OT: WBC to picket Heath Ledgers funeral.

But as I stated in my post the ideals at the heart of their bigotry are not due to the religion, but due to lust for power and desire to hold themselves above others.

This ideal is not constrained to religion though.  For instance, I live in a country where the government outlaws homosexuality and considers it to be a mental illness.  The government also requires all government officials to renounce any association to religion.

I therefore do not see the veneer of Christian terminology which this church uses as the problem.  I am disheartened by it, and think it misrepresents the faith that I believe and thus gives us a bad name.  Still, I think the issue that needs to be addressed with individuals is a lust for power and prideful desire to hold ourselves above others, which ironically is something that Jesus addressed and condemned regularly in the gospels.

As such, without religion the power hungry would simply find their way in labor unions or political parties, etc. and the evil in the world would continue.  That's why even in non-religious societies you still see great amounts of oppression (usually on the religious).

This view is not the majority view though.  Most scholars believe that religion came about as a means of motivating the necessary morality for survival.  People in and of themselves were unruly in their lust for power, and therefore the masses decided that the best way to respond to this dilemma was to create morality.  The association between necessary morality and religion came about when people began asking, "Why should I not kill my neighbor and take his food when I'm hungry?"  In an age where illnesses were not understood the gods were usually the source of death and phenomenon (such as the rising and setting of the sun) that were not understood became godly events.  As such, these godly events quickly became associated with and the motivation behind living moral lives.  In its earliest states there was no priestly class lusting for power themselves (as Nietzsche suggested), but instead a primal man relinquishing his desire to kill his neighbor because he feared that the great fireball in the sky might forbid it.

Whenever I studied ancient near eastern history in grad school this was the majority view by scholars studying the origins of religion, and I've not heard of a shift in academia since...although I'm not as in the loop as I used to be.

Of course, since I'm a Christian and actually believe in a real God and a real revelation of God in Jesus Christ, I hold neither of these views, heh.