Norms to protect against consistency and commitment pressures would be very valuable. One possible mechanism would be to make public 'Red Team' analyses: designate a forum where you will present the strongest case you can against one of your favored ideas, along these lines:

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/07/introducing-ram.html

This could be improved with rewards for success, which the speaker could provide herself using a mechanism like http://www.stickk.com/

With respect to religion, here's some support for the vertical versus horizontal spread idea:

Catholicism-celibate priests, early spread by evangelization. Buddhism-celibate monks, early spread by evangelization. Islam-polygamy for believers, early spread by evangelization and violence, with capture of women for followers. Judaism-priests and rabbis marry, tribal religion Hinduism-contains vast diversity, but religious leaders have generally married, generally the religion is inherited and does not seek converts