­low­ers to MURDER all the Mid­i­an­ites and save the vir­gin girls as chattel/prizes. Are you try­ing to sug­gest his mur­der­ous actions were “law­ful” killing, so he did­n’t real­ly break the com­mand­ment?

    Have fun try­ing to resolve the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance of say­ing Moses’ geno­cides and mur­ders were law­ful while at the same time prais­ing the com­mand­ment, “Thou shalt not kill,” and, “do no mur­der.” Also, the vast major­i­ty of CHRISTIANS refer to that com­mand­ment as, “Thou shalt not kill,” like he said, so why would he change it to, “do no mur­der?”

    The Bible is full of com­mon­ly mis­trans­lat­ed or mis­in­ter­pret­ed Hebrew words and phras­es. The Hebrew word “almah,” which peo­ple thought described Mary as a vir­gin for cen­turies and still do to this day, actu­al­ly also means sim­ply a “young woman,” so she was­n’t a vir­gin, if she even exist­ed in the first place. The birth canal is not a one way street.

  • JoJo says:

    Apol­o­gist for Iraq War.

  • Phil Jones says:

    Hi
    I feel pret­ty sure you know what sophistry means.

  • Jas says:

    So it’s still ok to keep vir­gins as chat­tel, Hanoch, as long as you kill the men­folk with­out mur­der­ous intent?

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