What did slavemasters give slaves outside of scraps to eat? A Bible.
Most a workers (my guess around 80%) aren't paid to critically think, so they are trained in school to follow protocol, memorize them and conform to the rules, these are typically your teachers, firemen, cops, construction workers, and cab drivers.
The next 15% are paid to enforce the system, these are the foremen, lawyers, supervisors district managers.
The top 5% are the people who create the laws and write the books and create instructions to build bridges, buildings cars and computer chips, that help keeps society running smooth.
With that model in mind, think about it, if you have spent all of your life being trained and educated to follow instructions and go with the flow in life, typically you will grow up to be the type that follows fashion, trends, whats hot, living whats considered a normal life (because this is what everyone around you is doing).
To many of these people religion, whether its Christianity, Judaism, Islam or others provides a way of coping with the unknown aspects of life, also it provides structure and stability especially in the household. This may seem great but there is a trade off that strips you of independent critical thinking and because of this prevents you from seeing the whole reality of the universe.
What cracks me up is seeing someone thinking they are finally free from the shackles of their religion only to become shackled to another, for example someone who denounces Christianity only to buy into the pro Black movement, where you went form thinking the man on the cross is god to now the man with the same skin color is god.
Now we can debate over which one is better, but that's not the point, the point is you are still under dogmatic thinking where your stance or conclusion is all ready established, all contrary evidence is met with hostility and skepticism, while all evidence that supports your conclusion is embarrassed without scrutiny or skepticism.
Understanding how this process can uplift the typical working class citizen's life, by giving them pride and hope, you would soon discover most people need some type of belief system just to get by the day to day operations in today's work force.
But to get up to the higher levels, you need more critical thinking, and to be honest sometimes this can be brutal, because sometimes the truth hurts and dealing with the truth, the way the truly are can be challenging, for example as a black man who loves my people I no longer operate from the vantage point that we are the begot from the curse of ham (this is a good thing), but at the same token I don't operate from the notion that we are gods chosen people (this can sometimes alienate me from people of this dogma), instead I am forced to see all people for their merits, the good and the bad that they do, and this takes more mental energy than most people have time to commit towards.
At the end, I sometimes feel like the protagonist from Pluto's cave, where I can see things that are almost explainable to the very people I love, and often find myself compromising truths that can help them and watering it down so they can somewhat relate to, but to me it sort of feels like pandering. The bottom line is, in the eyes of a critical thinker, all dogmatic minds are alike, doesn't matter what set, what creed, what belief system, if you are not able to critically challenge the belief system that guides you in life then you are no different than anyone else who does, but I will admit that in most cases, from the persons point of reference, this may not be a bad thing, especially if they are getting the result they want in life.