There does seem to be a strong biological tendency in humans to identify with a team or group to fight against another team or group. This is one thing that religion does, even in cases like Northern Ireland, where the hostility is not actually about theological disagreement. I mean, when a Protestant terrorist throws a bomb into a Catholic pub they are not saying, "Take that you transubstantiating, nationalist Tridentine bastards."
I think that Sept. 11 has cleared the minds of people like me who had hitherto been against religion, but nevertheless polite and respectful (toward it). I now no longer feel polite and respectful. I think it has (steered me toward) the direction of wanting to come out into the open and be actively hostile to religion.
I am not surprised, and that is another aspect of the situation. In America, they held various days of prayer, which actually made me quite sick. It seemed to me that, on both sides, the same evil was being revered with neither side realizing that this kind of faith was fundamentally responsible for the attack in the first place.
(via FmH)