and there upon the vast prairies, will be the fox. The mighty fox. The implacable fox. The fox who knows they are coming. - Sheri S. Tepper

All societies maintain themselves by forcing personal behavior into a mold or pattern which the society calls its 'culture.' The patterns are imposed by natural or political conditions; for example, either recurrent drought or recurrent persecution can result in similar patterns. Most patterns require changes in behavior, and that requires changes in belief systems, or vice versa, sort of chicken and egg as to which comes first.
"So a few thousand years go by and the climate changes, or the politics, but the people still follow the same taboos because by now they believe their deity ordered them to do it. Long-practiced behaviors that started as a response to conditions, always fossilize into 'traditional values,' that is, the only 'right way' to do things. At that point people no longer use the system in order to survive, the system uses them in order to survive. That's something people often don't understand. Systems are parasitical, they have a life of their own, and they, too, evolve and change and try to survive. The one factor that is true of all cultures, without exception, is that it never represents the free desires of the people who are jammed into it even when people are conditioned from childhood to accept uniformation."
"Really?" asked Ellin. "Never?"
Questioner grinned at her. "Only mavericks live in accordance with their desires, and even they don't often get away with it. They are usually labeled as troublemakers and gotten rid of.

People don’t seem to rob bookstores much, more’s the pity for them.

The difference between a true religion—and there are many which share aspects of truth—and a dangerous cult is only this: In the one the individual is freed to grow and live and learn; in the other the individual is subordinated to the will of a hierarchy, enslaved to the purposes of that hierarchy, forbidden to learn except what the cult would teach. You have only to look at the rules which govern the servants of a religion to know whether its god is God indeed, or devil!