Crowd-Sourcing Vacuity: (non) Ten (non) Commandments for the (non) 21st Century

The authors of a new book entitled Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart, Lex Bayor and John Figdor, have it seems awarded $1000 prizes to the winners of their "Crowd-Sourcing the Ten Commandments for the 21st Century" contest.  More than 5,000 entries poured in.  The authors, or their colleagues, corralled all kinds of humanist bigwigs (Adam Savage, David Silverman, executive directors, presidents and founders galore) to judge the entries.  

And here (drum roll, please) are the ten.  Or six.  Or, well, if you want to be technical, the three, repeated a few times: 

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) Be open minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence. 
 
4) Every person has the right to control over 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) Be open minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence. 
 
10) Leave the world a better place than you found it.

First of all, it's striking that even with a Stanford professor on board, nobody here seems able to count to ten.  Or perhaps none of those thousands of contributors could think of anything new to say.  The first "non-Commandment," as John Loftus calls them (let's color it red), is repeated three times, in exactly the same words (1, 3, and 9), and then once more, in slightly different words (2).  (What are the odds that three people would phrase Non-Commandment 1 (3, 9) exactly the same?  Instead of, say, "Be open-minded (with a hyphen) and therefore alter your beliefs when new facts present themselves?"  Or "Change your mind when warranted?")

Numbers 4 and 5 are truth claims, not moral imprecations (leave them black).  8 and 10 are repeats, and corollaries of (7).  6 is purely psychological.

So when up-to-date atheists get together and try to think up some really good improvements for the Ten Commandments, what do they come up with?  The Golden Rule (echoing Buddha, Confucius, and Jesus, who said it was half the Law), plus "Plan for future generations" (implied by the Golden Rule) and "Think things through, and change your mind when the evidence warrants."

I love that last one, and hope to see New Atheists begin following it, some time soon.  (Even if its "more like a guideline, really.")  Up to this point, our atheist neighbors have often seemed among the most pig-headed creatures on the planet.  

If they were less pig-headed, for instance, they might recognize that evidence has always been a part of what Christians mean by "faith."  (Since we have explained this to them in such detail and with such repetition, now.) 

For instance, when Jesus explained the Golden Rule, he said all the commandments come down not to ten, nor even to three, but to just two: "Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  And love your neighbor as yourself."  Loving with your mind, of course, means thinking, following our Creator who has made us in His rational image by exploring reality rationally.  In any case, aside from some cherry-picking of Thomas in the Gospel of John, and a few verses in Hebrews 11, which we explained in True Reason, both the Bible and Christian history have been pretty insistent that yes, the Christian call to faith is a call towards the evidence, not away from it.  

And yet the enormous wealth of evidence we have cited to prove this fact, does not seem to have budged the opinions of radical atheists an inch.  Even those who know better STILL attack Christianity for its supposed insistence on Blind Faith.  

So our Secular Humanist friends have crowd-sourced the Ten Commandments, asking many of their top leaders to vet the results.  And what do they come up with?  The ancient Golden Rule and one of its more obvious corollaries.  Plus, "Oh, BTW, that thing on top of your neck is called a head, it comes with a brain inside.  Try the on-switch."  

The implication, drummed into the reader by repeating this point four times, is that no one else ever thought of doing that, before.  "Gee, thanks!  I was wondering what that thing was for!"  

Aside from failing to find 10 Secular Humanist non-commandments, some secular humanists have also recently taken to denying that Jesus lived 20+ centuries ago, undermining even the date Lex Bayor and John Figdor assign to their non-innovations. 

So apparently Secular Humanism doesn't claim to have much to offer the world anymore, apart from what we already know, in our hearts if not in our hands, one may say.  But maybe that's an improvement from the Humanist Manifestos of yore, not to mention Soviet Constitutions and such, which could at times be worse than unoriginal.  

The Tao, as C. S. Lewis said, is indeed eternal.  

(Afterward: Arizona Atheists points out that I made a mistake, in copying this list from "Debunking Christianity."  [I did also go to the original site, but overlooked this discrepancy.]   In the present version -- see below -- non of the "commandments" are repeated.  However, the two "new commandments" are every bit as morally vacuous, and in one case untrue as well.  So my overall impression of mush is, if anything, heightened with the addition of these two new "un-commandments."  See the first two posts below.)