A good question might be why we would want to pay homage to the 10 Commandments by rewriting them. I mean, I don't know, why not just let them remain as an historical monument of sorts, acknowledging that they were extremely important to Western Civ. I don't have much against them, but I wonder why, if there's an interest in doing without religion, we'd want to ape religion. To me the matter is similar to atheists wanting to have churches, which seems to be an envy of the corporate power of religion. Atheism isn't going to be able to be that kind of force. It isn't really anything in particular, after all, except the absence of belief in an involved deity. That doesn't get you very far in setting an agenda that people are going to flock to.

DWill wrote:A good question might be why we would want to pay homage to the 10 Commandments by rewriting them. I mean, I don't know, why not just let them remain as an historical monument of sorts, acknowledging that they were extremely important to Western Civ. I don't have much against them, but I wonder why, if there's an interest in doing without religion, we'd want to ape religion. To me the matter is similar to atheists wanting to have churches, which seems to be an envy of the corporate power of religion. Atheism isn't going to be able to be that kind of force. It isn't really anything in particular, after all, except the absence of belief in an involved deity. That doesn't get you very far in setting an agenda that people are going to flock to.

I agree with you.

I don't want to be critical of the book without having read it, but what does it bring to the table that a reasonably intelligent atheist doesn't already know?

Science and critical thinking are good, being moral doesn't require God, etc.

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.

I am all for coming up with a "Humanist Manifesto," but this has already been done. http://americanhumanist.org/Humanism/Hu ... ifesto_III

I'll read the book, too, and try not to prejudge the effort. I doubt, after all, that the authors truly want to promulgate new commandments. Seems to me that if you take one-half of the Bible's Great Commandment, you're just about done: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. That is an ethical precept that appears in quite a few traditions, discovered as humans began living in more complex societies.

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!

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.