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.
I'll tell you something of the forbidden horrors she led me into - something of the age-old horrors that even now are festering in out-of-the-way corners with a few monstrous priests to keep them alive. Some people know things about the universe that nobody ought to know, and can do things that nobody ought to be able to do.
I have done for my country, and for all mankind, all that I could do, and I now resign my soul, without fear, to my God - my daughter to my country.
Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.
I took a wrong turn on the way to the bathroom and found myself in a beautifully proportioned room I had never seen before, containing a really rather magnificent collection of chamberpots. When I went back to investigate more closely, I discovered that the room had vanished. But I must keep an eye out for it. Possibly it is only accessible at five thirty in the morning. Or it may only appear at the quarter moon - or when the seeker has an exceptionally full bladder.
I think one of the great dangers here is going and categorizing anybody from one religion as a terrorist. That's not true... That would let the terrorists win. That's what they want us to do.
The Bible is the Word of God in such a way that when the Bible speaks, God speaks.
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