You're telling me that like I don't already know. It's easier if I just quote Seneca to explain how I feel:
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."
but that doesn't add up with your previously stated position, unless i've misunderstood it.
before you seemed to be saying that people like Bin Laden are guided by their religious fanaticism, now it seems you're saying he was only cynically manipulating the religious to achieve earthly ends.
Anyway there's ample evidence that Seneca was wrong - George Bush and Sarah Palin appear to genuinely believe their religion and are clearly ruling class.
Dick Cheney has not to my knowledge ever made a big deal about being Christian and so seems likely to be firmly secularist. He and George Bush appear to have very different attitudes to religion, yet their policies are identical. Religion here has played no role at all.
What's more the "common people" have frequently found religion to be useful, e.g. early Christianity, liberation theology during the 1980's, Islam and Christianity in the civil rights struggle, Buddhism in the fight against the US occupation of Vietnam, Islam in Sudanese resistance to the British empire, Christianity in the Revolutionary war in the USA. While religion does usually play a reactionary role, helping the ruling class, we can't make any clear-cut statements like Seneca does.
Also the fact that he regards common people and the wise as being mutually exclusive categories hardly paints him in a good light.
But even discounting that, wouldn't one say that (to stay in the Ancient world) Marcus Aurelius was wise? How about Akhenaten? Both of them were clearly wise, both of them were rulers, both of them devotedly religious and both of them in fact found religion an impediment to their rule, Akhenaten especially would have had a far easier time as a cynical manipulating unbeliever.
tl;dr - Seneca too simplistic and also a classist reactionary
