Steven Weinberg Quotes

Is there one specific source that determines correct morality and everybody should follow that? Or should individuals come up with following that source or not depending on their situation?

In theory it may seem all right to some, but when it comes to being made the instrument of the Lord's vengeance, I myself don't like it.

In a world without the law of God, you have chaos, oppression, tyranny, and everyone doing what is right in their own eyes.

Those of us who believe in God and derive our sense of right and wrong and ethics from God's Word really have no difficulty whatsoever defining where our ethics come from. People who believe in survival of the fittest might have more difficulty deriving where their ethics come from. A lot of evolutionists are very ethical people.

Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.

Doing something because God has said to do it does not make a person moral: it merely tells us that person is a prudential believer, akin to the person who obeys the command of an all-powerful secular king.

We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found.

Is there any moral enormity which might not be justified by imitation of such a Deity?

That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be, and often is, right under another. God said, 'Thou shalt not kill'; at another time He said, 'Thou shalt utterly destroy.' This is the principle on which the government of heaven is conducted—by revelation adapted to the circumstances in which the children of the kingdom are placed. Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire.

Our judgements of good and evil ... presuppose God as the standard. If there's no God, there's neither good nor evil. There's just nature doing what it does

I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil.

I don't know whether any religious leader would say that we must ultimately win, because we're on God's side. If they do say that, it's bad religion.

The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.

If God does not exist, then everything is permissible.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of all mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.

What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.

We can no more tolerate neutrality and benevolence toward every conceivable form of discourse, including that of magical thinking, than we can lump together executioner and victim, good and evil.

But no man has a monopoly of conscience.

The idea of good and evil is a myth created by the politicians, the priests, and all those who have an interest to keep it at their mercy.

Because of the diverse conditions of humans, it happens that some acts are virtuous to some individuals … while the same acts are immoral for others …

No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.

Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.

For such is my will.

Truth is not half way between right and wrong;