Religion is the most important element defining civilizations

Evidence

Blood, language, religion, way of life, were what the Greeks had in common and what distinguished them from the Persians and other non-Greeks. Of all the objective elements which define civilizations, however, the most important usually is religion, as the Athenians emphasized. To a very large degree, the major civilizations in human history have been closely identified with the world’s great religions; and people who share ethnicity and language but differ in religion may slaughter each other, as happened in Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, and the Subcontinent. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 110

Categorization

• XREF: The Lebanon/Yugoslavia/Subcontinent examples connect to the later chapter-core thesis that religious/civilizational fault lines drive conflict; also echoes the book’s central clash thesis. — connects to: Organized religion was the first great claimant on human attention. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 82
• STORYSTEM: Shared ethnicity and language failing to prevent slaughter when religion differs is a rich engine for both literary and historical-fictional conflict plots.