Daarvoor is godsdienst nodig

‘ Met of zonder religie kunnen goede mensen zich goed en slechte mensen zich slecht gedragen. Maar om goede mensen kwaad te laten doen, daarvoor is godsdienst nodig.’ Voor mij was deze uitspraak van Steven Weinberg nieuw. Zoals de meeste Amerikaanse geleerden is hij, 1933 geboren in een Joods gezin, atheïst. In 1979 won hij de Nobelprijs voor natuurkunde. De rake observatie over de moreel ondermijnende werking van religie is de climax van deze passage: Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. 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.