> [Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg] once said, "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.” To which Freeman Dyson remarked, “Weinberg’s statement is true as far as it goes, but it is not the whole truth. To make it the whole truth, we must add an additional clause: ‘And for bad people to do good things – that takes religion.’"
> And for bad people to do good things – that takes religion.
Clever retort. But even if proven true somehow is it the religion that made the bad do good or agreed upon ethics with consequences for those who broke them? Must it include belief in some unprovable future consequence?
How do we know whether a person is good or bad, other than by seeing what the person does? In truth, the idea of a good or bad person is a trope of fiction intended for children. In real life everyone does good and bad things.
