Pretensions to moral superiority are devastatingly destructive.

Just in our lifetime our society has become looser and more private, it becomes extremely difficult to hold to any permanent commitment whatever, least of all to organized religion.

Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe in a transcendent reality, and to be encouraged by grand rituals and music and preaching, to love their neighbors, then they would put jealousy and frustration aside?

The history of the Church of Rome is a constant leakage of members into such breakaway cults, which go on splitting.

Inside a religious body you get sects and hierarchies, inside an information network you get bazaars and cathedrals, it is the same, call them what you like. They survive by pointing the finger of blame at each other.

Some scholars have been arguing that a civilizational clash between organized religions is the next step in human history.

I am sure it must be true that people opt out of the mainstream society because they feel that there are going to be no rewards for them, if they stay.