Spleen Cringe, you asked: "Little Hawk, are you offering lessons in this technique?"

Yeah. $30 an hour. Contact me at your convenience. ;-)

As Jack Campin so aptly pointed out, it's not about religion, it's about authority. People do all sorts of destructive and insane things on the basis of obeying some authority...regardless of whether or not that authority happens to be a religious one or not.

And therein lies the problem. Most people are followers, and the people or authority systems they choose to follow can be extremely unreliable.

To quote Dylan again: "Don't follow leaders"