Then religion is the noble lie we feed to the savages to keep them from...well, savaging each other? We, the enlightened, can surely discuss things in such terms - how Straussian of us :) - but won't the religious be a bit dismayed at the idea?
Maybe, but I have enunciated this point of view often on this site (sans you tenditious little spin on it), and nobody has come after me. It seems to have received a rather positive reception in fact. Maybe the religious are not quite as knuckle dragger as some have posited. The point I am making is that we all make a priori assumptions, or need to, and in that sense we all engage in that naughty little unscientific, non-objective in the narrow sense of that term, leaps of faith.
We are not as different from each other as both sides might wish to think.