Stephen Weinberg on religion making good people do evil
example · Steven Weinberg ·
retold in 9 talks
Žižek cites physicist Steven Weinberg's quip, without religion, good people do good things and bad people do bad things, but religion is needed to make good people do bad things, as containing an element of truth even though Žižek elsewhere celebrates Christianity.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 9
“you need something like religion to make good people do bad things”
“You need something like religion to get good people do bad things. And that's where true ideology begins.”
“without religion it would be simply that good people would be doing good things and bad people bad things… But you need religion to make good people do bad things.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
corruptio optimi pessima
×1
evil inscribed into the system
×1
poetic-military complex
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Steven Weinberg8Jonathan Littell2Massimo Cacciari1René Magritte1Creston Davis1Ivan Illich1Günter Anders1Isaiah Berlin1
alongside works
Every retelling 9
Žižek cites physicist Steven Weinberg's quip, without religion, good people do good things and bad people do bad things, but religion is needed to make good people do bad things, as containing an element of truth even though Žižek elsewhere celebrates Christianity., illustrating corruptio optimi pessima,religion and political violence
The cosmologist Steven Weinberg said: without religion good people do good things and bad people do bad things; you need religion to get good people to do bad things, Žižek's formula for where true ideology begins., illustrating ideology,evil inscribed into the system,no ethnic cleansing without poetry
Žižek cites Weinberg's line that without religion good people do good things and bad people do bad things, but you need religion to make good people do bad things, deployed as an ambivalent critique he partially endorses., illustrating religion and politics,theologico-political dimension
Žižek cites physicist Stephen Weinberg's remark that without religion, good people do good things and bad people do bad things, you need religion to make good people do horrible things, and applies it to communist ideology as the mechanism of Stalinist atrocity., illustrating ideology as religion,ethical tragedy of true believers
Physicist Steven Weinberg said that without religion good people do good things and bad people do bad things, but you need religion to make good people do bad things. Žižek applies the formula to communism: its tragedy was not evil people but good people made to do evil thinking it was good., illustrating communism as structural tragedy,ideology and good intentions
While religion might make bad people do good things, Weinberg claims it makes good people do bad things, illustrated by mob killings in the name of religion., illustrating ideology as a lie