Regarding God's Ten Commandments

*The Ten Commandments, unlike most laws generated by most legal systems and processes therein, are authoritarian (as in dictated by a dictator in a dictatorship), not democratically arrived at by any form of due process.

*The Old Testament details the Ten Commandments three separate times. You have the original set in Exodus 20: 2+ which was the set, set in stone, which Moses broke. You have a third close to near set of the originals (really unnecessary duplication) that's listed in Deuteronomy 5: 6+. But, you have that second set in Exodus 34: 10+ which replaced the set broken by Moses and which presumable is THE set encapsulated in the Ark of the Covenant. The problem is that this replacement set is not only DRASTICALLY different from the other two recordings, but Commandments you wouldn't want to follow in a pink fit.

*It's a Tenth Commandment sin to have envy or jealousy and covet your neighbor’s slaves, but it's not a godly or a Biblical sin to actually have slaves! If God was opposed to slavery why didn't he issue an 11th Commandment "Thou shall not own another person" (i.e. - a slave)?

*If God doesn't want humans to worship other gods, then God took His bloody sweet time in letting humans (and a rather select group of humans from just a tiny geographical part of the world at that) know that since other gods ruled the religious / theological roost for many thousands of years before God turned up unannounced and uninvited to the party.

*The original Ten Commandments (although not the final version) we get rather unimportant stuff like no other gods before God, and no worshipping idols and no taking God's name in vain and do not work on the Sabbath, etc. So what's missing that any moral deity would have, and should have included? Well what about thou shall not commit rape; thou shall not commit genocide; thou shall not own another human being (slavery) [#]; thou shall, as parents love your children; thou shall not commit child abuse; thou shall not commit animal abuse; thou shall protect the environment; and of course thou shall endorse women's rights.

[#] That all the more the case given God's actions in Exodus - "Let my people go".

*The question really boils down to, couldn't YOU have done a hell of a lot better job in coming up with the Ten Commandments?

*Contrast the following Commandment in Exodus with Luke 14: 26

Exodus 20:12 (King James Version)
“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.”

OR

Deuteronomy 5:16 (King James Version)
“Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.”

Hence…

Exodus 21:15 (King James Version)
“And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.”

Exodus 21:17 (King James Version)
“And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death.”

Luke 14:26 (King James Version)
“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”

*Consider God’s ‘Thou shall not kill” Commandment in Exodus or in Deuteronomy.

Exodus 20:13 (King James Version)
“Thou shalt not kill.”

Deuteronomy 5:17 (King James Version)

“Thou shalt not kill.”

Now that apparently doesn’t apply to someone you know who 1) violates the Sabbath; 2) erects a graven image, or 3) takes the Lord’s name in vain. Then you are supposed to kill them!

And we all know about this contradiction.

Exodus 22:18 (King James Version)
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”