Quotes from Small Gods
"Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure."
This section brings to mind JWs and shunning...This is Didactylos, a philosopher from another city, talking to Brutha (the protagonist) about whether people are sure they have "the truth" in their religion:
"And in your Citadel I saw a crowd stoning a man to death in a pit. Ever seen that?"
"It has to be done, " Brutha mumbled. "So the soul can be shriven and-"
"Don't know about the soul. Never been that kind of a philosopher," said Didactylos. "All I know is, it was a horrible sight."
"The state of the body is not-"
"Oh, I'm not talking about the poor bugger in the pit," said the philosopher. "I'm talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn't them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wasn't them that they were throwing just as hard as they could."
Brutha speaking to his god Om (who is quite like Jehovah, actually) who has had an unfortunate reduction in his power base (gods need people to believe in them to have power):
"You could have helped people," said Brutha. "But all you did was stamp around and roar and try to make people afraid. Like...like a man hitting a donkey with a stick. But people like Vorbis (the bad guy, a priest) made the stick so good, that's all the donkey ends up believing in."
"That could use some work, as a parable," said Om sourly.
"This is real life I'm talking about!"
"It's not my fault if people misuse the-"
"It is! It has to be! If you muck up people's minds just because you want them to believe in you, what they do is all your fault!"
As I said. I think the book is a brilliant treatise on religion and how people react to it. I even see a bit of myself in good old Sgt. Simony, who is furious at the gods for not existing Matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few of us on this board aren't good and peeved at ol' Jehovah for not existing the way he was supposed to.