Exactly!

Here's a comment that bruno_bt made in bitterlawngnome's journal:

My friend identifies as a Unitarian, which is based around seven principles that apply to everything. She was talking to another woman who was a devout follower of an Abrahamic faith. This woman questioned the validity of Unitarianism, since it didn't have a long list of rules on how its adherents should live and behave. In her eyes, a faith without detailed rules wasn't a faith at all, and provided no guidance.

But the fact is that rules can be bent. A rule-based faith allows their followers to be generally nasty people, yet revel in the delusion that they're decent human beings because they're living within the parameters of divine instruction.

Principles, on the other hand, never can be conveniently ignored if one claims to adhere to them. Principles place the responsibility of moral behaviour on the individual, and not dogmatic instruction. One has to understand one's actions as opposed to blindly following creed.

We can see the effect of the difference, for history has demonstrated that there are no limits to the horrors people are willing to inflict when they are "just obeying orders".

And a link to the entry.