Glenn Beck asked Penn Gillette, one of my favorite libertarians, to come up with a list of moral dictates for non-believers. The result is this, 10 Commandments for Atheists. The whole list is pretty good. I especially like No. 5
5. Be there for your family. Love your parents, your partner, and your children. (Love is deeper than honor, and parents matter, but so do spouse and children.)
Was it Woody Allen who said 90 percent of life is showing up? As Gillette recognizes, being a good person is 90 percent being where you're supposed to be, doing what you're supposed to do. And most of the time, we know those wheres and whats, without being reminded by a therapist or priest or authority figure. When we fail, it's because of what we ignore, not because of w
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The questions arise, when there is a "Ten Commandments For Atheists" as to "Who is doing the commanding?" and "Who put HIM in charge?"
While Jillette has some nice individual commandments there, they don't jibe with each other. (And the 11th commandment should be don't say jive when you mean jibe.) Intelligence, creativity and love are the highest ideals, except that property is of greater value when your neighbor's house is on fire?
And by having commandments that don't jibe with each other, he's violating his own 9th commandment.
If you read the traditional ten commandments carefully, you'll realize that they don't say what everyone thinks they say. It starts out by saying there are multiple gods, and make sure you are worshipping your own god. It doesn't say fornication, it says adultery. And it doesn't say "don't lie", it says "don't commit perjury".
The Jewish Ten Commandments also ban the creation of "graven images." We know that because God engraved that commandment into a stone tablet, and I read it in a printed Bible.