Here's my problem with the Ten Commandments: why are there ten? ... Why not nine, or eleven? I'll tell you why: because ten sounds official. Ten sounds important! Ten is the basis for the decimal system, it's a decade, it's a psychologically satisfying number: the top ten, the ten most wanted, the ten best dressed. So having ten commandments was really a marketing decision. ... I give you my revised list of the Two Commandments: "Thou shalt always be honest and faithful to the provider of thy nookie", and "thou shalt try real hard not to kill anyone, unless of course they pray to a different invisible man than the one you pray to". Two is all you need. Moses could have carried them down the hill in his pocket, and I wouldn't mind those folks in Alabama posting them on the courthouse wall, as long as they provided one additional commandment: "Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself."

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Here's my problem with the Ten Commandments: why are there ten? ... Why not nine, or eleven? I'll tell you why: because ten sounds official. Ten sounds important! Ten is the basis for the decimal system, it's a decade, it's a psychologically satisfying number: the top ten, the ten most wanted, the ten best dressed. So having ten commandments was really a marketing decision. ... I give you my revised list of the Two Commandments: "Thou shalt always be honest and faithful to the provider of thy nookie", and "thou shalt try real hard not to kill anyone, unless of course they pray to a different invisible man than the one you pray to". Two is all you need. Moses could have carried them down the hill in his pocket, and I wouldn't mind those folks in Alabama posting them on the courthouse wall, as long as they provided one additional commandment: "Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself."" in the context of "George Carlin: Complaints and Grievances" to mean that wisdom is timeless.