While most of the world’s 7 billion people weren’t looking, the co-authors of the book Atheist Heart, Humanist Mind, went ahead and presented a set of “Ten New Commandments” that was assembled by 13 judges, out of 2,800 submissions, coming from 18 countries and 27 States in the United States of America.
You can almost here the cheering crowds.
The New 10
1. Be open-minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence.
2. Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true.
3. The scientific method is the most reliable way of understanding the natural world.
4. Every person has the right to control of their body.
5. God is not necessary to be a good person or to live a full and meaningful life.
6. Be mindful of the consequences of all your actions and recognize that you must take responsibility for them.
7. Treat others as you would want them to treat you, and can reasonably expect them to want to be treated. Think about their perspective.
8. We have the responsibility to consider others, including future generations.
9. There is no one right way to live.
10. Leave the world a better place than you found it.
Everyone is welcome to take this or leave it, of course. But here are my thoughts, with just a couple of, sjhall we say, prefatory notes.
First off, the authors are putting it out there for people to comment on and, perhaps improve. CNN reports:
Bayer (one of the authors) said humans are hardwired for compassion, and the scientific method and wisdom of crowds — or the tribes that gather online each day — will weed out bad ideas. In other words, this is an open-ended, and hopefully progressive, process, he said.
It is in that spirit, therefore, that I will share my thoughts.
And second, by framing this work as the “New Ten Commandments,” the authors invite comparison with the original Decalogue. More importantly, they make it inevitable for people to view their version as a prescription for living (please remember that point. It’ll be important later) life. This is not at all surprising – perhaps not even unintentional – considering how modern atheists have all but embraced proselytization.
With that out of the way, here we go.
1. Be open-minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence.
This sentiment is admirable, but I really don’t see how this can be considered a “new” commandment, especially since most of the world’s major belief systems already warn their adherents about the dangers of blind faith. The Dalai Lama, for instance, is famous for saying that where scientific evidence contradicts the assertions of Buddhism, science ought to prevail. The Vatican’s own science Guy (no, that really IS his name: Guy), says much the same thing.
In an interview with HuffPost Science editor David Freeman, Brother Guy (Consolmagno) said he believes the antagonism between scientific principles and religious faith exists mostly among fundamentalists.
“I mean fundamentalists on both sides,” he said, “because there are also science fundamentalists. And what is a fundamentalist? It’s somebody who is clinging to the fundamentals of their truth because they don’t have the confidence or the faith in their faith to be able to say, ‘I’m settled, I’m happy with this, let’s see where it goes.’ Fundamentalism is a sign of fear.”
On the other hand, if we were to view this new 1st commandment as being addressed to ordinary person, rather than the belief institutions, well, we will have to assume that that ordinary person is, himself, the kind of fundamentalist Consolmagno was referring to: a person who clings to a set of beliefs which he may have originally received from institutional sources, but who has since refused to heed the current teachings of those very same institutions.
Interestingly, it would seem that this commandment would actually run afoul of atheists themselves. Intrinsically, with its emphasis on “new evidence,” this commandment is temporally agnostic, i.e., it witholds final judgement until evidence comes along. Which, I feel compelled to point out, is not atheism.
2. Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true.
The thing that immediately jumps out is the poor construction of the secondary clause. No one has to “strive” to believe what they wish to be true.
Semantics aside, this commandment does seem to be sound advice for most ordinary situations. It calls for reasonableness and rejects wishful-thinking. But commandments are supposed to hold true for all foreseeable situations, aren’t they. And in that context, this commandment seems to fall apart.
In the absence of better information, everyone actually gravitates to what they deem “likely” to be true. “Likely” being defined by everything a person knows which might have some bearing on the situation at hand. What happens then when there is a dearth of applicable “stock knowledge?” When someone inexplicably recovers from an otherwise fatal illness, for instance. Will this commandment still be obeyed?
In that situation, strictly rational thought will tell people “we don’t know why your loved one recovered, but we’ll find out.”In other words, the person struggling to understand is presented with two options: to believe that divine intervention acted upon the problem, or that it’s all just random. There are no prizes for guessing how more than 90% of humanity will decide that question.
3. The scientific method is the most reliable way of understanding the natural world.
Agreed, although this seems less a commandment and more a statement of principle.
4. Every person has the right to control of their body.
Agreed, although – like the one before – this is not so much a commandment as it is a declaration of principle. More interestingly, it should be noted that the most effective laws are those which are the least equivocal. In this case, it can be argued that, as against the other persons, the right to control one’s own body might not be absolute. As they say, you’re right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.
5. God is not necessary to be a good person or to live a full and meaningful life.
I don’t see how this is a commandment. God may not be necessary, but belief in God is not irreconcilable with being a good person, and so on.
6. Be mindful of the consequences of all your actions and recognize that you must take responsibility for them.
This is basically what all religions say, except of course the problem arises when we arrive at the question: to whom are you accountable. Fundamentalist nuts have no qualms about taking responsibility for their actions, except that they insist they are answerable only to their deity. This commandment could have shut that logic down, but as presented, it stops short of saying “respect human laws.”
7. Treat others as you would want them to treat you, and can reasonably expect them to want to be treated. Think about their perspective.
The Golden Rule – of which this is a mere reformulation – is a bedrock principle in all major religions. So, basically, this is not a new commandment. And if people routinely ignore this rule when it is enunciated by their religions and belief systems, how effective will it be now?
8. We have the responsibility to consider others, including future generations.
Agreed.
9. There is no one right way to live.
Agreed, but wait. Isn’t that what commandments like these seek to do? Aren’t these prescriptions for how to live life? If they are (and yes, they are), then these ten new commandments are significantly weakened by the internal inconsistency.
10. Leave the world a better place than you found it.
That’s what everyone wants. No one – not even the most notorious megalomaniacs of history – ever believed that they were doing anything other than building a better future. So, I don’t see how this can be considered a commandment either.
And that’s that. Going through these ten new commandments, while it may be satisfying in a self-referential sort of way, leaves one with a sense of something missing. More specifically, it leaves out that which made the original so compelling: commandments which mandate a higher standard despite standing in direct conflict to human nature, or at the very least, the darker tendencies to which human nature is prone.
Thou shalt not kill, for instance. Or Thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s wife and daughter. Or Thou shalt not bear false witness.
The thing most people gloss over in regard to the original Decalogue was it actually left people free to do whatever the hell they wanted while creating a handful of exceptions that, if obeyed, would smooth human relations. It did not, as these new 10 do, attempt to say what people could or should do.
Any positive list, i.e., it tells you what to do as distinguished from a negative list that tells you what you can’t do, will be incomplete. And because of that incompleteness, it leaves the door wide open for relativism (that belief that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute) and objectivism, whether deontological or teleological. Which is to say these commandments don’t do anything at all, except perhaps to say that as long as you’re ok with what you’re doing, go ahead and do it. Aleister Crowley did a better job, to be honest, when he said “The whole of the law shall be this: Do what thou wilt.”
If the authors of this list sought to create a fuller moral foundation for atheism with these new commandments, I’m afraid they may have fallen short of that goal. They would have probably done better if they’d simply expunged the religious aspects of the old list, thusly:
I – I am the Lord thy God, you shall have no other gods before me
II – You shall not have any false idols
III – You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain
IV – Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy
V – Honour thy father and thy mother
VI – Thou shalt not kill
VII – Thou shalt not commit adultery
VIII – Thou shalt not steal
IX – Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour
X – Thou shalt not covet (neighbor’s house, wife, servants, etc.)
That leaves six, arguably religion-neutral, commandments. Now we can add:
- Maintain openness to reason and evidence;
- Thou shalt not suffer the diminution of the human dignity of others, nor allow your own human dignity to be diminished;
- Thou shalt not suffer the oppression of anyone’s beliefs; and
- Thou shalt not deplete the earth, nor render it unlivable for future generations.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.