Just a quick aside because somebody mentioned it....

Karl Marx's oft-quoted comment about religion being the "opiate of the masses" is one of the most misunderstood statements in philosophy. The connotation of the word "opiate" has done a total about face since Marx's time. The idea of an opiate as a mind-numbing sloth-inducing addictive drug is a fairly recent concept. In Marx's time the use of opiates in medicine was fairly new and was being hailed much as "miracle drugs" were hailed in the last century. So, in Marx's time, to say that religion was the opiate of the people was actually saying something positive about religion. It helped ease pain and made life more bearable. It was only after the negative addictive and destructive effects of opiates were realized that Marx's comment took on the negative anti-religion meaning that many people attribute to it.

Bruce