Do you believe it because it’s True?

Recently, I started off on a train of thought, and it took me a bit differently than I’d intended. I talked about the notion of what people mean when they speak of “religion,” as if religion is some kind of recreational activity that is a way to kill time on the weekend, and how people treat their “choice” of religion with the same standards that one applies to, for example, the choice of a football team to support.
To most people, the notion that “religion” matters significantly as anything other than a source of conflict is thus completely alien. It doesn’t help that the term itself is vague. Is a “religion” a set of practices, or a set of theological principles, or something else? C. S. Lewis tried to answer that by his distinction between “thick” and “clear” religion: ritual and theology, respectively.
People will say, “You think your religion is better than other religions,” and mean essentially the same thing as, “You think the Gamecocks are better than the Tigers” or “You think that Pepsi is better than Coke.” They see the diistinction as being purely a matter of taste or preference and capable only of being discussed angrily, if at all, based upon emotion. The notion that a particular religion may be *true* is a whole other matter entirely.
I don’t see the point of adhering to a religion *unless* one believes it to be true and, thus, superior. To say, “You think you’re superior because you believe God is real and has revealed Himself through Jesus Christ, and you look down on people who disagree with you” is the same thing as saying, “You think you’re superior because you believe that matter is made up of atoms, and you look down on people who disagree with you.”

Most people in our society, particularly those most likely to look down on “religious” people, would admit that it’s absurd to deny certain historical or scientific truths, yet they don’t understand why “religious” people think it’s absurd to deny what we believe to be perfectly obvious revealed theological truths, as well. It especially baffles me that people think religious conviction should lead to war any more than any other conviction. If someone wants to deny the Holocaust, or insist the moon landing was a hoax, or insist the earth is flat or that dinosaurs were put there by the Devil to deceive us, I’m not going to kill that person over it; I’m going to try to convince him he’s wrong. The same is true of theology. The same kind of people who would go to war over religion would go to war over any of those other matters, as well.