Carnival of the Godless: Lost Secrets

In September 1996, a group of maverick archaeologists disappeared into the desert on a Quixotic quest for Biblical artifacts. The months wore on and contact with the rest of the world became more and more sparse. When, by early 1998, they had not been heard of for half a year, search parties combed the area but found neither hide nor hair of them. They were eventually given up for dead.

That all changed in 2001, when a windburned, emaciated American was found wandering the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. She was wearing, almost as an ironic commentary on her state, the tattered remains of an Oasis T-shirt, the lyrics to "Wonderwall" barely legible on the back. Her boots had long since ceased to be useful and were held together with little more than duct tape and hope. Her hands were covered in scrapes and old scars, her face was a wreck, and her hair was unkempt as as wild as her still-bright blue eyes. She had a large, very full green duffel bag on her back.

She was discovered when she found her way into a local restaurant, croaked her desire for water, and collapsed onto the ground. She was rushed to the hospital and died of dehydration and heatstroke within the hour. Only once the authorities examined the contents of her duffel bag were any clues to her identity found.

The bag contained the shattered remains of a large number of stone tablets. They sat around a police station for some time until the woman's affairs had been taken care of. They were then sent to a university where, in the utmost of secrecy, the tablets were reconstructed. The archaic Hebrew in which the contents of the tablets were etched took further years to translate.

Eventually, the researchers concluded that they had found a list of missing Biblical Commandments, their number far exceeding the meager ten offered in the original book of Exodus. The knowledge, they felt, would rock the world of theology to its very core, and so they sat on the information for quite a while.

I, however, have the distinct pleasure of being able to bring to you this list of Lost Commandments, free finally of their shackles, made public for the first time here on Action Skeptics. In order to preserve their secrecy should somebody get this far and decide they'd rather not know the lost history of the Holy Land, I have placed them below the fold. Enjoy.

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Hear me, O sons and daughters of Israel, for thou wilt in the future of thy world see fit to commit many a grevious sin against the LORD thy GOD. These laws have I provided to Moses that he may set them in stone for all eternity, to be carried faithfully and followed by future generations, a divine accompaniment to the Ten Commandments that I bestowed upon thee last Friday. Thus speaks the LORD thy GOD:

XI. Thou shalt not publish studies that show a strong positive correlation between national religiosity and rates of violent crime, teen STDs, and teen abortion.

XII. Thou shalt not criticize close friends for their dogmatic tendencies.

XIII. Thou shalt not criticize religious or moral feelings, even should they be wrong.

XIV. Thou shalt not question the inerrancy of Biblical prophecy nor the committment of a self-proclaimed Biblical Literalist.

XV. Thou shalt not tout the high points of atheism.

XVI. Thou shalt not offer thine ideas on the topic of framing and promoting atheism.

XVII. Thou shalt not write Jesus fanfiction about the Son of Man's encounter with dinosaurs that survived The Deluge, no matter how humorous such a story might be.

XIX. Thou shalt always regard all of thine brethren in God as compassionate, no matter how often or egregiously they might fail to live up to that label.

XX. Thou shalt only share conversion stories when thou hast been converted into belief, never out of it.

XXI. Thou shalt only accept empirical findings if they jibe with My Holy and Inerrant Writ; anything else, no matter how obviously true, is false.

XXII. Thou shalt not look at the definitions of the words "atheist" and "agnostic" while smiting the logic of Thy LORD GOD's child Ray Comfort.

XXIII. Thou shalt not point out the absurdity and ignorance in religion's anti-gay stance.

XXIV. Thou shalt not make fun of silly, superfluous religious advertisement in America's Bible Belt.

XXV. Thou shalt not evaluate claims that Christianity is only successful due to divine miracles, especially shouldst thou choose to add a second part.

XXVI. Thou shalt not let the rest of the world in on Sweden's growing secularization.

XXVII. Thou shalt not use Ken Ham's Creation Museum as an object lesson in the failings of natural history museums that sinfully deny thy LORD GOD's Divine Words.

XVIII. Thou shalt not encourage hellbound atheists away from violence and extremism, for theirs is evil.

XIX. Thou shalt not share passionately and eloquently your perspective from a childhood of hellbound atheism.

XXX. Thou shalt under no circumstances advocate the selling of souls as a weight-loss solution.


XXXI. Thou shalt not attempt to explain the truth about macroevolution and microevolution to followers of the LORD thy GOD.

XXXII. Thou shalt not claim that hellbound atheism is anything more than substanceless, reactionary rhetoric.

XXXIII. Thou shalt not argue that denying a naturalistic source of morality does not justify an appeal to the LORD thy GOD.

XXXIV. Thou shalt not speak ill of of attempts by scientists to relegate a place in the world for religion.


XXXV. Thou shalt not spread the word among believers that hellbound atheists are not miserable wretches.

XXXVI. Thou shalt not claim that traditional religion is waging a losing battle.

XXXVII. Thou shalt not point out the contradictions in the laws of the LORD thy GOD, even those regarding rape.

XXXVIII. Thou shalt not make fun of a group of clownish strongmen who speak the glory of the LORD thy GOD.

Keep holy these laws so that thy future remains secure. There will come a time of inter-nets and world-wide-webs, and they must be free of sedition against the LORD.

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There you have it. It strikes me as kind of weird that there's a lost commandment that has been directly broken by every single submission to this edition of the Carnival of the Godless, but who am I to question divine providence?

Look for the next CotG in two weeks at The Uncredible Hallq, and keep on breakin' them commandments. You know you love to.