"It seems to be a hangover of the Medieval Catholic era that causes most people, even the educated, to think that everybody must "believe" something or other, that if one is not a theist one must be a dogmatic atheist, and if one does not think capitalism is perfect, one must believe fervently in socialism, and if one does not have blind faith in "X", one must alternatively have blind faith in not X or reverse of X. My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assume certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered typically dead under current medical standards where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended." Robert Anton Wilson