Does religion make “good people” do “bad things”?

Ask a church receptionist #10

Stock photos…is there anything they can’t do?

Welcome to another installment of Ask a church receptionist, a monthly column where I answer your questions about the Bible, Christianity, and why Miley Cyrus continues to be a thing (no idea).

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Dear church receptionist,

What do you think of that line from Steven Weinberg, “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”?

Thanks,

Probably not a cloned velociraptor

Dear naturally conceived velociraptor,

I think it’s a bit of vacuous word salad. Next.

…you want more? Fine, after the break:

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The line you quote here—originally spoken by Nobel laureate Weinberg during a talk at a 1999 science convention (you can read the full speech here, if you want)—has been a favorite of the “New Atheist” set for the last quarter-century, and for good reason: it’s a quick, pithy way to condemn religion. At this point in history, though, the New Atheism has lost nearly all of its cultural cachet, so going after it is sort of like shooting fish in a barrel. With that in mind, I’ll try to be measured in my critique here, but I think Weinberg is making at least two big philosophical assumptions:

1. Who are the “good people”?

The whole premise of this pithy line is that “good people” and “bad people” exist. Maybe that’s true (certainly we all have some people we prefer to others), but it absolutely raises the question about what makes a person “good” or “bad” and how we distinguish between such people.

The obvious distinction, you’d think, is that good people are people who do good things and bad people are people who do bad things—but if, as Weinberg states, “good people” can sometimes “do evil”…well, in what sense are they good? Or, to put it another way: If our goodness or badness isn’t determined by our behavior…what is it determined by?

It only gets weirder when you consider that a lot of the same people who share Weinberg’s quote around the internet also seem to love this Ricky Gervais tweet:

If we take both Weinberg and Gervais at face value, we have to conclude that religion can both make “good people” do “bad things” and make “bad people” do “good things.” If that’s true, we’d have to conclude that religion is, at worst, a net neutral—but more relevant to the question, both Weinberg and Gervais are endorsing an essentialism that is deeply weird. Given that the overwhelming majority of the world is religious, are we to conclude that the world is teeming with bad people who only do good things and good people who only do bad things?

I mean, at that point, how are “good” and “bad” even useful words?

2. Who gets to say what’s “good” or “bad”?

This is one of those ethical debates that many find tiresome, but at the end of the day, this question really comes back to whether morality can be defined objectively—and I have yet to hear a secular account of objective morality that I personally find satisfying (anyone who thinks they know of one can point me toward it, I suppose). For proof of this, all you have to do is look around and notice how utterly convinced of their own morality many of the people around us are—and how deeply said people disagree with each other on what is or isn’t moral.