I do believe men need to lead. I believe we need to lead our families to God. Men need to teach our sons and daughters morals and proper behavior. We need to teach them about responsibility and duty. We need to teach them about honor, compassion and self-respect. We also need and to do what we can to build and support a culture the sustains such values.
If a religion tells you not to think for yourself then you have chosen the wrong religion. Your argument against religion are indeed a valid complaint against some religions but not all. In the words of Kurt Godel.
Religions are, for the most part, badbut religion is not.
You can't possibly teach men to be objective if you are inject the unfalsifiable God nonsense into the equation. And you can't possibly be objective about morals (ethics) and competitive cultural evolution if you are trying to be so idealistic that you idolize women (which the 10 Commandments tells you not to do and Genesis tells you Eve couldn't be trusted and woman is only a rib of a man!) and fairytales that don't exist.
Gödel was the guy who tried to prove God exists, but then was so ashamed of it he never published his attempt. So apparently he was suffering from some idealistic delusion as well. At least he apparently had some awareness of his insanity.
I mean you can claim that you are teaching your offspring something, just as your parents sent you to be educated. But that doesn't guarantee you aren't just spreading more idealistic delusion.
(I will follow up on Bruce Charlton's writings later)