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.
Let go the past, let go the future, and let go the present (front, back, middle). Crossing to the farther shore of existence, with mind released everywhere, do not further undergo birth and decay.
In a jump, the subject, in a sudden burst of energy, overcomes gravity. He cannot simultaneously control his expressions, his facial and his limb muscles. The mask falls. The real self becomes visible. One only has to snap it with the camera.
A cloud of incense was rising on high; the people suddenly all bowed low; what could it mean? The truth flashed on him, fearfully yet sweetly; it was the Blessed Sacrament - it was the Lord Incarnate who was on the altar, who had come to visit and bless his people. It was the Great Presence, which makes a Catholic Church different from every other place in the world; which makes it, as no other place can be - holy.
If a man's at odds to know his own mind it's because he hasn't got aught but his mind to know it with.
The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's people that has not previously been taken into account.
The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.
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