A Must Read!

[Thorne]

There you go again...are you so sure thats why religion came into being?

No, I'm not sure. That's why I said "I would venture to say", stating it as an opinion, or speculation.

See when you take the idea of a benevolent god out of the picture everything is reduced to Machiavellian levels.

And just which "benevolent god" are we talking about here? I'm not familiar with too many.

I guess thats the Atheists way huh? Control and cruelty?

Oh certainly. It's atheists who kill those who convert to another religion, isn't it? No, wait. That's Islam:

Apostasy in Islam (Arabic: ارتداد, irtidād or ridda‎) is commonly defined as the rejection in word or deed of their former religion (apostasy) by a person who was previously a follower of Islam. The traditional schools of Islamic jurisprudence are unanimous in holding that apostasy by a male Muslim is punishable by death. They differ on whether to execute the apostate immediately or grant the apostate a temporary reprieve in order to allow him to repent and avoid the penalty. The schools also differ on whether a female apostate is to be killed, or only imprisoned until she re-embraces the faith.

Or maybe Christians:

Within 5 years of the official 'criminalisation' of heresy by the emperor, the first Christian heretic to be prosecuted, Priscillian was executed in 385 by Roman officials. For some years after the reformation, Protestant churches were also known to execute those whom they considered as heretics, including Catholics, and later, in North America, the Salem witch trials. The last known heretic executed by sentence of the Catholic Church was Cayetano Ripoll in 1826. The number of people executed as heretics under the authority of the various 'church authorities' is not known, however it most certainly numbers into the several thousands.

though the Christian churches seem to have grown out of the practice.

Or perhaps Judaism:

The Torah states:

Deuteronomy 13:6-10:

If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which [is] as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; [Namely], of the gods of the people which [are] round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the [one] end of the earth even unto the [other] end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.[16]

They seem to have gotten over it, too.

I never heard of an atheist apostate, though there have been people who have gone back to religion after becoming atheists. I don't think any of them were condemned for it, though.

Spiritualism didnt develope out of a need to control someone elses actions.

I never claimed it did. I said religions did. Spiritualism, and faith, developed out of individual searches for truth.