“unless the religion is a farce”
My wife is staunchly anti-Catholic. She thinks it’s hypocrisy for someone to feel better after a confession, then go out and commit the same sin all over again. She uses drug lords, Mafia and other hoodlums that are stout Catholics as examples.
May favorite example is my sister’s livein boyfriend who is divorced, and the house has 3 generations of bastard children in it. He goes to church daily & claims to be a good Catholic.
Another example, is look at all the banana republics south of the Rio Grande. They have the similar natural resources as the US & Canada, and similar European colonizing, yet something really went wrong down there. Of note is the predominant religion is Catholic.
So you might have a point there.
It’s not just religion there is a culture at work there also.