By the book

I'm often struck by the force of conviction that people with religious faith have that they are right. But why shouldn't they be self-righteous when they have a book that justifies all they say, be it the Torah, Coran, Bible, Guru Granth or whatever? Because there's no suspension of judgement, no further investigation, no intellectual exercise; just a displacement of confidence away from the self to text that has been interpreted for them.
It's little coincidence that the times of the greatest religious fervour have produced the least progress in human knowledge. The industrial revolution saw the greatest decline in church attendance in Britain, while the Cultural Revolution in China (little red books this time) hardly compared favourably with increasing levels of education in neighbouring Japan.
Marx may have looked on religion as an opiate, assuaging those in poverty that they would be rewarded after they died. But its hallucinogenic qualities are no less evident as it blinds us to resolving issues (west bank, stem cell research, capitalism) that should be considered in a little more detail.