[Suzerain of Sheol]

Oh, that. Well, I do largely agree, I honestly feel kind of dumb for putting it the way I did, since as you say, it's rather tautological.

It *does* make me think about what it says about us as a culture (or even a species, possibly) that we gravitate towards "religion" in the institutional sense and largely flee or shun (Ireneus, I'm looking at you!) those system which lead to further self-knowledge and better understanding of the world that we perceive.

Almost makes me think of Fulke Greville's "Oh, wearisome condition of humanity/born under one law, to another bound/vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity/created sick, commanded to be sound". Or, also, his lines, "To teach belief in good and still devotion/to preach of heaven's wonders and delights /yet, when each of us in his own heart looks/he finds the God there far unlike his books."

Religion almost seems the business of rendering the spiritual earthly and humanized -- and often ugly. Dethroning godhead for the sort mundane minutiae that are the precise opposite of sublimity. In short: going about it entirely the wrong way, in my opinion. Dragging God down to the level of man, rather than letting man aspire to Him.