I’d like to think religious people don’t necessarily believe or remember word-for-word what happened to Jesus or Muhammad or whoever but they do learn lessons from the readings that they apply in their lives in a positive way. Or at least their intentions are positive.

It’s a routine group-based literary text analysis that gives people a reason to be together, not unlike a high school first language class.

If you wanna get old school sociological about it, you could say it fulfills a social need for cohesion that non practicing people replace by placing increased importance to other routine activities such as sports watching or working.