If people want to compete for leadership of a religious group, they can compete in piety. A chilling thought. Or funny.

Institutions have the pathetic megalomania of the computer whose whole vision of the world is its own program.

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.

It seems true that the growth of science and secularism made organized Christianity feel under threat.

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.

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