From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that humans often misuse the concept of God to rationalize immoral actions.
Salman Rushdie's quote highlights the tendency of individuals and societies throughout history to invoke divine authority in order to excuse or legitimize actions that are fundamentally unjust. This reflection points to a deeper examination of morality, faith, and the influence of religion on human behavior, encouraging a critical view of how faith can be manipulated in the name of justifying wrongful deeds.
In practice
During a debate on moral philosophy, this quote can be used to illustrate the misuse of religion.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes.
The world says: "You have needs - satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.
When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, [I] submit myself to my instinct to decide for me.
God created infinity, and man, unable to understand infinity, had to invent finite sets.
The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow - so arbitrary are these transient laws.
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