 Remember, irrational means belief without evidence which is also part of "faith", right?  That may be your definition of irrational. There are others. A more general connotation of the word "irrational" goes along the lines of "not endowed with reason, affected by loss of usual or normal mental clarity; incoherent." There are many "rational" people (not necessarily you) who seem to believe that if you are religious, then you have lost mental clarity. That is not exactly the case.  People should be able to question why anyone would value a symbolic ritual above actual human life. Now, Phil may have misinterpreted the article (or not - I haven't read it) but it's still a legitimate question.  Well, after almost 000 comments, you haven't read the article in question? That's interesting. As other commenters have pointed out, it actually does appear that Phil and the reporter in the article are guilty of misinterpreting some facts and ideas