From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that humans often misuse the concept of God to rationalize immoral actions.
Salman Rushdie's quote highlights the tendency of individuals and societies throughout history to invoke divine authority in order to excuse or legitimize actions that are fundamentally unjust. This reflection points to a deeper examination of morality, faith, and the influence of religion on human behavior, encouraging a critical view of how faith can be manipulated in the name of justifying wrongful deeds.
In practice
During a debate on moral philosophy, this quote can be used to illustrate the misuse of religion.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
I mean, knowing people, people are terrified of the unknown and they want to just kill the unknown.
Just because it's on the radio doesn't mean we have to suspend belief in the evidence of our senses.
We gain internal freedom through external actions.
If you carry someone else's fears and live by someone else's values, you may find that you have lived their lives.
There's a very committed effort to convert the US into something resembling a Third World society, where a few people have enormous wealth and a lot of others have no security.
...those called by Christ's name should order their lives. They should persevere in prayers and supplications and, in imitation of the angels, have their eyes lifted up to the Master above the heavens, praising and blessing Him with irreproachable conduct, and waiting for His mystical Coming. As the Psalmist says to Him, 'I will sing and will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O when wilt Thou come unto me?' (Ps. 101:2).
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.