For arguments sake let’s assume that the Earth was created by God (bear with me on this, even you non-theists, I’ve been thinking about it!). At each stage of his work he checked on it and made sure it was okay, only when he ‘saw that it was good’ did he move onto the next part of his project.

Once god had completed his Creation and had given Man, his supreme creature, stewardship over all things he left them to get on with it. God was always there for Man if they needed help and support but since they had eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge they had freedom of will and of choice in what they could do (bear in mind that the scriptures were written at a time where Man’s thoughts were mainly attributed to divine action and influence, the writers did not have the cognitive capability of attributing Man’s thoughts to anything other than supernatural influence; if it was good God made you think it, if it was bad the devil made you do it.) So Man’s early attempts at living were not going well, a brother killed his brother, father attempted to kill his son, a man built a ship to save animals and his immediate family from a flood but left the rest, his mother, father, aunts, uncles, all his and his children’s in-laws and all the people that helped him build his ship to perish (you don’t think he built that great boat all by himself?). Eventually, so we are told, god felt that the time was right to give Man a set of rules to live by, the ‘Ten Commandments’ (there were a lot more but the ‘Ten’ were the main ones, applicable to everyone within the community.) The question I often ask of atheists etc who condemn these ‘rules’ is ‘Which of the Ten Commandments proscribe something that you feel you have a need or a right to do or have done to you by someone else? With the possible exception of the First Commandment, an objection that can be obviated by reaching a closer understanding of the meaning of the term ‘God’ the others are rules for living together in a society, Respect for each member of the community and their possessions (you can choose which category a wife falls into?) and having respect for the community itself (Honour thy father and mother [respect the history and traditions of your society]. Do not use the name of the Lord your God in vain [‘name’ here means more than just a nomenclature it includes the whole ethos of the named one] .)

The other commandments are ‘rules’ for living in a community. nothing godly or spiritual about them, they just explain how to be nice to each other.

And what if god doesn’t exist, do the same rules apply?

The famed anthropologist Magerate Mead recorded that the first sign she saw in the fossils of humans of Civilisation developing was when she unearthed a skeleton with a broken femur that had ‘healed’. This person had been cared for and tended to whilst the bone set and afterwards when they were unable to take part in hunting. They were they given a less active role in the hunt or assigned another job in the community that did not involve running (or even standing unsupported)? Unlike in other animal societies they were not just allowed to die. If this was not a god-inspired code of practice or way of living then the evolution of the human brain and mind had instilled in them a community spirit of mutual assistance and dependency (to witness this development in action watch the documentary ‘One Million Years BC’ and see how the brutality of the cave dwellers towards each other was transformed when they encountered the cooperative morals of the coast dwellers who helped and respected each other. (this documentary also shows that Man invented the eyebrow tweezers before he invented the wheel. [think about it, even Neanderthals made and wore jewelry so mayhap early female Man dolled herself up a bit!])

Joshing aside, was there a factor in the evolution of the Homo Sapiens that brought about cooperation and ‘rules’ for communal living, if there was, would those ‘rules’ be very different from the ten commandments?

Man is not a solitary animal, he seeks community, indeed he needs community, to thrive. To live in a community successfully requires rules, whether these rules were given by god or by evolution is not the first issue to be dealt with here, it is that they are there and when followed a community turns into a society and all can flourish.

Think about it