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That sounds like he stole it from Peter Weinberg:

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



That attitude makes me uneasy. Atheists are tempted to dismiss religion and sit back, confident in our superior rationality. But what we should do is try to learn even more from theist errors. The errors are not just limited to the obvious (to us) errors like faith in the supernatural. There's also obedience to authority. The Milgram Experiments show that plenty of good people will do evil in certain circumstances.


I can't imagine either of them or the originators of this idea, but I prefer the way Hitchens put it.


Peter or Steven -- make up your mind! :P

It's Steven.




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