In December 2014, over 2,800 atheists responded to a challenge to rewrite the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) with modern, humanist alternatives. After collating and condensing the submissions, thirteen judges voted on the top ten atheist Ten Commandments – or perhaps to avoid the hierarchical implications of the word, we ought to call them Suggestments. I would like to offer a few, brief observations to this list, which aren’t so much chiseled into immutable stone as they are finger-sketched into the sand at low tide. The original CNN article can be found here.
We have the responsibility to consider others, including future generations.
Sort of a mash-up of the sixth and seventh suggestments here. Not only do we need to consider how we treat our neighbors, but also take responsibility for that treatment when it sours. Included here are the future generations, and I appreciate the extension of forethought to those not yet born. Our actions not only reverberate to our spatial neighbors but also to neighbors in time.
And while we consider our actions in light of future generations, it is also polite to extend the same consideration to the past generations and the traditions they built.
Chesterton said, “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” This is particularly true when we, as the oligarchical living, begin to dismantle barriers and institutions which our forebears built, forgetting they did so for a reason.
Moderns take TNT to the levees because they obstruct our view of the sea, without taking time to understand the flood of devastation they hold back. To quote Chesterton again, “Do not remove a fence until you understand why it was put up in the first place.”
Those who banished prayer and Bible from public schools, who erected the Obergefell idol over the toppled boundary stones of traditional marriage, and who are now raising an executioner’s axe above the nape’s of the First and Second Amendments, would do well to heed Chesterton’s advice. And if you are looking for what group of individuals displays both the hubris and myopia I am talking about, start with the ones attempting to rewrite the Ten Commandments.
Thought Butter 