Humankind being swept away - Is it all in the name of religion?

Potential Spoilers Below

“They could not hold together,” the Ogier replied. “Crops failed, or trade failed. People failed. Something failed in each case, and the nation dwindled. Often neighboring countries absorbed the land, when the nations were gone, but they never lasted, those annexations. In time, the land truly was abandoned. Some villages hang on here and there, but mostly they have all gone to wilderness. It is nearly three hundred years since Harad Dakar was finally abandoned, but even before that it was a shell, with a king who could not control what happened inside the city walls. Harad Dakar itself is completely gone now, I understand. All the towns and cities of Hardan are gone, the stone carted away by farmers and villagers for their own use. Most of the farms and villages made with it are gone, too. So I read, and I've seen nothing to change it.”

Ogier

“It was quite a quarry, Harad Dakar, for almost a hundred years,” Ingtar said bitterly. “The people left, finally, and then the city was hauled away, stone by stone. All faded away, and what has not gone is fading. Everything, everywhere, fading. There is hardly a nation that truly controls the land it claims on a map, and there is hardly a land that claims today on a map what it did even a hundred years ago. When the War of the Hundred Years ended, a man rode from one nation into another without end from the Blight to the Sea of Storms. Now we can ride through wilderness claimed by no nation for almost the whole of the land. We in the Borderlands have our battle with the Blight to keep us strong, and whole. Perhaps they did not have what they needed to keep them strong. You say they failed, Builder? Yes, they failed, and what nation standing whole today will fail tomorrow? We are being swept away, humankind. Swept away like flotsam on a flood. How long until there is nothing left but the Borderlands? How long before we, too, go under, and there is nothing left but Trollocs and Myrddraal all the way to the Sea of Storms?”

Ingtar

Trollocs

Myrddraal

“Studying his blade, Ingtar did not seem to hear. “Humankind is being swept away everywhere. Nations fail and vanish. Darkfriends are everywhere, and none of these southlanders seem to notice or care. We fight to hold the Borderlands, to keep them safe in their houses, and every year, despite all we can do, the Blight advances. And these southlanders think Trollocs are myths, and Myrddraal a gleeman's tale.”

Gleeman

The ideas expressed in TWOT concerning how southlanders feel about Trollocs and Myrddraal are expressed the same as those in ASOIAF feel about the Children of the Forest (COTF) and the White Walkers.

Children of the Forest

White Walker

Tyrion laughed. “You’re too smart to believe that. The Night’s Watch is a midden heap for all the misfits of the realm. I’ve seen you looking at Yoren and his boys. Those are your new brothers, Jon Snow, how do you like them? Sullen peasants, debtors, poachers, rapers, thieves, and bastards like you all wind up on the Wall, watching for grumkins and snarks and all the other monsters your wet nurse warned you about. The good part is there are no grumkins or snarks, so it’s scarcely dangerous work. The bad part is you freeze your balls off, but since you’re not allowed to breed anyway, I don’t suppose that matters.”

Tyrion

Members of the Night's Watch

Yoren

Jon Snow and his brothers

And they did sing. They sang in True Tongue, so Bran could not understand the words, but their voices were as pure as winter air. “Where are the rest of you?” Bran asked Leaf, once.

Bran

Leaf

“Gone down into the earth,” she answered. “Into the stones, into the trees. Before the First Men came all this land that you call Westeros was home to us, yet even in those days we were few. The gods gave us long lives but not great numbers, lest we overrun the world as deer will overrun a wood where there are no wolves to hunt them. That was in the dawn of days, when our sun was rising. Now it sinks, and this is our long dwindling. The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers. The great lions of the western hills have been slain, the unicorns are all but gone, the mammoths down to a few hundred. The direwolves will outlast us all, but their time will come as well. In the world that men have made, there is no room for them, or us.”

Wun Wun - the giant

Ghost - the direwolf

She seemed sad when she said it, and that made Bran sad as well. It was only later that he thought, Men would not be sad. Men would be wroth. Men would hate and swear a bloody vengeance. The singers sing sad songs, where men would fight and kill.

As Hodor he explored the caves. He found chambers full of bones, shafts that plunged deep into the earth, a place where the skeletons of gigantic bats hung upside down from the ceiling. He even crossed the slender stone bridge that arched over the abyss and discovered more passages and chambers on the far side. One was full of singers, enthroned like Brynden in nests of weirwood roots that wove under and through and around their bodies. Most of them looked dead to him, but as he crossed in front of them their eyes would open and follow the light of his torch, and one of them opened and closed a wrinkled mouth as if he were trying to speak. “Hodor,” Bran said to him, and he felt the real Hodor stir down in his pit.

Hodor

Brynden the Three eyed crow

Weirwood tree

Did you catch the part about the nests of weirwood roots that were full of singers enthroned like Brynden?  To me this is the key to what is going on.  I believe that they are the source of all the religious beliefs throughout the world.  I believe that they are using lost technology or magic in the way that the glass candles were used according to Maester Marwyn.

Marwyn seated himself upon a stool. “All Valyrian sorcery was rooted in blood or fire. The sorcerers of the Freehold could see across mountains, seas, and deserts with one of these glass candles. They could enter a man’s dreams and give him visions, and speak to one another half a world apart, seated before their candles. Do you think that might be useful, Slayer?”

Sam the Slayer

Think about it this way.  You show a group of people visions that do actually come true and you have them believe it came from a god.  Over time a religion springs up around those visions.  You start doing this to a large group of people isolated from each other and let it all marinate over time.  Wars start over these beliefs because the zealots in each religion are given signs that what they believe is true and shouldn’t be disputed.  You even start giving different visions or messages to members of the same religion separated by distance and you let humankind do the rest.  Look at R’hllor for instance.  Daenerys is being preached as the savior in the east and Stannis was and now Jon Snow is in the west?  Which is true?  Or is either for that matter?  I believe it is just a ploy to gather large forces behind both and have them fight it out and destroy each other.  When all is said and done, in their plan, the COTF rise to rule the world.

Daenerys

Stannis pulling burning sword from the fire

Davos said what I believe in his own unique way in a conversation between him and Melisandre on the TV show:

So are all the religions that exist going to be confirmed to be the same and from a single source?  Could it be that the extremely complex story that we all know and love that is ASOIAF is going to all boil down to be about religion?  What do you think?

Comments encouraged.  Love to hear the idea's of others.  Most believe that since I present my idea's as "fact like" I'm not open to change my viewpoints which as far from the truth.  I simply look at the information presented and go from there.  If you can shine a light on another way of thinking that opens the door to debate.