After finishing “Positivist Republic: Auguste Comte and the Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1920″ tonight, I began re-reading some passages from neuroscientist Sam Harris’ short but cutting critique of religion, “Letter to a Christian Nation,” in which Harris targets, in succinct language, some of the more pervasive arguments for Christianity. Apparently not over my reading bug, I made it to page 19 before I felt compelled to highlight a particularly stunning passage. Here, Harris discusses the apparent timelessness of the Ten Commandments:

They are, after all, the only passages in the Bible so profound that the creator of the universe felt the need to physically write them himself — and in stone. As such, one would expect these to be the greatest lines ever written, on any subject, in any language.

I thought that was a key point. Lines directly penned by the all-knowing, omniscient god that set this universe in motion. We might expect the most profound and stunning words ever heard in human history. Harris:

Here they are. Get ready …

1. You shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make for yourself a graven image.
3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honor your father and your mother.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.

And Harris’ further commentary:

The first four of these injunctions have nothing whatsoever to do with morality. As stated, they forbid the practice of any non-Judeo-Christian faith (like Hinduism), most religious art, utterances like “God damn it!,” and all ordinary work on the Sabbath — all under the penalty of death. …

Commandments 5 though 9 do address morality. … Admonishments of these kind are found in virtually every culture throughout recorded history. There is nothing especially compelling about their presentation in the Bible. There are obvious biological reasons why people tend to treat their parents well, and to think badly of murderers, adulterers, thieves, and liars. It is a scientific fact that moral emotions … precede any exposure to scripture. Indeed, studies of primate behavior reveal that these emotions (in some form) precede humanity itself. … All of our primate cousins are partial to their own kind and generally intolerant of murder and theft. They tend not to like deception or sexual betrayal much, either. Chimpanzees, especially, display many of the complex social concerns that you would expect to see in our closest relatives in the natural world. It seems rather unlikely, therefore, that the average American will receive necessary moral instruction by seeing these precepts chiseled in marble whenever he enter a courthouse. And what are we to make of the fact that, in bringing his treatise to a close, the creator of the universe could think of no human concerns more pressing and durable than the coveting of servants and livestock?

…

If you think that it would be impossible to improve on the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures. Once again, we need look no further than the Jains: Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: ‘Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature of the living being.’ Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept. Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theologically defensible reading of the Bible. It is impossible to behave this way by adhering to the principles of Jainism. How, then, can you argue that the Bible provides the clearest statement of morality the world has ever seen?

I’ll add that there is no mention of the prohibition of rape, and we only need point to the glowingly immoral case of Moses himself in Numbers 31:

But Moses was furious with all the military commanders who had returned from the battle. “Why have you let all the women live?” he demanded. “These are the very ones who followed Balaam’s advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the LORD at Mount Peor. They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the LORD’s people. Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.

That folks can be compelled to worship a god who condones and even commands such ruthlessness and sexual depravity escapes my understanding.

But ahh, some might retort: where did you get your basis for judging whether an act is moral or not if it didn’t come from outside source? Arguments about a moral framework embedded in humans seems almost beside the point here. As Harris stated, many animals other than humans display what we might call ethical and altruistic behavior. Humans’ overarching sense of right and wrong is nothing terribly special. We tend to, in general, seek to lessen the harm done to our fellow man and promote the good, except, of course, when a man feels he has religion on his side. Then, and history supports this time and again, a man will by any means harm or oppress others for no other reason than to advance the influence of his faith.

The need to dismiss religion in polite society still and unrelentingly presses upon us as a species, and this will continue as long as man fails to, in turn, dismiss his fear of death and the dark. For, only one of many examples of religion’s power to completely expunge whole societies, look no further than Alexandria, Egypt, which, as I noted in this movie review of “Agora,” has been upended again and again for centuries by religious bickering and religiously fueled violence and bloodshed. Here’s a report of the most recent incantation of the predictable and century-long squabbles in that once illustrious city of learning and philosophy. Of course, Christians and most believers, in their frenzy to affirm faith, have disgraced and disparaged their own species for millennia, although they doubtfully possess the clear-mindedness to notice the carnage left in their wake.