Sunday, June 17, 2007

ooookay

On my customized Google page I have a quote of the day (actually three) that come to me via The Quotations Page. One of today's was a bit of a doozy, assuming some amount of religious belief on the part of my readers, though I personally feel that it's one of those truths-that-can-hurt sort of situation. So without further ado, and with no more commentary from me, today's quote, which comes to us from Steven Weinberg. This is what Wikipedia has on him.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

1 comment:

Michele said...

But a lot of evil has been committed by those who seek to eliminate religion. Which is a sort of religion in itself. The secular fundamentalism of Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, etc. coupled with a lot of good people who bought into the communist "religion" has caused millions of deaths in last century.
Here's a list.

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm

About the good people doing evil things. I do believe good people have done evil things outside of religion as well. There are many banners under which people have committed atrocities that aren't typically considered "religion". Radical environmentalism and ludditism of Pol Pot eliminated 1/3 of the Cambodian population. How many good people have committed evil in the name of eugenics? How about the use of lobotomies and schock treatments for mental patients? The ends don't justify the means, even if the ends were justifiable at all. But these beliefs are not religions per se.

People just need to remain suspicious of silver bullet plans to help mankind.