Someday, I'd be interested in hearing what "taking organized faith to its logical extremes" means. I'm having trouble understanding this statement (maybe (probably) just because I'm tired at the moment). This isn't the thread for that discussion, though, and I'm perfectly okay with a PM.
I tend to cause trouble by trying to economize words... but I'll risk it anyway, because I'm tired, too. (And if anyone wants to carry this off on a tangent, we should let Russell or another moderator know so we can have it split off.)
Basically, it doesn't seem to matter what anyone states as their belief, there is always someone willing to exaggerate that belief into a "logical extreme", usually in an attempt to show why that belief is absurd or to discredit the believer. In this story, the basic idea of "maybe we should try THIS way to reach God" was through over-indulgence; the author took it to the extreme to show that even though the intention was to find God, all that was accomplished was another brutally oppressive system was created that enriched some, exploited others, and left everyone generally feeling like something the cat dragged in.
In the real world, I often hear (from my family back home) the line "we want to live according to a strict, literal interpretation of the Bible". It sounds great to them, until they realize they would have to give up pork and shellfish and would have to stone most of the people they know (including me) to death. Facing that logical extreme, they tend to back down from their above-quoted line... though they seem pretty intent on getting other people to live according to their strict, literal interpretations sometimes.
And yes, we're going to visit them this summer, so I'm probably thinking too much about it.
Edit: I unquoted myself.