richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

264 THR GOD DELUSION
• Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always
respect the right of others to disagree with you.
• Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason
and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by
others.
• Question everything.
This little collection is not the work of a great sage or prophet
or professional ethicist. It is just one ordinary web logger's rather
endearing attempt to summarize the principles of the good life
today, for comparison with the biblical Ten Commandments. It was
the first list I found when I typed 'New Ten Commandments' into
a search engine, and I deliberately didn't look any further. The
whole point is that it is the sort of list that any ordinary, decent
person today would come up with. Not everybody would home in
on exactly the same list of ten. The philosopher John Rawls might
include something like the following: 'Always devise your rules as
if you didn't know whether you were going be at the top or the
bottom of the pecking order.' An alleged Inuit system for sharing
out food is a practical example of the Rawls principle: the
individual who cuts up the food gets last pick.
In my own amended Ten Commandments, I would choose some
of the above, but I would also try to find room for, among others:
• Enjoy your own sex life (so long as it damages nobody else)
and leave others to enjoy theirs in private whatever their
• inclinations, which are none of your business.
• Do not discriminate or oppress on the basis of sex, race or (as
far as possible) species.
• Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think
for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree
with you.
• Value the future on a timescale longer than your own.
But never mind these small differences of priority. The point is