Me, you, and many thousands of others have made these same observations for years and asked the same question. CF is exercise, not training, and for many people exercise is enough. It is not what we do, but if you just want to lose some weight and do some conditioning it's fine, as long as the CF Level I trainer is not particularly stupid (many of the are). It has positive aspects, including having exposed hundreds of thousands of people to barbell training for the first time, even if it was so poorly coached that its potential for transformative strength acquisition was not realized. It has also introduced those same people to the Olympic lifts, and I guess that may someday be a positive thing. But the psychological aspects of it are puzzling to many people. The genius of it is the "belonging" component, the feeling of being on the inside of a group which most other people are not capable of understanding or participating in. He has successfully marketed this on the internet, the hook being the WOD that everyone in the group all over the world does TODAY, like a worship service that all of The Enlightened can share, and the common vocabulary and speech patterns they can all share that are derived from the WODs and the way they are "coached." I'm sure that many sociology masters theses have been written about this aspect of the cult phenomenon. But the appeal for new members is that, for most of them, CF is the first exposure they have ever had to something physically hard, and as they work through the novice effect and see progress, they attribute it to CF, never knowing that any hard exercise program does the same thing, most of them more effectively. Add to that the feeling of group membership that appeals to some humans, and which makes some of them stay on in the program when they otherwise would have quit, and you have a commercially successful product.
From the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality
I think that there are legitimate comparisons to be made here. Although it would be certainly wrong to accuse all CrossFitters of belonging to CrossFit at this level, I have met many that do. Some of them have been very good friends, and I hate it that they cannot see the problems.A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized, heroic, and, at times god-like public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Sociologist Max Weber developed a tripartite classification of authority; the cult of personality holds parallels with what Weber defined as "charismatic authority". A cult of personality is similar to hero worship, except that it is established by mass media and propaganda.