"With or without religion.." Quote. Is Weinberg wrong?

[dyresand]

Well, Weinberg obviously is one of the quickest bulbs in the shed when it comes to physics, but I never found this one to be terribly convincing. First of all, all kinds of ideologies can make good people do bad things, it doesn't have to be religion, unless you define religion really loosely. What's more interesting here is the statistics - how likely are people in each group to do X - of course there are tons of correlations and confounding factors which render such studies meaningless very easily.

In philosophical discussions, I care about the truth of religious claims first and foremost, whereas their impact on society is important, but something different entirely if you ask me. Religion could be pure poison, but still be true. Weinberg's argument is not so much concerned with the veracity of religion, but instead primarily aims to attack the very common notion that religious faith is a virtue.

I suppose one could say to the counter arguments that, "Sure, good people can do evil things, but if we take religion out, one could wager that evil acts would go down tremendously."

What do you think of this?

Edit: then again, a common premise is that "religion is used as a mask for evil deeds." Ugh...

Religion is evil with a smiley face sticker.