Is Steven Weinberg wrong? "With or without religion, good people..." quote

[Faisal]

That's what is neat about ambiguous Testaments---you can pick and choose what you want.

Do you have any theological queries I can help you with?

[trdsf]

Any belief system held too deeply and too unquestioningly can lead to bad acts by otherwise good people.  It's basically the Nuremburg defense: "$DEITY commands it" is exactly the same as "I was only following orders", the abdication of personal responsibility.  Religion provides exactly that kind of cover--followed by, in some traditions, the ability to do private penance rather than actual reparations to those who have been wronged by their actions.

The fault in Weinberg's quote is not in the assertion; it's that it leaves out the reason why religion causes good people to do bad things (and thus allows room for believers to go "Well, nonbelievers do bad things too!"): religion explicitly provides some sort of intangible cover or even benefit for the bad behavior, in that it's "in a good cause", "you can always do penance" and/or "there's a reward in the afterlife".  Historically, the non-religious don't demonstrate that kind of behavior as an explicit development of their lack of religion.  They may find other reasons, of course.

[Munch]

Religion is not the root of evil, despite how much I hate all religious beliefs. The root of evil comes from the faults in mankind in following the flock like sheep, or using fictional beliefs to validate their insane rationality. Any psychopath can claim to kill people in the name of god, and he wouldn't be wrong, because he interrupted the bible into how he wanted it to justify his actions.

Thats what religions are, they are a means to validate the world in people.

[aitm]

Do you have any theological queries I can help you with?

Oh boy a real live pilgrim.

[trdsf]

Sure, your average believer isn't a psychotic killer.

The main problem with religion is when it turns fundamentalist, which is the real core problem in religion.  That's where belief turns into "certainty", and that they "know" what their god wants and because it's their god that wants it, anything and everything is permissible to gain that end, and psychosis suddenly becomes a virtue in the mind of that person.

What religion is, is an early theory of the universe.  Unfortunately, unlike alchemy, it didn't have the decency to die off after a better theory came along; like astrology, it's a theory that appeals to emotion and egotism rather than to observation, and those are hard to get rid of.