Below is an extract of a speech given at a graduation ceremony at an Australian university by broadcaster, journalist, commentator, atheist and critical thinker Phillip Adams. It is somewhat idiosyncratic, and a little specific to the setting of the speech, as you will see... -------- 1. Thou shalt not worship false gods. The ones I've in mind are technology and the economy. There was a time when the economy served people. It was designed to give them jobs and wages arid, except when things went wrong, as in depressions, optimism. Now the economy is omnipotent and omniscient, requiring millions of blood sacrifices. We are destined, doomed to grease its mighty axles with our tiny lives. And playing Gog to Magog there are new technologies to assist your total surrender, their tentacles invading every nook and cranny of your life. Yield to them if you must, but please don't worship them. Now, famous writers will tell you cyberspace is a spiritual realm that the new technologies, by interconnecting human consciousness, are bringing God Into being. (He didn't exist, doesn't exist, but will exist by the time the Internet is in full flower.) How odd that cyberspace seems to be about downloading porn, buying junk from the vast dotcom shopping mall and visiting hate pages run by raving bigots. 2. Thou shalt not fear death. This is a big change. Over the millenniums, religions have insisted you do so. As an atheist, I believe we already know death well, that the death after life is identical to the oblivion that preceded it to those millions of years prior to birth, characterised by the same lack of light, colour, taste or sensation. Whereas religions postulate a smorgasbord of hereafters, including one wherein people simmer for billions of years in molten brimstone. Forget it. In the future you will live forever because your personality, no matter how enfeebled by years staring at a computer screen, will be immortalised. You'll simply jump ship, downloading your consciousness on to a floppy. Behold, the digital eternity. 3. Don't bother dying in the first place. The Australian writer Damien Broderick is among many who tell me that I belong to the last generation who'll find it necessary to kick the bucket. Whereas you, dear graduates, belong to the first generation whose boots need not come into contact with that battered receptacle. So you may not require the digital afterlife previously mentioned because you're going to benefit from the Human Genome Project that will allow you to linger on for centuries. You will have a lot of time on your hands which, oddly enough, leads to the fourth suggestion, which is, despite all the extra time... 4. Don't waste it. I've long found the thought of mortality useful. It's something of an aphrodisiac to know how quickly your time is running out. Which is why I've always had five or six careers running in parallel. Pack it in, that's my motto. So I don't waste time with TV soaps, cricket, football, the sporting pages, Alan Jones or Padriac McGuinness. It's better to use your time to think, and to think for yourselves. Not because you're paid to think. Not because it might lead to promotion or a Nobel Prize. Think because thinking is one of the two ultimate pleasures, more orgasmic than sex. Discover something. Olympic organisers do not know - that tossing ideas around is far more exhilarating than hurling discuses, putting shots or heaving javelins. And thought wins over sport in another important regard. You can do it longer. I know people over 30 still actively thinking. Try that with marathon running. 5. Fall in love. Do so frequently and with abandon. Falling in love is the most exhilarating. agonising, wonderful, woeful experience that flesh is heir to, while the symptoms are similar to flu, do not ask for antibiotics. Better to let the fever ravage you. Or, rather, ravish you. At no stage in life will your perceptions be as heightened as when you are overwhelmed by love. If you're not in love, please correct this by the end of the ceremony. 6. Worry about someone else. You are probably weighed down by neuroses, anxieties and self-pity. The best way to deal with them isn't to rush off to a therapist or to pop Prozac. To minimise the miasma of personal anxieties, it's good to help people with more problems than you. Work with street kids. Get involved with Aboriginal land rights. Wave placards at the Prime Minister. Rush off to Davos or Seattle and menace multinationals. In short, help society while we still have one. 7. Do not be fashionable. The world is full of people who have yielded to fashism. That's f-a-s-h-i-s-m, the fascism of fashion. This can, involve haircuts, nipple piercing, designer clothing, political ideologies, experiments in gender, philosophies, religions and modes of literary criticism. Remember, fashions have ever-briefer shelf lives. Yoghurt lasts longer than most modish theories. To avoid being covered by intellectual mould, keep your distance. Identification with a fashion will give a sort of evanescent relevance. You may briefly glow. But you'll finish up as dead as the dodo or Derrida. Here follows a grab bag of optional commandments or suggestions or lifestyle choices you may wish to download on to your floppy: 8. Be curious. This will ensure your education will not end with today's triumphs but begin with them. Remember, absolutely everything is interesting. 9. Be sceptical. This is utterly different from cynicism. Apply scepticism to everything you hear or read or see on the telly. Be particularly sceptical of experts, whether anointed or self-appointed, and of politicians. 10. Be enormously amused. It is our triumph and tragedy that we are the only creatures fully conscious of their mortality. This gives us three things: life insurance policies, spirituality and a sense of humour. Given a choice between the spiritual and the humorous, go for humour every time as, unlike religion, laughter hasn't been responsible for the deaths of millions. But always remember: it's a good idea to laugh at yourself. 11. Do as little damage as possible. "First, do no ill." This scrap of the Hippocratic oath seems universally applicable. At the end of life, or just before a voltage surge wipes out the digital you on the floppy, look back o'er the vista that was you and you may find that you've been comparatively harmless. 12. Be glad to be alive. The odds against winning lotto are what? A million to one? The odds against us being here today, because of the big bang billions of years ago, are trillions to one, whatever happens to you, you've already won first prize simply by existing. It's tantamount to winning lotto every day, and with all respect to this fine institution, that's far more important than your degree. Because no matter how crook things get, life, which so many take for granted and consequently waste, may be the most interesting phenomenon in the universe. And there isn't a lot of life around. Even the most optimistic cosmologist knows it's rare even life at its most basic, at the level of the amoeba or the polyp. Life on this jewel of a planet, in this beautiful and still not entirely stuffed-up country, is a billion times more precious than the biggest salary package or the highest share price. So react to life with joy, gratitude and passion. -------------------- Well, that's 12 "commandments". Personally, I'm not so sure about all the transhumanist stuff, but the rest is good advice, I think. If you were writing a new 10 Commandments for the present age, what would they be (or what would they include)? How should we try to live? What's important?
typical secular humanist crap... no mention about the things we shouldnt do... things we should limit... things we should aviod. no help at all for our society... another example.. of 'hey, why not'........ attitudes. THE OLD TEN COMMANDMENTS ARE JUST FINE... AND STILL WORK GOOD. -MT
He's probably refferring to the common sense ones such as "don't kill"... you know... ones that would be part of societal consensus with or without religion.
Yeah... Common Sense. 1) Dont Kill. 2) Dont Steel. 3) Dont Sleep With Your Neighbors Wife... 4) Honor Mom And Dad.. Stuff Like That.. Yeah... Its Still All Good. -mt
so what is the positive alternative (in other words unless one receives a higher engagement from actual spiritual principles one's position by default will be mediocrity) unfortunately such a view of life makes it practically impossible to follow commandants 4, 6 and 11 (since one will only work out of these things in the shrinking aperture of connection to ones ephemeral mortal self) interestingly he is advocating a sub-religious path of dharma commonly (or perhaps not so commonly known) jnana. Jnana is the step before acknowledging and benefiting from the greater thinking capacity of god - in other words to judge a tree by its fruit, devotion to god is greater than knowledge since it bears a greater result better advice would be how to not get bewildered by falling in love with something imaginary or illusory such words are simply sweet ideas since approaching the platform of selflessnesses is a practical impossibility for an atheist once again, if you keep your distance, what are you keeping a distance closer to? (what if not being fashionable is also a fashion?) Here follows a grab bag of optional commandments or suggestions or lifestyle choices you may wish to download on to your floppy: ok ok - but there is no perfection found in pure scepticism unfortunately not many people die laughing so I would hedge my bets in different direction therefore if you have a set of guidelines established by god this will be an easier ideal to approach (eg - don't have sex with other people's partners, don't steal, murder etc) the next question is what do we do with this gift? should we pursue propensities uniform to the animals or examine the special benefits of the human form of life? in the short, the problem of such self inspired directives is that they are devised by persons who have imperfect senses and are influenced by the pushings of lust, desire for name,fame, adoration and distinction - admittedly one can also get the same sort of turkey in religion too, but intelligence applied to scripture can help one avoid situations repeatedly indicated such as SB 7.5.31: Persons who are strongly entrapped by the consciousness of enjoying material life, and who have therefore accepted as their leader or guru a similar blind man attached to external sense objects, cannot understand that the goal of life is to return home, back to Godhead, and engage in the service of Lord Viṣṇu. As blind men guided by another blind man miss the right path and fall into a ditch, materially attached men led by another materially attached man are bound by the ropes of fruitive labor, which are made of very strong cords, and they continue again and again in materialistic life, suffering the threefold miseries.
Hey James, some of that stuff is great. However some of that is just like, well, idk. "false Gods"? We can't know what is false and real. Thats a non issue. And people will fear death, we can't help it. But its good to not sit around all day thinking about it, of course. I think respect should just be it, you know? Because if we respect people we're not going to rape them, kill them, or steal from them. We're not going to envy them or screw them over as well. And all in all the myths of God won't matter. What matters is now. And telling someone to fall in love is...idk...I guess it does make you happy.
What about Abelard? What about intent? If you lie to save someone's life, this violates the Ten Commandments, right? Is it wrong though?
I like George Carlins better: George Carlin on The Ten Commandments (adapted) The Ten Commandments are another way to keep people in line, just other laws.What happened was that some big religious juggernauts and political figures got together, and put together ten commandments. Not nine, not eleven, but ten. Why ten? Because that it is an official number. It is the basis for all numbers; the decimal system, a decade, Top Ten Movies, Top Ten Most Wanted List. If they would have made nine commandments, then people wouldn't have believed them, so in fact- the Ten Commandments were a marketing scheme. They were made to fool the ignorant, because if anybody thought for themselves, then the Christian religion, or any religion, wouldn't be in existence. I think we can change the Ten Commandments to a short list of three commandments. Lets look at the first four commandments, "I am the Lord thy God.... Thou shall have no other gods before me." "Thou shall not make unto thee any graven images.... Thou shall not bow down thyself to them." "Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." Those were made to scare you, don't they sound scary? Spooky..ooh..throw those suckers out. We are down to a list of 6 commandments. Lets look the fifth commandment "Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long." That one is complete bs. Respect and obedience are to be earned, not forced. Some parents deserve respect and obedience, some of them don't. So lets throw this commandment out. We are down to a list of 5 commandments The sixth commandment "Thou shall not kill." This commandment is bs in religion. People die every day in the name of God. "God" kills all animals, humans, and the Earth. Most religions, if not all, have a religious background. So you are not allowed to kill unless they believe in a different invisible man than you, or worship him different, Now there are 4 commandments left. Lets add some commandments together "Thou shall not commit adultery" "Thou shall not steal." We can add these two together because they have the basic principle of honesty. So lets make it a positive commandment and make it "Thou shall be honest and faithful" We have a list of 3 commandments left Lets look at some others. "Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor." This one is bs. America is based on this. Somebody sees something of their neighbors, and wants it himself, so he goes out and buys it. This can be an article of clothing, a piece for entertainment, or whatever. This makes our economy fatter. So throw that one out. Lets look at the last commandment "Thou shall not covet they neighbor's house." This one goes along with the honesty commandment so lets add them together. So now we have two commandments. "Thou shall not kill unless somebody believes in something that you don't" and "Thou shall be honest and faithful". Moses could have put them in his pocket and read it off to the people and it wouldn't have been so hypocritical to faith. But lets add in one more commandment "Keep thy religion to thyself." Return to the Ten Commandments Back To Politics and Poker
