Name a moral statement or action, uttered or performed by a religious person that could not have been uttered or performed by an unbeliever.
Interpretation
Hitchens argues that moral actions and statements can be made by anyone, regardless of their belief in religion.
This quote by Christopher Hitchens challenges the notion that morality is exclusive to religious individuals, suggesting instead that anyone, including non-believers, can express and embody moral principles. It implies that moral actions do not necessarily stem from religious beliefs but can arise from a universal sense of ethics shared by all humanity.
In practice
In a debate about the foundations of morality, this quote highlights that ethical behavior is not solely linked to religious beliefs.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way β because itβs had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But youβve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
We do not want, as the newspapers say, a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.
If Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is dealing with men.
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.
If I would follow your advice and Jesus could perceive it, he, as a Jewish teacher, surely would not approve of such behavior.
Language furnishes the best proof that a law accepted by a community is a thing that is tolerated and not a rule to which all freely consent.
Would a soul continually eye His everlasting tenderness and compassion...[then] it could not bear an hour's absence from Him; whereas now, perhaps, it cannot watch with him one hour.
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