@spendius,
It strikes me that the brilliant youthful insight that priest-craft is a load of gobbledygook inhibits the formation of the habit of supporting institutions for the sake of conventional propriety.
In proud natures the pride in having attained such a clarity of vision at an early age, and, once it has been communicated to others, the incapacity to admit the error thereafter, results in a condition quite similar to head butting the Great Pyramid of Giza, which is not as solid a structure as the facts of life, and a lifelong rejection of the conventions.
This explains the abysmally low rating of atheism in the polls, despite it having all the facts to support it, and a certain amount of ostracism being applied, discreetly of course, to its adherents. Not to mention the temptations atheism embraces.
btw--I hear that Satanic Black Masses are in vogue at Harvard. I don't suppose they are anything like the one Henry Miller described in Opus Pistorum but a start has to be made somewhere and where else but in an Ivy League institution.
And here is the Pope lecturing big-wigs at the UN on the need for a radical redistribution of wealth to alleviate the plight of the poor.