I ran across the following quote in Tom Clancy's "Rainbow Six" and thought it interesting...
Druids had been pagans...and to which human lives had been sacrificed. That had doubtless been a measure exercised by the priesthood to maintain their control over the peasants...and the nobility too, in fact, as all religions tended to do. In return for offering some hope and certainty for the greatest mysteries of life - what happened after death, whty the rain fell when it did, how the world had come to be - they extracted their price of earthly power, which was to tell everyone how to live. It had probably been a way for people of intellectual gifts but ignoble birth to achieve the power associated with the nobility. But it had always been about power - earthly power. And like the members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the druid priesthood had probably believed that which they said and that which they enforced because - they had to believe it. It had been the source of their power, and you had to believe in that.
Sound like anyone we know? How else do those with no education or training end up running a worldwide publishing empire and controlling the lives of millions of people? They develop power by using the threat of annihilation for not following orders, convince everyone they're infallible, that their word is God's law, etc. Like it says at the end - many of them probably do believe it because they have to. To question it is to question their ability to retain control and power.
I just thought this was interesting....