^ What I'm saying is...the purpose of religion is to unify a culture, and it's only in the formerly-Christian West that this has been lost.
The rightness or wrongness of the belief system doesn't come into it. What matters is that a people is united under that belief system. It's the moral equivalent of race and language.
Most cultures know this, which is why they don't let go of their religion. Atheist Jews remain culturally and ethnically Jewish. And individual Muslims who accept Dawkins' teachings would remain culturally Muslim. Can they convince their family that Dawkins is right? How about their extended family? Their province? Their nation?
The narrative needs to be simple, for the same reason that the media's narrative does. So if liberalism seems like a religion...well I guess they had to find a substitute
