(October 23, 2013 at 7:08 pm)SophiaGrace Wrote: I feel that religion is not the root of evil, human beings are. Religion is just a lense through which bad people justify evil deeds. The desire to do ill is already there, they just use religion to interpret their desires into a framework of thought that supports their motivations.
You are forgetting that ideas affect people's desires and motivations. The desire to oppress another class of people wouldn't be present unless there was a pre-existing idea that they are somehow inferior and deserving of it. Often, the religion not only provides a framework to support such motivations, it dictates those motivations as well.
