[builditand]

You found some similarities between some groups of people. This just shows that some beings like to get together, based sometimes on common interests. Also bananas share 50% of its DNA with humans. So?

What's more relevant is the differences. Funclubs' purpose is fun, I presume. Programming is serving humanity, I have no doubt. Political parties are in a way like football, a gentlemen game played by thieves. Companies are far from meaninglessness, they serve clear organizational and legal and taxes etc purposes.

Religions (edit: I'm familiar with) are built on deception to control people, they are not like fanclubs, programming, companies.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

Really, it's more useful to think of religion as a sort of memetic infection. While religion certainly has been used and in some instances/places still is being used quite explicitly to control people, most believers, and that includes most of the clergy, do themselves sincerely believe what they profess, and there is no intent to deceive, they are simply not competent at distinguishing rational beliefs from irrational beliefs, and often caught in a set of higher-order beliefs that make it difficult for them to recognize where their thinking goes wrong.

[builditand]

I agree completely with you and I don't think it contradicts what I said, more it completes it.

It looks like a viral infection, yes, that's how it spreads: an evil payload wrapped in good ideas. It's a tool to control people even if it's not used everywhere all the time, even if sometimes it's used for good. And finally, yes, the believers have no intention to deceive; they are the ones deceived and since most of them are essentially good people they naturally want to spread the "truth" by telling others about it.