I propose “suffering requires attachment” as a VERY well developed VERY non-obvious example.
That doesn’t seem like a religious claim so much as a claim originally (if so) made in a religious context. It’s an (admittedly fuzzy) empirical claim about suffering, once you define your terms.
More generally, claims made within religions seem to break down into three categories: claims about God, claims about the world, and claims about God’s relation/action within the world. It seems clear that Untheists would find nothing useful in the first or last of those, and it seems improper to call claims about the world “religious.” Claiming the Earth is six thousand years old is not a religious claim; it’s an empirical claim that some religious people believe irrespective of evidence. Similarly, true empirical claims made by religion are hardly religious by nature; if you disproved the religion to a believer, it seems unlikely he would give up those empirical beliefs, too.
Moral statements like “It’s bad to hate,” are a bit more complex. If they’re categorical (like, “Don’t murder”), they have no truth content ; I doubt Untheists would have categorical imperatives. If they’re hypothetical (don’t murder, or else people will murder you/society will collapse/baby Jesus will cry), then they can be evaluated empirically, and should be accepted or rejected based on supporting evidence.
More succinctly, EY’s claim seems right. I doubt any strictly religious claim would be accepted by Untheists.
It is worth to clarify what exactly counts as a religious claim. Else we are in a risk of arguing along the lines “whatever claim unreligious society accepts is by definition not religious”. Then clearly the question whether there is a single religious claim that Untheist culture would not reject would be empty.
To give a concrete example of non-theistically coming to “suffering requires attachment,” see Epicurus’ ethics. I don’t know if you would describe the ancient Greeks as untheists, but their view was certainly something other than modern monotheism. Epicurus was an atheist against a pantheon; I presume that monotheists were occasionally killed as ~atheists in that kind of environment.
I actually took “It’s bad to hate” as an empirical statement, cashed out as “It is a fact of human psychology that dwelling constantly on negative feelings toward others will generally make you miserable, and lead to outcomes which you would not currently rate highly”. This is an insight which I think is strongly implied by some of the Greek dramatic literature, though.
I doubt you have spoken to many untheists if you don’t expect them to have categorical imperatives.
An example would be nifty.
I tend to read “categorical imperative” in the strongest, Kantian sense, an imperative statement that is a priori valid irrespective of context or reasoning—i.e. murder isn’t wrong because people don’t like it, or because it reduces happiness, or because it makes baby Jesus cry; murder is just wrong and you just shouldn’t do it period. Perhaps I should not have raised that distinction without defining what I meant more rigorously. Unless there’s some counterexample I’m overlooking, of course.
I tend to read “categorical imperative” in the strongest, Kantian sense, an imperative statement that is a priori valid irrespective of context or reasoning—i.e. murder is just wrong and you just shouldn’t do it period.
If “murder”==”the wrong kind of killing” then “the wrong kind of killing is just wrong and you just shouldn’t do it period” is a tautology. It would seem you can get cheap categorical imperatives by jumping to tautologies, but they’re mostly useless since you still have to establish whether it’s murder in the first place (presumably by resorting to context and/or reasoning).
I suspect non-tautological categorical ethical imperatives are rare, and furthermore hotly disputed among ethicists. For example some groups hold that “killing is categorically wrong,” but that view is under heavy debate.
Edit: I retract my statement about non-tautological categorical ethical imperatives being rare, at least in per capita terms. Anecdotally, premarital sex and disobeying your parents would seem to be examples of things that are widely held to be categorically wrong, but certainly not universally agreed-upon.
Plenty of people hold essentially categorical imperatives to be true. I sincerely doubt any of these people are untheists. The essence of a categorical imperative is that it is completely divorced from evidence; categorical imperatives are by nature a priori. I believe they have no place in a rational mind, though I would love to see contrary evidence if it exists.
That doesn’t seem like a religious claim so much as a claim originally (if so) made in a religious context. It’s an (admittedly fuzzy) empirical claim about suffering, once you define your terms.
More generally, claims made within religions seem to break down into three categories: claims about God, claims about the world, and claims about God’s relation/action within the world. It seems clear that Untheists would find nothing useful in the first or last of those, and it seems improper to call claims about the world “religious.” Claiming the Earth is six thousand years old is not a religious claim; it’s an empirical claim that some religious people believe irrespective of evidence. Similarly, true empirical claims made by religion are hardly religious by nature; if you disproved the religion to a believer, it seems unlikely he would give up those empirical beliefs, too.
Moral statements like “It’s bad to hate,” are a bit more complex. If they’re categorical (like, “Don’t murder”), they have no truth content ; I doubt Untheists would have categorical imperatives. If they’re hypothetical (don’t murder, or else people will murder you/society will collapse/baby Jesus will cry), then they can be evaluated empirically, and should be accepted or rejected based on supporting evidence.
More succinctly, EY’s claim seems right. I doubt any strictly religious claim would be accepted by Untheists.
It is worth to clarify what exactly counts as a religious claim. Else we are in a risk of arguing along the lines “whatever claim unreligious society accepts is by definition not religious”. Then clearly the question whether there is a single religious claim that Untheist culture would not reject would be empty.
To give a concrete example of non-theistically coming to “suffering requires attachment,” see Epicurus’ ethics. I don’t know if you would describe the ancient Greeks as untheists, but their view was certainly something other than modern monotheism. Epicurus was an atheist against a pantheon; I presume that monotheists were occasionally killed as ~atheists in that kind of environment.
I actually took “It’s bad to hate” as an empirical statement, cashed out as “It is a fact of human psychology that dwelling constantly on negative feelings toward others will generally make you miserable, and lead to outcomes which you would not currently rate highly”. This is an insight which I think is strongly implied by some of the Greek dramatic literature, though.
I doubt you have spoken to many untheists if you don’t expect them to have categorical imperatives.
An example would be nifty.
I tend to read “categorical imperative” in the strongest, Kantian sense, an imperative statement that is a priori valid irrespective of context or reasoning—i.e. murder isn’t wrong because people don’t like it, or because it reduces happiness, or because it makes baby Jesus cry; murder is just wrong and you just shouldn’t do it period. Perhaps I should not have raised that distinction without defining what I meant more rigorously. Unless there’s some counterexample I’m overlooking, of course.
If “murder”==”the wrong kind of killing” then “the wrong kind of killing is just wrong and you just shouldn’t do it period” is a tautology. It would seem you can get cheap categorical imperatives by jumping to tautologies, but they’re mostly useless since you still have to establish whether it’s murder in the first place (presumably by resorting to context and/or reasoning).
I suspect non-tautological categorical ethical imperatives are rare, and furthermore hotly disputed among ethicists. For example some groups hold that “killing is categorically wrong,” but that view is under heavy debate.
Edit: I retract my statement about non-tautological categorical ethical imperatives being rare, at least in per capita terms. Anecdotally, premarital sex and disobeying your parents would seem to be examples of things that are widely held to be categorically wrong, but certainly not universally agreed-upon.
Plenty of people hold essentially categorical imperatives to be true. I sincerely doubt any of these people are untheists. The essence of a categorical imperative is that it is completely divorced from evidence; categorical imperatives are by nature a priori. I believe they have no place in a rational mind, though I would love to see contrary evidence if it exists.