i think there *is* one place where something like a "religious war" has its place: if your goal is to advance the language in some way or you want to provide a new path for people using the language in order to help them out in some situations.
my point is that you need to have quite high a level of compassion for a given language in order to not only detect where it's strengths and weaknesses are but also to do more than just accept these strengths and weaknesses. If you then make the choice based on effectiveness/cost criteria you wouldn't go the extra mile and see how "your" language may be extended or augmented via libraries or other mechanisms to deal with this scenario where "your" language is not as effective.
of course, this is a whole different scenario than people who need go get stuff done that are the vast majority of programming language users.
I know the original post was not directed at the language designers. And i also think that most of the people engaging in language wars are not language designers either. But for those who are.. religion and the fight about their religion (i.e. their language.. just to be safe Wink)... is vital.