A critical mind, favors a ruse to secure property rights in the here and now while offering uncritical minds, an exchange by sufficient artifice of the idea of a putative paradise and the avoidance of hell in the hereafter.
To close the information loop in a critical mind’s favor, coercion is necessary to silence infidels, apostates and heretics.
Brainwashing by dogma and ritual, neutralizes the threat of revolution, from uncritical minds by reinforcement of the ruse.
Since the objective of the ruse is political, namely, to secure the property privileges demanded in the Decalogue, religion doesn’t exist, because the constructs of artifice suggest a putative reality, but fail to instantiate one. A quid pro quo is something for something else. Uncritical minds are deceived by artifice to give something for nothing.
Atheists are theist heretics, who reject the idea of God as a delusion, because they uncritically accept the ruse indirectly, as a valid quid pro quo, by the very existence of putative monotheist religion.
The supreme Art of the War, is a political ruse that delivers the spoils of victory, without fighting.