From: "CE" 

> My point is that religions are just a sort of brainwash to start
> with.  Later on, they could get a huge momentum thanks to the power of
> the state.

Ah, well, then my answer to that is that religious belief is not the result
of mindless drones simply following the dictates of their masters. In many
cases, religious belief has spread in opposition to the wishes of the
socio-economic elites and even against the existing laws. During the early
days of the church, for example, Christians were hunted down and killed.
And in some countries, it is illegal even  today to be a Christian.
Believers in those countries meet in secret.
But the religion itself carries on and spreads.

Even if we were to accept, for the sake of argument - that people profess a
belief because they are simply and perhaps unconsciously imitating the
behaviour or following the wishes of the ruling elite - this position would
still be problematic. There would be no way for us
to know whether atheism and agnosticism are the result of people freeing
themselves from religious indoctrination or merely the result of yet
another indoctrination into the wishes of their new secular masters. Under
the proposed sociological model, it would be just as valid to claim
atheists and agnostics are merely following the dictates of a capitalistic
elite in a secular society - and not really the freethinkers they feel
themselves to be.

--- BBBS/LiI v4.01 Flag