Theres falsely religious (in a way, these are the properly religious kind) and truly religious kinds. The same applies to atheists.
Falsely religious are those who are simply in it to look good, but dont really know/care about the foundationanl beliefs/doctrines. These are somewhat controllable as long as you know what practices they abide by or you know why they pretend as they do (social acceptance, political benefits etc). The truly religious (aka the spiritual) are impossible to control but nearly perfectly predicatable because of absolute principles that they follow. You cant tell them what to do, but you always know it. So you can work with/around them easier, but never control.
With atheists, its the opposite. Truly atheistic are very critical and cautious of things and so are difficult to manipulate to go to extremes, but you can influence their dialogue to manipulate them moderately. Falsely atheistic are mostly caught up in the idea of non-conformism and dont really understand much of the religion they're rejecting, so these notions are easily manipulated but the same sense of non-conformity means they can 'wake up' at any time to change teams.
In terms of ease of control, the truly religious are the most difficult, practically impossible to manipulate, but most straightforward to understand in patterns. The truly atheistic come next because they still have thay genuine factor, buttheir thinking can still be influenced. The falsely atheistic come next because the notions they play with are easily manipulated, but the nature of their game always gives them a chance of getting free. The falsely religious are the easiest because the very reasons of their pretence are usually tied to politics anyway and these reasons are so instinctive that they are unlikely to break free without genuinely supernatural intervention.