(March 11, 2020 at 5:30 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote: Religious people do it ALL the time.
This is certainly true. Because human beings do it all the time, and religious people are a subset of human beings.
It would be equally true to say that Jews do it all the time, or gay people do it all the time. Because they are also subsets of human beings, and human beings do it all the time. I suspect we would be reluctant to type out such sentences, because even though they're true, they sound bad. Which raises the question of why we are willing to specify it's true for "religious people."
(It's no doubt also true for white art historians who live in Japan, as well. Since I should mention a group of which I am a member.)
If someone wanted to argue that religious people are more likely to justify their bad actions than others, I think we'd want a logical argument or empirical evidence, so as not to come across as just prejudiced. I'm not convinced yet that religious people self-justify more badly than, say, atheist Marxists or atheist CEOs of insurance companies.
It seems to me more likely that people are wont to justify their bad actions, and to do so they will reach for whatever tools are handy. If they go to church, they will find concepts from religion. If they live in a capitalist society, they will find capitalist concepts handy. If they read Ayn Rand, the justifications will be handed to them. If they imagine they are scientists, they have been able, in history, to point to the supposedly smaller brains of women and black people. And since the majority of people who have ever lived have been religious, it isn't a surprise that bad justifications are found in religion. The question is whether human beings would be any better if they didn't have religion. I see no reason to think they would be, although, since this is counterfactual, we don't really know.