I just finished reading Androcles and the Lion (for the nth time). Shaw might have been an atheist, but I think he was reaching for something, whether he realized it or not....
"That is the strange thing, Captain, that a little pinch of incense should make all that difference. Religion is such a great thing that when I meet really religious people we are friends at once, no matter what name we give the divine will that made us and moves us...But, when men who believe neither in my god nor in their own--men who do not know the meaning of the word religion--when these men drag me to the foot of an iron statue that has become the symbol of terror and darkness through which they walk, of their cruelty and greed, of their hatred of God and their oppression of man--when they ask me to pledge my soul before the people that this hideous idol is God, and that all this wickedness and falsehood is divine truth, I cannot do it, not even if they could put a thousand cruel deaths on me"
