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Comment by sukuriant | Hacker News Reader

In many cases, I suppose you might be correct; but, religion is often just a crutch or reason for people to get behind some very ... dedicated? evil? twisted? sociopathic? person's plans and do terrible things.

I downvoted you because religion is not the root of all evil, it's just a visible source of some of the evils in this world. But not all.

Rest in Peace, VileRat. You were called out of this world sooner than any of us expected or wanted...

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"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." --Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999

That's very pithy, but it's patently false. It doesn't take religion to make "good" people do "bad" things. It just takes an authority figure.

It doesn't take religion to make "good" people do "bad" things. It just takes an authority figure.

Exactly (see my other comment in response to yours).

If you're a wannabe authority figure with grand ambitions but no sound arguments, what's your next step? You either invent a God, claim the favor of an existing one, or (in the case of the Communist personality cultists) become one yourself.

When someone like me says that they "hate religion", what we are really saying is that we hate this process, and wish it would stop working so well.

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