Many people maintain that atheism is not a religion; my husband, an atheist for most of his adult life, would agree with that statement. But many other people say that it is, indeed, a religion, and that its beliefs should be taken seriously. Other religions, such as Jainism, actually maintain atheistic views, so being an atheist and religious are definitely not mutually exclusive.
A professor has now written an atheist bible. AC Grayling calls his book The Good Book and in it, he offers the advice of many famous philosophers and great thinkers, as well as a 10 Commandment list, of sorts, for atheists, which includes life guidelines such as:
- Loving well
- Harming no others
- Being responsible
- Being informed
- Looking for the good in everything
- Respecting nature
- Thinking for oneself
- Being kind
- Doing your utmost
- Being courteous
Though I don’t consider myself an atheist, this is definitely a list of “commandments” that I would be comfortable living by—and that I would definitely be more comfortable seeing on, say, government buildings. If these were the “moral values” that all of the evangelicals scream about when they try to merge government and religion, I wouldn’t mind as much, either, since all of these concepts negate what they’re already trying to do.
Think about it; if people try to ban gay marriage, all you have to do is cry out that it’s against the 10 Atheist Commandments—several of them, actually—and you could maintain the same argument every time someone wants to allow corporations to pollute, increase standardized testing in schools, ban abortion, declare preemptive war… and it would be more in line with what the Jesus figure in the original Bible stood for much more authentically than the current 10 Commandments do, for sure.
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