I disagree. I think its the religious right that ruined the Republican party. Being conservative and christian means you naturally have a predisposition to conspiracies like QAnon as you are told to take things on faith and not question. Think about it your entire religion is just one big conspiracy theory, the idea that some guy in the sky and some guy in hell are fighting with each other to control you.
Your point of view, in my opinion, makes a lot of sense and is one that is easy to come to when you have experienced such brainwashing personally and have escaped it and have left you angry and enraged, having been promised so much and having it all ripped away by doubt and logical clairity. What it fails to account for, however, and again in my opinion, is what I would claim is the fact that long before or without any religion at all humans are still beset by moral issues.
Moonbeam delivers the message I would give, however different the language used may be.
What Republicans experience, what the Religious experience, it is not unique to them. For theirs is the human experience. We simply target them and point fingers as it is "other" from us. Though we (some of us?)((in some ways??)) have a penchant for critical thinking, we too are not without our flaws. Never forget that their need to believe is ours as well. Any advantages we bear do not prevent us from falling prey to our baser instincts. Including social maladies much like their own.
It is the nature of knowledge. We do not have the position, the experience, or time to proof all the knowledge we learn from others. We all rely on authority to tell us what the truth is. We place our faith in institutions and hope that they have not been corrupted or misguided. Otherwise the truth that we know would not necessarily be the truth. Science is only science because it can be proven, as in replicated and verified. But much of what we know has never been verified by us personally, how could it?
So do not mistake what we have as being all that much different from theirs. It may have been built from a better foundation, but all it would ever take is a re-write of the history books and one generation to turn reality upside down. To disavow that which was once truth. To claim things for reasons other than their own merit - and have an entire nation of "enlightened" fellows believing whatever they were told to believe. Point being, the risk of relapse is ever present. And maybe we wouldn't even know it if we did. Again, we are all only human.
Furthermore, I speak of this with a purpose. If we learn to recognize the root of these problems we face. If we learn our baser instincts. We can seek to address them rather than the facade we place on top of them. Religion isn't the issue, their need for it is. Trumpism is much the same. Strike at the root cause, their need for it. However unlikely, but if we were to achieve victory over their fears - we would also have victory over them.