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Religion
In reply to the discussion: Aren't commandments intended for believers to follow? [View all]NeoGreen
(4,037 posts)42. Steven Weinberg...
...
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steven_Weinberg
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it 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.
Address at the Conference on Cosmic Design, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C. (April 1999)
Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham.
Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will.
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil that takes religion.
Above comment is modified in a later article derived from the 1999 talks
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The notion that those activities are undesirable is far, far older than any religion.
trotsky
May 2018
#6
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Why do some people feel its their responsibility...
marble falls
May 2018
#13
I don't know why some people have to troll others by creating fictitious commandments...
trotsky
May 2018
#24
Since you continue to insinuate things about me to try and badmouth me in public,
trotsky
May 2018
#86
If God metes out consequences for not obeying them, but you don't believe in God,
The Velveteen Ocelot
May 2018
#53
Exactly. If you aren't playing the game you don't have to follow the rules.
The Velveteen Ocelot
May 2018
#56
I hope none of Trump's molecules come my way, but I suppose it's hard to know.
The Velveteen Ocelot
May 2018
#62