Well, does it?

Bible? Probably not. Recommended Reading List.

I propose Nietzsche!

I'm actually writing a 'scripture' but it's really more of a vision document.

LOTU needs a Wikible.

 

Seriously.

In the meantime you could adopt an encyclopaedia as the holy book. When you have something more visionary ready, relegate the encyclopaedia to a sub-scripture. Religions can have more than one holy book after all.

Or something like Darwin's Origin of Species, or A Brief History of Time, or the Principia, or any other famous sciency text.

WikiBible would also be a nice touch though... avoids the potential for becoming too dogmatic 

Please please don't make Darwin the sub-text!!

Why not Darwin? Too controversial, or do you just not like his writing style? 

My suggestion:  Motion Mountain, a unique and freely available Physics textbook.  This review by Kevin Kelly gives you an idea:  http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/002542.php

Why not Darwin? Because for all his science, he believed in god!

Wow dewo, that's a very excited review on that page I'll be sure to look it up. Thanks!

A manual?

I think the "bible" of LOTU should be more of a set of suggestions for living rationally and in harmony with other sentient lifeforms (damn that sounds too star trek).

Getting along with each other would be a start - you could begin with suggestions for living in peace with other people, then extend into the realms of Star Trek when it becomes appropriate (yknow.. if we find aliens to get along with in the near future)

Commandment (1) Use Thy Brain

Or - Question everything?

Question Everything has a nice critical thinking angle but I think it's covered by Use Thy Brain isn't it?

Use thy brain (to me) doesn't imply critical thinking...

Actually, I wanted to say 'Trust no one' but that would have been plagiarism

You can use thy brain for lots of things without thinking critically. I think question everything should be somewhere in the commandments.

Could probably also use an updated version of "Thou shalt not murder" (updated because the first version seems to have some significant loopholes, judging by the amount of killing there's been in the name of Christianity)

I suppose LOTU would need to figure out where it stood on war?

It is possible that LOTU, while not needing an Holy Book, could well need a body of music. As a lonely athiest I sometimes look back on my days as a believer in myths and the sense of community created by the singing of songs of faith. Almost all successful movements (Protest, Unionism, Islam, Christianity) have developed what amounts to a Hymnal. This helps in group bonding and personal belief reinforcement.

As a beginning allow me to present the first two verses of "Amazing Laws". Sung, as is the tradition amongst church music, to an older tune you would all recognise - even without the bagpipes 

Amazing Laws, how neat they are
That shows the world to be!
We once served myths, but now we know
There're Laws that science found.

Old myths had taught me just to fear
Till Science showed me the way
How wondrous was my life
When first I learned to think.

That's excellent!

Excellent work Archie! I would love to see music be a major part of LOTU but suggest we need better tunes than amazing grace. I would rather have stuff like Greydon Square, the atheist rapper: http://gdayworld.thepodcastnetwork.com/2007/03/31/gday-world-222-greydon-square-atheist-hip-hop/

I wouldn't copy every aspect of institutionalized religion, because I don't agree that there is a natural need for religious experience.

'A natural need for religious experience'

Can you explain? I don't understand. What sort or experience, and what natural need? And according to whom?

Dino, as the latest research seems to indicate that "the religious experience" is the result of a brain malfunction, I agree, we can do without that. I don't think the vast majority of people involved in religions ever experience "a religious experience" anyway.

the latest research seems to indicate that "the religious experience" is the result of a brain malfunction

Left temporal lobe activity? That got a brief mention in my philosophy class recently (the topic being religious experiences as an argument for God's existence)

Seems like all the arguments we look at, be they ontological, teleological or cosmological, are pretty weak.. always tends to be the atheist viewpoint that has the show-stopping objections. 

Yeah, that's what rationality can do for ya

Heck, some of them don't even manage to avoid being counter-intuitive. The ontological argument being a prime example of using a strange twist of thought and language to "prove" a point.

Yeah... there's a lot of manoeuvring that happens.

God exists cos of A. A is true cos of the definition B, which holds true just because it's defined that way.

'Why is it defined that way?'

'Cos that's what it means. Now eat your supper and go to bed!'

Or allowing God to slide out from under any proof that he doesn't exist, by saying that the thing you just disproved can't be God, because God must exist by definition.

Kant gutted their argument with a rusty.. gutting tool..

First off, he said that "existence" wasn't a valid predicate, so couldn't be included in a definition of anything, because adding it to a list of attributes really doesn't change your conception of an object - if it's being described to you, you imagine the same thing whether you're told it exists or not.

Then, even if existence is an allowable predicate, the whole argument is trapped in a priori definitions-land, so all that we know is that if there is a God, then he exists by definition (duh). But it tells us nothing about whether he actually exists in normal-land.

There we have it....

Reminds me of something when I was young. (Now that I think of it, it might be the first seeds of doubt in all the religious indoctrination I had)

I used to ask people, my parents, religious leaders etc, why I couldn't see god. Where was he?  They'd say he'd show himself if I had faith. But how could I have faith in something I hadn't seen? I would then be told to be patient and believe. And round and round we went.  

Mum used to have a 'special answer'. She's say that god was in everything and everywhere, and just because I couldn't see didn't mean it wasn't there. Needless to say, the magic of that didn't last long

It's like love they said. You can't see love, but it's there.

Are you kidding me?! You can see love! It's on the faces of people who love you, it's in their actions! 
So, where's this god again?

I was actually referring to Persinger's God Helmet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet

I wrote quite a long post.. then my PC crashed for unknown reasons

Long post short: there was a book I read that contained a description of essentially that same experiment. It was based on the idea of a Neanderthal accidentally teleporting himself here from a parallel world where they're the dominant species instead of us, and one of the differences between them and us (as well as a differing number of chromosomes) was that they have differently structured parietal lobes and so have no experience of religion or religious belief.

This, along with other traits of theirs, made their world into a vision of Utopia. The number of things they'd gotten right that we'd gotten wrong (and the underlying "damn, we've screwed up here" message) got a little heavily laid-on at times. Good read otherwise though.

Surely the holy books for LOTU would be by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens?

carruthk - well they will certainly be on the 'recommended reading list'. What others should be there?

I wonder why this question was posed in the first place?  If a person wants some guidance or instructions then recommending a book based on the subject of the required information is surely the thing to do.  For example, if you want to put up some wallpaper then I recommend a book by Joe Bloggs on Domestic Wallpapering.  If you start down the line of recommending a reading list about all things in general then you are on the first steps to turning yourself into a leader of some kind.

(Having said all the above) - Good question Mick - I like it...