With religion, even Obama abandons reason.

One of the grand mysteries of our time is why otherwise rational people abandon reason the moment talk turns to god, religion, virgin births, magic crackers, reincarnation, angels, or a hundred other brain-deadening manifestations of the word "faith."

The grand exemplar of this grand mystery is president-elect Barack Obama. He is "pragmatic and empirical," a friend of his told me recently, and everything about the man -- from his words to his policies and appointments -- supports that. Or at least it did until this week, when Obama announced that the prayer at his inauguration will be delivered by Pastor Rick Warren, founder of a California megachurch and author of The Purpose Driven Life.

Now, it is fine that there will be a prayer. It's traditional and lots of people want one. Some of us angry atheists aren't that angry.

But Obama's choice for this prestigious role is astonishing.

Religious belief spans a wide spectrum. At one end are the Biblical literalists and loons who think guardian angels squat on our shoulders. Further over are those who pick and choose their scripture and reserve belief in the supernatural for things that happened long, long ago.

At the opposite end from the literalists are those who see religious texts as poetic fables written by men and who view even the central events of their religion -- virgin births and whatnot -- more as metaphors than miracles. God may exist, but only outside the universe. These people may identify themselves as Christian -- or Jew or Muslim -- but it is far more accurate to call them Deists, a category that includes such magnificently rational thinkers as Thomas Jefferson and Voltaire.

Rick Warren is not a Deist. Nor does his faith lie on the more-rational end of the spectrum. No, he is definitely one of the loons.
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What marks Rick Warren as a loon is not his politics. As it happens, I do not share many of his views and I am appalled by Warren's support of California's Proposition 8 (First, they condemn gays for promiscuity. Then they stop gays from marrying. I do wish the bigots would make up their minds.)

But this is not what qualifies Rick Warren as a loon. It is how he thinks that settles it.

"I talk to God every day," Warren said in a debate with atheist author Sam Harris. "He talks to me."

Harris was incredulous. "What does that actually mean?"

"One of the great evidences of God is answered prayer," Warren responded. "I have a friend, a Canadian friend, who has an immigration issue. He's an intern at this church, and so I said, 'God, I need you to help me with this,' as I went out for an evening walk. As I was walking I met a woman. She said, 'I'm an immigration attorney; I'd be happy to take this case.' Now, if that happened once in my life, I'd say 'that is coincidence.' If it happened tens of thousands of times, this is not coincidence."

The moderator then asked the obvious question. "There must have been times in your ministry when you've prayed for someone to be delivered from disease who is not -- say, a little girl with cancer."

"Oh, absolutely," Warren answers.

"So parse that," the moderator responds. "God gave you an immigration attorney but God killed a little girl."

"Well, I do believe in the goodness of God," Warren responds, "and I do believe that he knows better than I do."

Harris interjects. "This is a classic sampling error, to use a statistical phrase. We know that human beings have a terrible sense of probability. There are many things we believe that confirm our prejudices about the world and we believe this only by noticing the confirmations and not keeping track of the disconfirmations. You could prove to the satisfaction of every scientist that intercessory prayer works if you set up a simple experiment. Get a billion Christians to pray for a single amputee. Get them to pray that God re-grow that missing limb. This happens to salamanders every day, presumably without prayer; this is within the capacity of God."
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The transcript notes that Warren chuckled at that last quip. By all accounts, the pastor is quite a likeable fellow. He may think like a rather dim nine-year-old -- "I prayed to see a rainbow and one appeared so God answered my prayer!" -- but he's a nice guy.

Nice guys incapable of rational thought on fundamental matters -- and there's plenty more evidence Warren is one of those -- are not usually taken seriously in the corridors of power. But Rick Warren is taken very seriously, indeed. The Purpose Driven Life is one of the best-selling books of all time. He's been invited to speak at the United Nations, Davos, the Kennedy School of Government, and many other leading institutions. Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

And in January, this nice-but-dim man will play a prominent role in the most significant ceremony of American civic life -- a role that "positions the Rev. Rick Warren to succeed Billy Graham as the nation's pre-eminent minister," notes the New York Times. Like Graham before him, Warren will certainly become an informal adviser to presidents.

And this will happen at the invitation of the pragmatic and empirical Barack Obama -- a man who wouldn't hire an intern whose reasoning was as childish as Rick Warren's.

That, my friends, is the special magic of religion.

You can contact Dan Gardner at the Ottawa Citizen.
E-mail: dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com

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