There were a lot of gods. Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that gods or belief systems can be manipulated to rationalize behaviors and actions.
Margaret Atwood's quote reflects on the idea that the existence of multiple gods in various cultures serves as a tool for people to justify their actions and decisions. It implies that belief in deities can be conveniently employed to legitimize behavior, regardless of its moral implications, highlighting the complex relationship between faith and human nature.
In practice
During a philosophical debate on the nature of morality, one could use this quote to illustrate how beliefs can influence ethical decisions.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
I decided to be what crime made of me.
This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.
Where there is no style, there is no slave. Martial Arts mean honestly expressing yourself. No style. No slave.
In matters of sexuality we are at present, every one of us, ill or well, nothing but hypocrites.
Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals.
The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.
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