Say What You Will About the Ten Commandments, At Least There Are Only Ten of Them

The 60s are out. Forget about liberals. Non-Christians, not a chance. Homosexuals can stick it somewhere else, figuratively speaking. Independent thought, “deviant.”

That sums up the worldview of Dean Gotcher, founder and director of the Institution for Authority Research, who presented his Bible-based critique of Marxist dialectics at a local church event I attended in Ft. Worth last week.

He takes two muddled hours to explain that you can’t make any sense from combining fundamentally opposing ideas. That’s what fundamental differences mean, after all. He neglected to discuss other forms of dialectics such as the Sacrotatic method, among others.

To Gotcher’s credit, he was able to tie together a whole grab bag of ideas as diverse as the central nervous system to Patriarchal rule. I also appreciated how he cast human morality in strict, black-or-white terms. Christians like Gotcher do provide a framework of rights and wrongs, good and bad.

However, that framework is gloomy arbitrariness, not rational judgments. Just take him at his word. “This is a book of suffering,” he said, referring to the Bible. He continued, “Apart from God’s word, you have no opinion.”

The loathing of human beings with his expressions like “Man is bad” and “Deny yourself” are not rooted in reason. They just are not. The proper purpose of morality benefits human virtue rather than shame it. Later, Gotcher is more direct. “I’ve met the enemy,” he said. “He’s not out there; he’s inside.” He again repeats his assault,”You are wicked. There is no hope in you.”

Gotcher berated gays, liberals, and women again and again.

Referring to gays, he said, “Dialectics is built on homosexuality.” I think he meant the other way around, but he didn’t correct himself, either.

“[Benjamin] Bloom is secularized Satanism,” he said. Holding a copy of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Education, he added, “For liberals, this is like candy.”

He said women and children should also know their role, which it turns out doesn’t amount to much. As a guiding rule for fathers, “When he tells his son ‘take the trash out,’ that is the word of God,” Gotcher said, pointing to his chest. To husbands, “In your homes, you rule.”

I quickly tried to write down his most memorable lines but I didn’t get everything, and I also have no interest in listening to the audio taping.

After returning home, I just felt soiled by his ideas. Though, the experience was not a waste in the slightest because I got to hear Pastor Jim Borchert give a short impromptu address to the group. He’s a real contrarian. I heard him for about five minutes, and now I have no shortage of respect for him.

Oh, yea. The title is a paraphrase of H.L. Menken’s line, “Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.”

Here’s another good one by HLM. “It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities.”

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