The New Commandments - (Page 414 of Arguably)

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VANITY FAIR: Christopher Hitchens's Ten Commandments
This is a video that goes hand in hand with the essay.

In his review of the traditional Ten Commandments, I believe he does a fine job of pointing out relevant criticisms, and granting the wisdom when necessary. (Although I wish he had not tried to make the argument that the tenth tried to call women "property," as I think that argument is weak.)

As for the "commandments" he gives at the end, I find them to be well thought out, and I personally love the humor when he says,


All in all, I think he did a fine job of making the point that many others have tried to make, with slightly less success.

Hitch exposed that credulity of religious dogma when he penned this essay. The antecedent of the Ten Commandments is the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi which was a doctrine of social behavior and order that the Hebrews peculated. Religious apologists offer the piffling notion that without religion or commandments, people would be screwing in the streets (to quote Hitch) and that society would cease functioning morally. It does not occur to them that man has been surviving in tribes and communities for thousands of years (without commandments from God) because they realized that disparate behavior led to higher incidents of starvation, death, and social disorder. Quite simply, we require cooperative decorum for the survival of our species.