Watching one of those Science Channel shows on Ancient Egypt and this episode was on Amenhotep IV, who got rid of all the old Egyptian Gods* in favor of just one, Ra, the Sun God. (*Like so many pre-history groups they had a god for every reason and season, hundreds, maybe thousands of them - and of course a cadre of priesthood with a vested interest in keeping things running just the way they were.)

Anyway, Amenhotep did make the changes during his lifetime, Pharaoh and all, but as soon as he died everything went back to the way it was, and his face was mostly chiseled from history because “heretic.” At least until “new” religions sprung up thousands of years later.

The moral of the story I guess, is it’s often more effective to graft onto an existing religion (As Christianity did) than to try to yank people wholesale into another. (Although thinking about it, it seems to have worked for certain English Kings and others. Stalin tried to close down all religion which didn’t really work, and he finally relented when he needed people to come together once WWII had started.)

Well, this went nowhere, with examples going both directions. Ah, maybe a good metaphor for religion?