Here are some quotes from Thomas Jefferson and Mark Twain that say what I
think much better than I could come up with the words myself:
Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities
the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every
wind.
-Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822.
In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every
case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who
have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at
second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not
worth a brass farthing.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain
I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion
and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.
- Mark Twain in Eruption
A religion that comes of thought, and study, and deliberate conviction,
sticks best. The revivalized convert who is scared in the direction of heaven
because he sees hell yawn suddenly behind him, not only regains confidence
when his scare is over, but is ashamed of himself for being scared, and often
becomes more hopelessly and malignantly wicked than he was before.
- Mark Twain in a letter, San Francisco Alta California, November 15,1868