Minor point, but…

Hawley went on to speak at length about scripture, invoking biblical stories of Abraham and Jesus, and told a story about early Christians in the Roman empire who drove an axe into the head of a statue of a "pagan" god, supposedly leading to "thousands of rats…surging out of the rotten insides."

Why would someone use an axe—or any bladed weapon, for that matter—to destroy a statue? Wouldn’t you go with a blunt weapon like hammer or club instead?

Also…for the sake of argument, let’s just pretend that it’s super-normal for the types of stone and/or metals comprising a statue to be such of poor quality that literally thousands of rats to hollow it out and make a home sweet home for themselves inside. Again, thousands of rats, evidently.

…Just how huge is this fucking statue? And how is any one individual short of Goliath on steroids and angel dust going to be capable of breaking it open with the single swing of an axe?