Comment by S S Tragus on December 14, 2009 at 1:45pm

Reminds me of something the physicist Steven Weinberg once said, "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" and a quote from Blaise Pascal, "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.” Because religion settles into traditions that support specific power structures, and because religion overrides, indeed hijacks conscience, it can manipulate otherwise decent people into praying for and doing terrible things. What humanity needs to do is find a way to eject the hijacker without killing or maligning the hijacked.

Comment by Jon Heim on August 5, 2010 at 3:43pm

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction." is one of my favorites too.

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