In a first for any American President, Barack Obama pointedly acknowledged ‘non-believers’ alongside xtians, Jews, Muslims, etc. in his inaugural address.
While it’s nice for this atheist to be included, it’s not so nice to have that acknowledgment sharing the stage with Rick Warren, an especially wretched extremist xtian hatemonger. I mean, Obama could have invited Fred ‘God Hates Fags’ Phelps and would have done no worse.
image: ubertoonist, the 50 foot Mikhaela B. Reid
While the majority of Americans, if asked, will claim to be xtians, you won’t find many of them far away from the football game on teev on Sundays.
Despite some exposure to Islam in his early school days in Indonesia, Obama’s upbringing was absent religion. Obama writes in his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope:
“I was not raised in a religious household . . . Without the help of religious texts or outside authorities, (my mother) worked mightily to instill in me the values that many Americans learn in Sunday school: honesty, empathy, discipline, delayed gratification, and hard work.”
Certainly, as part of his political education, Obama learned about Americans’ general ersatz xtian beliefs and began attending a church soon after his move to Chicago, clearly to avoid impeding his political aspirations, not because he has any particular interest in religion. It’s plenty that the man had to overcome the political obstacles of having an Arabic name and being not just black but of mixed race. Being an out-n-proud atheist would surely have been a showstopper for a man with ambitions in US politics.
Hypocrisy? You bet. However, sometimes you have to break a corrupted system from the inside- can’t score unless you have the ball. I’ll suggest the strategy works. Look who’s President now and look who included atheists in his inaugural address. I’ll cope.
One of these days, faerie-taleists, no matter how happy the face they put on their hatreds, will be consigned to the same historical rubbish tip as witch burners. I reckon they’ve already been loaded on the garbage truck.
-weez
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Religion made simple.
Hate gays. Give us money.
Mel, it’s simpler than that.
“Hate everyone but us while we plaintively wail ‘god is love.’ Oh, you can give us money, too.” 😆
Comment by weez 01.24.09 @ 4:57 pmLeave a comment
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