People really, really hate their religion being criticized. It's as though you've said they had an ugly face; they seem to identify personally with it.
Interpretation
Criticism of one's beliefs can provoke strong defensive reactions, as people often see their beliefs as part of their identity.
Richard Dawkins highlights the intense emotional connection individuals have with their religious beliefs. When criticized, many people perceive it as a personal attack, leading to defensiveness and hostility. This suggests that religion is not just a set of beliefs for many; it is intertwined with their self-identity, making any critique feel like an insult to their very being.
In practice
In a debate about faith, one might quote Dawkins to highlight why people react strongly to religious criticism.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
A narrative that branded Africa as little more than an economic, political and social basket case was not likely to provide the investment needed to drive development.
Your past is just a story. And once you realize this it has no power over you.
I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret, overruling decree, that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it with our eyes open.
Grimly, she realized that clocks don't make a sound that even remotely resembles ticking, tocking. It was more the sound of a hammer, upside down, hacking methodically at the earth. It was the sound of a grave.
People have been predicting the death of philosophy since the 17th century. When I was a student, people were saying, 'We're in the last days of philosophy.' Then we were told in the '60s it would be replaced by sociology, then by literary criticism.
In the consciousness of the infinite, the conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his own nature.
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