Steven Weinberg (1933-2021): a personal view

scottaaronson.com

25 points·furcyd··5 comments

> 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.

A great physicist without any doubt, but this quote in my opinion is symptomatic of a very shallow analysis when it comes to religion.

Without religion (or some other set of values, even secular values) it’s very difficult to define good or bad. You can come up with some general idea of treating other like you would like to be treated yourself, but the devil is in the details and there’s a ton of details! Also, many bad people did good deeds because of religion.

What difficulty that doesn't persist in religion (except you choose one specific, but even then it doesn't fully help) is there to define good or bad (apart from the difficulty to define anything like what is a 'sheep' for example).

I am not sure I get your point. One can have a range of opinions about religions, but I think it’s clear most of them provide some strong guidance about what’s good and what’s bed. I mean, some of them literally contains lists of what’s good and what’s bad.

On the other hand, the problem of what’s good and what’s bad is of course far from being settled, at least looking at the diversity of opinions people have about the matter.

My point is what specific devil in the detail do you refer to beeing only present in defining good and bad without religion (or strong value system)

To be honest I have no idea of how good and bad can be defined without a strong value system (be it religious or secular).

It’s pretty much the definition of value system, actually!

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