The Einhorn (Unicorn) Press

The Ten Commandments

 Union Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, 11th Illinois Cavalry            

The Ten Commandments and divine inspiration or holiness of the Bible were being questioned seriously, not unlike today, by educated leaders in the nineteenth century.  One such dignitary was Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll (1833—1899), the son of an abolitionist preacher.  He commanded the 11th Illinois Cavalry, a regiment that fought at the Battle of Shiloh and elsewhere during the American Civil War.  After the war, the renowned lawyer served as Illinois Attorney General and later passionately lectured against the validity of the holiness attributed to the Ten Commandments recorded in the Bible.  And his well-publicized orations did not go unnoticed by the American clergy.  In rebutting a prominent minister’s argument against one of his famous lectures, in an interview printed in the Chicago Times of May 29, 1881, he declared:

“If the Bible is true and God is its author, then God was in favor of slavery 4,000 years ago.  He was also in favor of polygamy and religious intolerance. In other words, 4,000 years ago he occupied the exact position the Devil is supposed to occupy now.  If the Bible teaches anything, it teaches man to enslave his brother,* that is to say, if his brother is a heathen.  The God of the Bible [not unlike Allah of the Koran] always hated heathens.

“Dr. Fulton also says that the Bible is the basis of all law. Yet, if the Legislature of New York would re-enact next winter the Mosaic code, the members might consider themselves lucky if they were not hung on their return home.  Probably Dr. Fulton thinks that had it not been for the Ten Commandments, nobody would ever have thought that stealing was wrong.  I have always had an idea that men objected to stealing because the industrious did not wish to support the idle; and I have a notion that there has always been a law against murder, because a large majority of people have always objected to being murdered.

The common abbreviated form of the Ten Commandments 

“If he will read his Old Testament with care, he will find that God violated most of his own commandments—all except that ‘Thou shalt worship no other God before me,’ and, maybe, the commandment against work on the Sabbath day.  With these two exceptions, I am satisfied that God himself violated all the rest.  He told his chosen people to rob the Gentiles; that violated the commandment against stealing.  He said himself that he had sent out lying spirits; that certainly was a violation of another commandment.  One of the commandments was that you should not covet your neighbor’s property.  In that commandment you will find that a man’s wife is put on an equality with his ox.  Yet his chosen people were allowed not only to covet the property of the Gentiles, but to take it.

“If Dr. Fulton will read a little more, he will find that all the good laws in the Decalogue had been in force in Egypt a century before Moses was born.  He will find that like laws and many better ones were in force in India and China, long before Moses knew what a bulrush was.  If he will think a little while, he will find that one of the Ten Commandments, the one on the subject of graven images was bad.  The result of that was that Palestine never produced a painter, or a sculptor, and that no Jew became famous in art until long after the destruction of Jerusalem.  A commandment that robs a people of painting and statuary is not a good one.  The idea of the Bible being the basis of law is almost too silly to be seriously refuted.”

That commandment is found in Exodus 20:4, the second of the so-called Ten Commandments, which declares: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water below.”  Also, Deuteronomy 27: 15 warns, “Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image.”  Over a hundred years now since Ingersoll wrote the above, one Internet Web page exclaims: “That’s right kids don’t EVER draw, sculpt or paint or else god will curse you.  Wanna be an artist, a photographer, take a picture of yourself or family?  TOO BAD, God says no!  You better drop out of art class before he smites you with boils.”  This comment is quite defining and obviously points to one of the reasons why so many people do not want to see the Ten Commandments in our schools—and can you blame them?

Of course, what most people do not realize today is that the Ten Commandments were authored by Moses, and the god to whom he assigned them was nothing more than an electric carbon arc light blazing away atop the Ark or Arc of the Covenant.

*It's ironic that today the majority of blacks revere the Bible, especially since it endorsed slavery, a diabolical institution that their ancestors could hardly have appreciated.