Personally, I didn't see the essay as a religious bashing - but, as pointing out how some justify why there are poor and why they deserve to be poor.

Granted education is a key to improving the living conditions of those born into poverty. However, one need only visit a school in (say) SouthCentral L.A. and realize the insurmountable task that a young person there has in attaining a quality education.

Still, it is not as simple as assuring a productive education. It is more a matter that corporations need to involve themselves in that system to assure they will receive the workforce they need - as to outsourcing being the easier path. The path they are presently on will likely bite them in the ass at some point, as the poor of the lesser nations they are using to produce their profits realize the disparity between them and their desire to purchase the things they are making for foreigners.

Do people want to be poor? Can we blame it all on drugs and sex? Gee, isn't that a simplistic cause all to answer the ills of the poor? Is there a category that fits this analogy? Yes, but really - they also fit in to the category of giving up. When something seems insurmountable, it is a natural human impulse to surrender to the forces keeping them there - or revolting, rioting, looting, burning - what ever it takes.

Remember: Religion is the opiate of the masses. Karl Marx