What a great post. Of course, I like it because it undermines the very reason most of you are here. Basically people aren't all that rational, they require something to praise, something to devote themselves to. You guys are trying to make "reason" be the object of devotion, but it's not a great fit to the mental slot (and it's been tried before).

One other note: the advantage of having your praise-object be something remote and universal (like God, or the Tsar (pretty remote for most Rus)) is that if your are expressing your allegiance to Lord Alfred and Lord Bob is in the next town over, Lords Alfred and Bob and their followers might have to have a war to determine who is indeed the deserving one. There's some kind of dynamics going on that favors larger-scale objects of worship and larger-scale social alliances.