Gosh, plenty, although it does depend upon how strictly you are defining ‘objective’ and ‘religious’. Let us say by ‘objective’ we mean: not entirely dependent upon an individual’s whims, circumstances, or desires; and by ‘not religious’ we mean: not justified through faith in a divine being. Then, Aristotle’s ethics (virtue ethics), Kant’s, and Bentham and Mill’s utilitarianism all qualify. However, if by objective you mean ‘an object of scientific enquiry’; and if by ‘not religious’ you mean ‘unrelated to any idea of spirituality whatsoever’, then the list is a shorter. Utilitarianism might still qualify. Some would call that its great strength; others its great weakness. Aristotle, on some interpretations, might squeak through; Kant would not. Interestingly, Nietzsche lumps all of these together with more obviously religious beliefs, because for example they all involve idealisation, which he argues itself can only be justified through a kind of faith. On the other hand, he says...

An excellent question. Let us think this through just considering the ordinary usage of these words in English. Although the terms seem to overlap in the way you describe, in fact they appear to belong to entirely different realms. A ‘right’ is generally taken to be a moral claim that anyone who wishes to perform a certain action, or maintain in a particular state, ought to be allowed to do so. Rights may be protected by laws, but we normally do not think of them as created by laws, or that they should only apply in certain places, times, or for certain people. So, if there is a right to free speech in one nation, people there would believe that citizens of another nation ought also to have that right. A ‘privilege’, on the other hand, tends to be used as a legal or social term. It refers to the fact that some action or course of events is permitted within a local place or time, and only because of some particular property of the person involved. Someone who belongs to a particular club...

'Nature' is a difficult concept, with a long and varied history. Thus, whenever someone comes up with an argument that something is ‘natural’ or ‘un-natural’, the first question that should be asked is ‘what do they mean by ‘nature’, and how can this concept of nature be justified?’ Broadly speaking (very broadly) there are two conceptions. First, nature as ‘of this world’, and thus as opposed to ‘supernatural’ (for example, pertaining to God). Under this conception, human activity would generally count as natural, along with rat-behaviour, tulip-behaviour, and granite-behaviour. However, if we take away the possibility of the supernatural (if we argue that, at least for these purposes, we can discount the realm of the divine), then natural is everything, and thus doesn’t really have much meaning at all. Second, nature is the world insofar as human beings do not interfere; as opposed to, say, ‘culture’. It is this second meaning that would be in use in the kind of argument about genetic...

An interesting and very timely question. It seems to me that it breaks down into several parts. First, we need to ignore the problem that what one person believes is unethical corporate behaviour another believes is appropriate competitive behaviour. For example, much of the current trend in ethical investing stems from religious groups, many of whom refuse to invest in companies that produce alcohol, as well as those that produce and sell arms to oppressive regimes. Many would for good reasons count the latter as a more important oversight than the latter. Let us assume that we are all agreed that behaviour X (using your example, treating the workforce in some particular way) is unethical. Second, your question assumes that if a company were in fact guilty of X, then that alone would preclude investment in it. However, corporate activities are complex; one might be inclined to take a holistic view of their activities and ignore one thing because of activities you feel are...

I suspect that there is near universal agreement on one thing, namely that 'moral goodness' does not automatically derive from sound aesthetic judgement. As Kant (with uncharacteristic wit) puts it: "virtuosi of taste, who not just often but apparently as a matter of habit, are vain, obstinate, and given to ruinous passions, can perhaps still less than others claim the distinction of being attached to moral principles" (Critique of Judgement , par. 42) . Much more controversial is whether what you call sound aesthetic taste might have some less direct relation to or influence upon moral behaviour. But in order to answer the question, we would first need a good, solid definition of its key terms: 'sound aesthetic judgement' and 'moral goodness', and you could hardly have picked two more debated ideas! Let me suggest just two possible ways of approaching the question in order to illustrate something of the variety: First, might some forms of art (particularly narratives in novels or...