This newest pole shows that the non-religious people are less tolerant of torture than the religious.
How could that be?
Americans Learn To Stop Worrying And Love Torture « The Dish
It can be because there is nothing inherent about religious belief in sanctifying life of all people.
Religious belief has been and remains predominantly to be a case of supernatural precepts to define a particular tribal group centered around specific traditions. No where in that description is included the sanctity of human life which would include outsiders who proscribe to a different set of traditions building supernatural precepts to support a different tribal group.
History substantiates this. Not even the monotheistic religions, starting Zoroastrianism and then Judaism, is the idea that all people fall under the same moral protection of the immediately identified ethnic identity that falls under a certain religious ideal. Many religious beliefs actively promote violence against others as well.
Religion, no matter what scholar might like to proclaim otherwise, has never been about peace and morality to all.
As well, as Quintessence pointed out, the linked article makes no mention of religious believers.
However, this is an issue in which it would be appropriate to conflate two separate ideals. The first ideal is that the majority of Americans are religious believers of various denominations. The second conflation being that Americans believe, by the majority, that harsh interrogation techniques including torture are appropriate. When you have enough of a mass of positive respondents among religious identity and belief in a specific factor, that factor in this case being harsh interrogation techniques, than it is not necessarily inappropriate to draw a distinction between the two. Namely in this case that given that the mass of Americans are religious adherents and that the mass of Americans as well believe in harsh interrogation tactics than one can draw a conclusion that religious belief in itself is not against harsh interrogation tactics.
Not only is there a strong correlation in America of such an ideal the idea that religion is somehow a concept bring peace among various ethnic or tribal identities ultimately fails in that not only has religious beliefs, or the use of religion to dominate one ethnic identity over another, been a historical truth in those cases in which multiple religious groups have participated in violent conflicts religion was not a barrier to the most foul of human actions.
So I think the OP, if choosing a better topic, could show that a modern movement against religious idealism might be a preferable system to oppose violent human conflict given the historical nature of religious conflict backed by the idea that religion among humanity has not been a great definer in preventing human conflict.
And I point to this once again. Disregarding the very, relatively new concept that spirituality is some overarching humanist concept the far more dominating spiritual and religious concepts of humanity is that of ethnic identity which has served more to divide human beings which aids in enabling human conflict than preventing human conflict.
edit: And to add, that if anyone makes the argument that those who support such methods as presented in the linked article of the OP are not following the "true" religious principles than they are making nothing more than a logical fallacy of the no true Scotsman.