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?
Your life is an island separated from all other islands and continents. Regardless of how many boats you send to other shores or how many ships arrive upon your shores, you yourself are an island separated by its own pains, secluded in its happiness
If all consciousness is subject to essential laws in a manner similar to that in which spatial reality is subject to mathematical laws, then these essential laws will be of most fertile significance in investigating facts of the conscious life of human and brute animals.
The true story is vicious and multiple and untrue after all. Why do you need it? Donβt ever ask for the true story.
The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.
That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,_x000D_ _x000D_ For slander's mark was ever yet the fair;_x000D_ _x000D_ The ornament of beauty is suspect,_x000D_ _x000D_ A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
If you have rooms that are very homogeneous, that have all had the same life experiences and educational backgrounds, and they're all relatively wealthy, their perspective on the world is going to mirror what they already know. That can be dangerous when we're making systems that will affect so many diverse populations.
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