I agree with your assessment, however, we could broaden the perspective to include most if not all religious believers. They have all been misled by their religious leaders to believe in ancient conjecture, unsupported by any credible evidence. The religious leaders themselves are victims in the same sense. They have been misled by the religious leaders who preceded them. And, this has been going on for some 150,000 years, ever since early man started to develop language and the earliest religious ideas (e.g., an afterlife).