mgb wrote:
Divine Insight wrote:Weinberg's point is that it takes religion to get genuinely good people to do bad things while believing that they are actually doing good things.
Likewise with politics, business, foreign policy etc.
Agreed, but I'm sure that Weinberg also intended to mean:
it takes religion to get genuinely good people to do bad things while believing that they are actually doing good things with the approval of a God.
People who do what politics, business, and foreign policy requires them to do, don't necessarily feel that they are doing the right thing. In fact, they often actually feel that they are doing something wrong, but they do it anyway to maintain their position in the politics, businesses, or foreign policies they are being paid to to do. After all, they don't want to risk loosing their income and potentially also losing credibility in terms of finding another job. If you lose your job because you refuse to do as you are told it isn't likely that you'll be given a very good reference for the next job you apply for.
So there's a lot of pressure for good people to do bad things in politics, business and forgiven policy, even when they realize that what they are being asked to do doesn't match up with their own moral values.
So in a sense, it's not really good people doing bad things while thinking that what they are doing is right. It's good people DECIDING to do bad things that they know are bad.
Quite a big difference from religion actually.
[center]
Spiritual Growth - A person's continual assessment
of how well they believe they are doing
relative to what they believe a personal God expects of them.
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