The sad reality is the vast majority of religious leaders in this country have little or no advanced education, yet these leaders yield a dangerous amount of power and influence in society and politics. This self righteous interference in our daily lives is what our founding fathers warned us about, which we seem to be forgetting and worst not valuing.
Unless we find a way to stop the blind adoption of parental indoctrinated belief systems by increasing the depth in the teaching of the objective and neutral truth of science via the scientific method, we are doomed to repeat the history of suffering from religious mental enslavement.