The deadliest attacks on a religion come not when it is criticized rationally by outsiders

But when it is defended irrationally from within.

If you want to destroy a religion, or a republic for that matter, get people to recite creeds and patriotic pledges mindlessly.

Teach children answers, but do not allow their questions. Get children to recite the Pledge of Allegiance but do not allow them to question why there isn’t liberty and justice for all.

Put the 10 Commandments on the walls of schools but refuse to allow questions about slavery, America’s covert wars or the adulterous lives of the very politicians who insist on displaying religious symbols in secular spaces.

If you want to destroy a religion, or republic, get people to say their values but not really mean them. In the end, that religion and that republic will both suffocate in the airless abyss between who they claim to be

and who they really are.