Scottish agnostic cleric and writer Richard Holloway writes in Doubts and Loves: What is Left of Christianity (2001):

By definition, religions of salvation are in the bandage business, they have come to heal our wounds. They do not sit alongside us in the chair looking in the distance, comparing points of view; they want to protect us from what we might discover for ourselves, by telling us what the official view is and how dangerous it will be for us if we don’t accept it. Or to mix the metaphor slightly, they want to sell us their special spectacles, which have been theologically tested by experts to give us maximum power for long-distance looking. Given the extraordinary energy and vitality of the human species, none of this should surprise us, but buyers should always beware of sellers.