"It ought to be possible for me to pursue my studies and researches in one house, and for the Buddhist to spin his wheel in another. But contempt for the intellect has a strange way of not being passive. One of two things may happen: those who are innocently credulous may become easy prey for those who are less scrupulous and who seek to 'lead' and 'inspire' them. Or those whose credulity has led their own society into stagnation may seek a solution, not in self-examination, but in blaming others for their backwardness,..--From There Is No "Eastern" Solution, the fourteenth chapter in Christopher Hitchens' excellent tome, God Is Not Great (How Religion Poisons Everything)
...A faith that despises the mind and the free individual, that preaches submission and resignation, and that regards life as a poor and transient thing, is ill-equipped for self-criticism. Those who become bored by conventional 'Bible' religions, and seek 'enlightenment' by way of the dissolution of their own critical faculties into nirvana in any form, had better take a warning."
