Religions as overgrown fandoms

I've come to see many religions as overgrown fandoms.  People join or stay for similar reasons:

• because they want to be entertained / have something to do
• because they're friends or family of someone in the fandom / religion
• because they believe in the worldview / optimism / pessimism of the canon, the original teacher, or the source documents behind the rituals / fandom activities
• because it reinforces something they already enjoy / believe
• because it introduces them to something amazing
• because they like the art
• because they like the music
• because they like the other fans / adherents.
• because they see an opportunity to be recognized for their skill at embodying what it's about
• because they want to keep power out of the wrong hands
• because they want power
• because they want money, sex, or other benefits
• because they want friends
• because they want to correct other people
• because they see the world as a failure and that fandom / religion as a way to escape or fix it
• because they see themselves as a failure and that fandom / religion as a way to escape or fix themselves
• because they see other people as failures and that fandom / religion as a way to escape or fix them

Fandoms are only recognized as not worth killing people over because they're about fiction, entertainment. Yet people lie, cheat, steal, dox, and commit other wounds against other people up to the very edge of death, and use the language of threats and violence in arguments all the time.  Fandoms are about our core passions, and it shows.

The paradigms are identical.  The instincts are identical.  The failure isn't in religion or in fandom, but how we use it to express our fundamentally flawed humanity.

Religions have claims of worldview accuracy.  Even Atheism claims that there is no God, or were there to be one, the sorry state of His creation proves Him unworthy to rule it.  They are about very big, eternal, weighty things that, in their adherents' minds, surpass the laws and taboos against killing others or themselves.  I as a Christian have grown up expecting that there will come a day I will be asked to choose between my life and my faith, and on that day, it will be my welcome duty to be slain by another's hand and go to meet my God.

Milgram and Campbell

The Milgram experiment showed that, even in the worst situations where things are going horribly awry, people prefer to have an illusion of control instead of a total loss of control. Perhaps they feared that the person instructing them to press the switches would take over and press the switches; the instructor had already proven himself sadistic and heartless, and would probably press the switch for longer than absolutely necessary.

None of them bothered to ask "why am I here", to question the assumptions of the experiment and ask why a volunteer who won a lottery had to torture the one who lost.

None of them questioned the established setup - because they were following the Hero's Journey, in which someone takes you out of the world you know and gives you instructions for dealing with your new reality, becoming your mentor in that process, and Horrible Things Will Happen if you step off the path for one moment.