In step with many millennial atheists, Figdor and Bayer are looking for principles by which to live. In “Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart,” they rewrite the Ten Commandments. Like the original set, Figdor and Bayer’s commandments are more than moral rules; they’re statements about cosmic order. Commandment IV: “All truth is proportional to the evidence.” Commandment V: “There is no God.”
The book launched at the end of October, and no divine being struck down Figdor and Bayer, a Bay Area entrepreneur and Airbnb executive who’s active in humanist circles. At its core, their book is a manual for ethical self-reflection in a secular age. The pair want readers to come up with their own sets of commandments.
Over the phone, John Figdor spoke with Salon about religious law, crowdsourced dogma and the experience of sharing an office with two rabbis.
Not particularly. We’re crowdsourcing alternatives to the Ten Commandments. Many people have done this in the past, and almost every revision of the Ten Commandments that I’ve seen has been better than the first draft. I think almost anyone can do better than the original 10.
Well, for secular people, people who don’t believe in God … there’s a significant number of the commandments that don’t actually relate to human morality that relate to human relationships with God. And those are kind of missed opportunities, the way that I see it, to add in more moral commandments.
The original Ten Commandments was written before the invention of modern scientific knowledge and the scientific method. We wrote the original Ten Commandments without understanding psychology, neuroscience — with a very antiquated view of philosophy, without understanding evolutionary biology. We think that you ought to base your beliefs on the evidence, and as we have access to more information and more evidence, our beliefs ought to change.
You specifically call them “Ten Commandments for the 21st Century.” What is it about this particular historical moment that invites a rewrite? Or what is it about your version of the Ten Commandments that’s specifically adapted to the 21st century?
Again, we’re trying to point out that the original Ten Commandments were written in, like, very early history. We’re talking Stone Age texts. There’re many points at which we probably should have updated the Ten Commandments. When we understood the germ theory of disease, we probably should have reworked the Ten Commandments. When we figured out the printing press, we probably should have worked them out. When we figured out basic evolutionary biology, all of these moments where we learn something new, we ought to reflect on our previous beliefs and say, “Do these still seem true? Do these still seem valid to us?”
But doesn’t that already happen within the religious context? Reading your book, I felt like you had set up a straw man, in which religious laws were described as static, rigid dogma that hasn’t changed in thousands of years. But certainly, if we look at, say, Jewish law, there’s a constant process of evolution and legal wrangling, as people apply ancient laws to a new world. How do you account for that dynamism?
I think that you’re seeing the dynamism in the liberal version of those religions. I don’t think you see it in the conservative interpretations of those religions, first of all. And second of all, it’s right to think they changed, but they evolved so slowly. Take, for example, modern evangelicals and their objection to both deep time — say, that the Earth is older than 6,000 years old — and to evolutionary biology.
It’s fair to say that religions evolve, and I come from the liberal church tradition where I see that completely. My church was pastored by an atheist at one point, or at minimum, a deistic agnostic. I certainly don’t want to give you the view that I have a straw man view of religion. I mean, so frequently in the atheism discussion, religion just gets translated into following beliefs, following commandments directly — taking orders — and that’s not actually how many people practice their faith. But it also is how around 40 percent of the American public practice their faith. So it’s not a total distortion. But you’re right, it’s not the full picture.
Could this book be applicable for people who consider themselves believers?
Yeah, I think it absolutely is relevant to believers as well. Look, I may not agree with your starting assumption, if one of your starting assumptions is that God exists and that he sets truth and logic into existence. That’s fine. I don’t believe that, but if you still want all of your other beliefs to follow science and philosophy and rational thought and critical thinking, then absolutely you can apply the method to all your other beliefs.
The people that we’re really targeting this to are people who have given up their belief in God and are wondering what’s next. It’s not our belief that everyone needs a secular Ten Commandments, or that everyone even needs to read a discussion about secular ethics. But it is our belief that over the years, a number of students have come up to me and said, “John, I’ve given up my belief in God, I don’t believe in supernaturalism, but I want to figure out what I do believe in, what values are worth believing in.”
I cannot stress enough that this is not our attempt to come up with a list of 10 that atheists just follow and then they’re going to be good people. That’s not at all the point.
What methods do you encourage people to use?
We think that you ought to follow a broadly scientific, critical-thinking methodology in thinking about your beliefs.
Do you agree with Sam Harris’ argument that science can give us a set of absolute moral codes?
He says that science can give you objective morality, and I disagree.
So how do you differ from Harris’ approach?
I have huge respect for Sam Harris, and my position is actually extremely similar to Sam Harris’. We just come to two different conclusions. Sam Harris’ position is, broadly, that we can look at something called the neurotypical behavior of human beings, and we can understand that when you have serotonin in a certain volume, or you have dopamine in a certain volume, this means that there’s something positive going into your brain. So he has this standard for valuing things. A neurotypically derived version of utilitarianism.
Sam Harris has this view where we’re able to generate an objective answer out of this. [Lex Bayer and I] don’t think that it’s objective, because ultimately it’s based on the beliefs, experiences and preferences of individuals.
Those opinions are based on people’s subjective experiences, and so you can’t call them objective at the end of the day. But it is the closest possible thing we can get to objective ethics, which is that you take everyone’s viewpoint into consideration.
I interviewed Rabbi Jonathan Sacks a couple months ago. He argues that it’s actually pretty easy to figure out the right thing to do. The hard part is getting people to do it. For Sacks, that’s where religion comes in. Do you feel like you’ve addressed that criticism?
Well, if his criticism is that moral problems are not difficult, and we need to just shut up and follow the conventional answers, that seems like a bad answer. When we’re asking questions like, is A.I. consciousness real? Should computers have moral value? Or when we’re talking about the idea of genetic engineering. These are enormously complex problems, and what I would say to the rabbi is that it’s very difficult to have realistic and rational conversations about these problems with Stone Age beliefs operating in the background for about 40 percent of people.
My view is religion comes in and introduces a bunch of moral problems that wouldn’t exist otherwise. There is a wonderful emergent religious left that’s coming out, that’s having really authentic and serious conversations about religion. But, unfortunately, they aren’t the people having the conversation, and making it so that we can’t really have a discussion about stem-cell research or abortion access or evolution.
I think that Sacks would say that part of the battle is figuring out what’s right, but the more difficult part is building social structures that motivate people to do what’s right.
The second point, that religion is a good way of providing a community for people, and a good way for us maybe to address these concepts in a context that works for people — oh, that’s absolutely true. And that’s why you see the profusion of humanist groups rising around the country, and the enormous proliferation of humanist chaplains.
When I started out in this business, there were five humanist chaplains. There was one at Harvard, one at Columbia, one at Rutgers, one at American University, and we were thinking about launching my organization [at Stanford]. Now, just a few years later, there’s one at Harvard, Yale, Tufts, American University, Rutgers, the University of Southern California …
If two in five Americans are essentially secular, essentially do not participate in religious life except for, like, a wedding and a funeral, that changes our religious landscape in this country in an enormous way. I think we’re on the turning point of people turning away and saying, “Look, religion is nuts.” It has a good concept, the congregational model seems to work pretty well, the community-building model seems to work really well, but its answers don’t work anymore for people. That’s what I see humanist chaplains doing, saying, “What’s worth preserving from the religious model, and how do we update this with modern science, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, et cetera?”
What do you think is worth preserving from the religious model?
The idea of community, first of all. I’m sure you’re familiar with Robert Putnam’s study “American Grace,” which shows that religious Americans are better than secular Americans, because they donate more to charity, they donate more to secular charities, they vote in higher percentages.
I argue that this stems from the community aspects. It comes from people coming together and making a commitment publicly, and then holding each other accountable for that commitment. So when we raise money for leukemia and lymphoma research or do a blood drive or a bone marrow drive, that’s what’s operating in the background.
