That's my sense of it too (regarding religion not being nearly as important to religious folks as they pretend), and Hitchens used to make that point.

That's an interesting point about the real reason for apologetics. It feeds into another article of mine that will be coming out in a couple of weeks, about how you need to sell something only if the product's flawed and it can't sell itself. Thus, salesmanship consists of lying by omission, plus all kinds of other sophistry. In religion's case, this salesmanship is known as casuistry. or apologetics.

This is the start of a series on KT's theistic arguments, by the way. I've already written several others.