None of which is to say, of course, that one should give up language or religion. As with any powerful tool, they’re best used with care.

One can nevertheless use a language to say untruths (e.g., “Pigs always fly on Tuesdays because the sea is sometimes boiling hot”) or nonsense (”Colorless green ideas sleep furiously during the invisible pink unicorn diagonally from the twelfth Thursday of every week.”)

More prosaically, a language can make it difficult NOT to speak untruths in the language. E.g., a language which used a phrase for “unimportant and immoral adult” as the only way to say “woman” would make it VERY difficult to describe any woman as important and/or moral! (Though I made up that particular example, several books on Tibet inform me that the Tibetan language similarly uses the phrase “low-born” as its way to say “woman” — similar enough to my “unimportant/unvirtuous” example, if Tibetan Buddhist beliefs in reincarnation regard one’s social position in this life as the result of one’s good or bad conduct in previous lives)

So .. just as one can use any language to tell outright lies (or to speak sheer nonsense, or to prevent the communication of important facts), it seems to me VERY probable that one can also use any *religion* to present to other believers (or to try presenting to God/Spirit/Whatever) an outright lie, a bit of sheer nonsense, or anything that contravenes/prevents expressing some vital truth.

What do *you* think?