One thing this essay misses is that in your typical religious group, you're going to have: * A good-sized portion who are "in name only" adherents * A large g

One thing this essay misses is that in your typical religious group, you're going to have: * A good-sized portion who are "in name only" adherents * A large group who are "in good standing" but not necessarily strong adherents * A minority, and likely a small minority, who are "sweat the details" adherents. For instance, among Americans who identify as Catholics, only 40% attend Mass weekly. But only about 22% of Catholics say they ever go to confession, and only 2% go regularly. So although a person might identify as Catholic, the importance of their faith and their adherence to its doctrine is going to vary from person to person, and my guess is that for the majority of U.S. Catholics, their religion does not hold as much sway on their behavior as other factors -- including their political affiliation. Granted, there are some cases where the distribution is different. If your religion is especially insular or vulnerable, or if it is controlled by people with great political power, there are probably fewer casual adherents. Nevertheless, I don't think it's especially helpful to talk about Catholics or Jews or Muslims or what have you without making the distinction between these different levels of adherence. But I do think the author makes a good point that many of the activities, attitudes (and atrocities) we attribute to religious groups are really the result of other cultural factors that use religion as a mantle. Look at the Catholic-Protestant conflicts in Northern Ireland; these were undeniably political groups that used the Catholic and Protestant labels to identify themselves, even though they weren't fighting over doctrine -- they were fighting over power.