The God Problem

Heather Mac Donald, a leading US conservative intellectual and atheist,  nicely pinpoints the problem with mixing religion into politics:

Moreover, the task of persuading the prayer-inspired president that he is wrong about the wisdom of federal intervention in the auto industry, say, seems unduly daunting to me. If a president made the decision purely on worldly grounds, those grounds can in theory be countered with other evidence. Obviously, not everyone is open to contrary evidence. The ideal of rational decision-making is only imperfectly realized in practice. But I at least know the type of arguments I would make. I don’t know how you counter revelation, however. God is a political conversation-stopper, a trump card that constricts political discourse rather than widen it out.

Taken from here.