DWill wrote:Okay, so not 10 min. after that last post, I found that the mailman had left Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart on my doorstep. One thing I can clear up now: the authors list their 10 Non-commandments toward the end of the book.

You know how you think you can judge a book when you first look at it, not by its cover alone but not by a whole lot of investigation, either? I have a favorable feeling about this book--for what little that is worth at this point!

Good to know, you can tell something by skimming through it a bit, one thing I don't like about ebooks.

I've now got my book and Dexter should have his within a few days.

I've ordered this book as well, the actual book.

Amazon charges $27 for the hardcover versus $17 for the Kindle version. But you can get the brand new book from third party sellers (on Amazon) for about $13. There's nothing about that pricing makes sense to me.

Yes, $27 is pretty damn steep. The author sent me a copy so I lucked out on this one. But had he not sent me a copy I'd have gone for a used version or at least the Kindle version.

We do have plenty of book discussions where the books are either free online or relatively cheap through Amazon.com. For this one I think the price will be worth the great discussion. But we'll try to have the next non-fiction discussion a bit cheaper.

If you do own a Kindle, you can download the introduction for free. It's subtitled: Questioning Everything.

Chris OConnor wrote:My issue is that the "10 Commandments" were commandments from a non-existent deity. So I have no interest in revising "fake" commandments. They should go in the garbage with no hesitation.

Well, now, the existence of the person, place, or thing where the message comes from doesn't necessarily make the message meaningless. Just because Gandalf is a made-up character, doesn't make any of the things he said unimportant literary or personally enriching.

Guy Montag's lessons and words in FAHRENHEIT 451are no less captivating when I consider that he's no more than ink of the page.

This is not me saying one way or the other the value of the 10 Commandments; however, the non-existence of the Judeo-Christian God does not, in my opinion, necessarily mean to toss out the entire thing without thought. But that's just my opinion.

You make a good point, Movie Nerd. But I don't know if anyone is saying, "Throw them out," in the sense that the Big 10 have no validity or meaning. The authors are talking about updating them, after all. The way I'm going to look at their use of the 10 Commandments as a platform is as a hook they're using in an increasingly crowded market for books offering alternatives to religion. You'd like for people to buy your book if you've taken the time to write one, and so they think they've come up with a pretty good theme to draw people in. Where they end up, with their 10 Non-commandments, is a far cry from the old 10, so they do appear to be fashioning something new, rather than trading on the notoriety of the original ones that Moses carried down the mountain.

However, implicitly they do validate the idea of 10 Commandments as a statement of foundational beliefs. So perhaps they would see the 10 Cs in a evolutionary context, with the old ones having served a purpose but now needing some rather drastic revision.

DWill wrote:You make a good point, Movie Nerd. But I don't know if anyone is saying, "Throw them out," in the sense that the Big 10 have no validity or meaning. The authors are talking about updating them, after all. The way I'm going to look at their use of the 10 Commandments as a platform is as a hook they're using in an increasingly crowded market for books offering alternatives to religion. You'd like for people to buy your book if you've taken the time to write one, and so they think they've come up with a pretty good theme to draw people in. Where they end up, with their 10 Non-commandments, is a far cry from the old 10, so they do appear to be fashioning something new, rather than trading on the notoriety of the original ones that Moses carried down the mountain.

However, implicitly they do validate the idea of 10 Commandments as a statement of foundational beliefs. So perhaps they would see the 10 Cs in a evolutionary context, with the old ones having served a purpose but now needing some rather drastic revision.

That is very true DWill. But I wasn't referring to the authors of the book. I was referencing what one of the posters said regarding their beliefs on the Commandments.

I plan on buying this book, if I can afford to order it the next time I'm at Barnes & Noble.

Oh, right, my mistake.

I suspect this book has very little to do with the commandments anyway. Maybe the authors are saying we need to "Rewrite the Ten Commandments" in a metaphoric way.

By the way, you don't need a Kindle to read the introduction. It's available on the web site.

http://www.atheistmindhumanistheart.com/sample-chapter/