Richard Dawkins is kind of a jerk

Why on earth would he feel the need to create on alternative to the ten commandments? Ok, I guess I understand his annoyance with the constant references to an omniscient deity. But, honestly, are the rest of them that inconsequential that new ones are required?

Here the the original ones:

• I am the Lord your God
• You shall have no other gods before me
• You shall not make for yourself an idol
• You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God
• Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
• Honor your father and mother
• You shall not murder
• You shall not commit adultery
• You shall not steal
• You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor
• You shall not covet your neighbor's wife
• You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor

I feel like Dawkin's need to create a new set of commandments is based on his ignorance of the other 603 of them and a desire to condense everything into a nice little package. Pious people are well aware that the Ten Commandments are all nice and good, and the most important of ones, but also recognize that following as many as possible is the path to righteousness. Certainly the Ten Commandments get redundant and annoying; the first four are all the same. But I feel similarly about Dawkins's.

Here are his humanistic ones:

• Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you
• In all things, strive to cause no harm
• Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.
• Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.
• Live life with a sense of joy and wonder
• Always seek to be learning something new
• Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.
• 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

These are great guidelines and I appreciate his sentiment. Some of them sound like a call to veganism, though, which is interesting because that is how some interpret kosher law. And obviously the appeal to skepticism is not shared in the original ten, but a penchant for questioning is a very important facet of Jewish tradition. "Live life with a sense of joy and wonder" sounds oddly religious, and probably isn't followed by most secularists, myself included, because they tend to be cynical atheists with a propensity for nihilism.

Don't get me wrong, I think Dawkins is a great dude who is fighting the good fight against religious extremists. But I have to call him out; I think he would benefit from a better understanding of Halachah, or maybe even the Five Pillars of Islam, which I wish I knew more about myself. What Dawkins's commandments lack, though, and I believe Jewish law has, is this commandment from the Pagan list:

• Work together for the benefit of all humankind.

(I also think Dawkins would benefit from observing and resting on the Sabbath [which I am ironically not doing] instead of publishing obsolete tracts.)