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.
Interpretation
Religion can inspire good or evil actions in people, but goodness and wickedness exist independently of religion.
This quote by Steven Weinberg highlights the distinction between inherent human morality and the influence of religion. It suggests that while good and evil can exist within people regardless of their religious beliefs, the capacity for good people to commit evil acts can be significantly swayed by religious doctrines or motivations, raising questions about the role of religion in shaping moral behavior.
In practice
During a debate on morality, one might use this quote to illustrate differing views on the role of religion.
It was one time when people thought the value of the fine structure constant was important. Now of course it's still important, of course, as a practical matter,but we now know that the value it has is a function, that in any fundamental theory you derive the fine structure constant as a function of all sorts of mass ratios and so on and it's not really that fundamental.
Americans swept away the instruments of English hereditary inequality - entails and titles of nobility - even before we had a constitution.
It's very difficult to convince other countries that they shouldn't pursue nuclear weapons programs if we ourselves are actively developing a component of a strategic defense system.
[Science] is corrosive of religious belief, and it's a good thing too.
I'm offended by the kind of smarmy religiosity that's all around us, perhaps more in America than in Europe, and not really that harmful because it's not really that intense or even that serious, but just... you know after a while you get tired of hearing clergymen giving the invocation at various public celebrations and you feel, haven't we outgrown all this? Do we have to listen to this?
How strange it would be if the final theory were to be discovered in our lifetimes! The discovery of the final laws of nature will mark a discontinuity in human intellectual history, the sharpest that has occurred since the beginning of modern science in the seventeenth century. Can we now imagine what that would be like?
The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose
The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.
If an enemy has alliances, the problem is grave and the enemy's position strong; if he has no alliances, the problem is minor and the enemy's position weak.
To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another.
There is only one way to put an end to evil, and that is to do good for evil.
Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
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