Introducing A Much Better Ten Commandments Than God Allegedly Gave

I have been helped by reading and trying to incorporate the commands and/or language used from other attempts to better the Ten Commandments, as suggested by Bertrand Russell, Christopher Hitchens, Valerie Tarico, David Madison (in his chapter for my anthology The Case Against Miracles), the Seven Satanic Precepts, and a few I wrote in my book How to Defend The Christian Faith: Advice from an Atheist.

By doing this I am suggesting God was ignorant, incompetent and inconsiderate when he gave us his ten big ones! Had he given my suggested commands instead, he would have saved untold numbers of lives, immensely  decreased the amount of suffering in the world, and exponentially increased human knowledge, and with it produced a safer, healthier world to live in. 

Criticisms and suggestions are appreciated. 

1) You should not prohibit the freedom of conscience, the freedom of expression, the freedom of assembly, or allow taxation without representation. Every single adult should have a voice in their government by voting for representatives who must answer to the voters who elected them, or be voted out of office. 

2) You must treat every human being with the utmost dignity they deserve by treating them as they want to be treated, including the mentally and physically handicapped, and those who are blind, speech impaired or hearing impaired. This means you should not harass, oppress, enslave, or beat into submission anyone anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances, especially for the express purpose of slavery. You must be truthful, keep your promises, legal obligations, and oaths in court. You must not defraud others, or steal from them, or murder them.

3) You should not treat women as inferior to men, nor shall you rape them, or force them to marry, or commit adultery, or kill them if they dishonor you, but rather treat them with equal respect and dignity as equally valued members of society with equal rights and equal privileges afforded to men.

4) Raise your children in love who should be taught to respect their parents and elders. Do not molest them, or beat them into submission, or treat them as mere commodities, or as hired hands, or treat them badly in any way. Teach them to love others and respect this world and care for the environment. Teach them to value truth and objective evidence in the pursuit of truth, by modeling it in your own life with patient admonition, instruction and loving kindness.

5) You should not despise, discriminate against, condemn, torture, or kill witches, or people who have a different gender, or different sexual orientation, or race, or religious faith, or no faith at all.

6) You should not engage in wars to spread the influence of your religion, or to gain  converts, or territory, power, fame, goods, money, women, or to assume I’m on your side if do, even if you must defend yourselves from the aggressors. 

7) You should wash your hands before eating, and boil the drinking water that has been defiled by pollution.  What you think and do should always conform to the best scientific understandings of the world.

8) Do not discourage honest questions, or answers based on objective evidence, nor feel absolutely certain about the conclusions you’ve reached. Instead, think exclusively in terms of the probabilities based on the strength of the objective evidence. 

9) You should not abuse animals, trap them, raise them in intensive factory farms, hunt them just for their furs or tusks, or needlessly experiment on them.

10) Renounce any god or any religion that contains inspired writings or holy oracles that oppose or reject any of the above commandments. 


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