The nonsense about President Obama being a Muslim has got to stop. I rise to defend him from this absurd accusation by pointing out that he is obviously an atheist.
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35 comments:
For Obama to be a Muslim would require him to believe in something higher than himself.
Steve, don't be modest. You had a far sharper quip in Half-blood Prince. I paraphrase: "Of course Obama is not a Muslim. Islam is too racially liberal for him."
I assume it's implicit in her statement that an atheist is worse than a muslim.
"Obama is an atheist." And that would be a bad thing? Weren't most of our founders deists, which was the 18th century elites' way of making a gesture in the direction of conventional belief without having to participate in organized religion? The private correspondence between Jefferson and Adams is blessedly free of God talk. My guess is that a significant percentage of our founders were atheists. Ethical atheists. That's the rub with Obama, not that he's an atheist but that he is utterly lacking in a restraining ethical code.
Obama is obviously a spiritual agnostic with an affinity for and background in Islam.
The comments of Anonymous and ricpic illustrate the most obvious characteristic of members of the "secular right": an excessive interest in what religious people think of them. They're always on the prowl, looking for a slight. It may be that for the right they fill the ecological niche that lesbians take care of for the left.
Rrrroger,
Christianity with its love thy neighbour universalist open the gates for the barbarians-ism, Zionism, and creationism has done more damage to the cause of conservatism than we on the secular right could do in a million years.
Regarding Islam, its a shame that the west didn't adopt it. We woudn't be in the fine mess we are in now if we had adopted Islam. Its got a built in memetic immune system.
People call him a Muslim because they're not familiar with the word dhimmi.
I like her previous comment that 'MSNBC swears to Allah that Obama isn't a Muslim.'
My guess is that a significant percentage of our founders were atheists. ...
My guess is as good as yours. My guess is that you're wrong.
Most founding fathers of America and most early Americans in general attended church quite regularly. Who knows what they believed deep down inside?
And Deism is not polite atheism. Deism is the belief in a Master Architect of the cosmos without belief in a Christian ( or Muslim ) God, Son, or Holy Spook.
Mt. Riclic, bombastic atheists such as yourself are as boring as Jesus freaks getting in ones's face. Same thing really: a compulsion to proselytize.
Anonymous,
If you can determine what civilization would be like if Christianity had not been adopted in the West, your brilliance puts Spengler and Toynbee in the shade. You should be writing important scholarly works, not commenting here. My suspicion is that if the religion you favor had been adopted in Europe at the time of Charles Martel, European civilization would now be advanced to the level reached in Saudi Arabia by the 1920s, or by Yemen today. I also have an opinion regarding what American conservatism would be like if you subtracted the Christians and Jews: a few hundred isolated, confused and irascible people living in a Barack Obama/Howard Dean utopia.
Liberals will rend their garments in disgust that anyone would dare to try to read Obama's mind, questioning his professed beliefs (or his patriotism). Following which they will immediately denounce as "racists" millions of Tea Partiers and all the other tens of millions of Americans opposed to Obama's agenda - without a hint of irony.
One man - a public figure who has given hundreds of speeches, has written two books, and has been our president for 19 months - deserves the benefit of the doubt. 100 million Americans do not.
Christianity with its love thy neighbour universalist open the gates for the barbarians-ism, Zionism, and creationism has done more damage to the cause of conservatism than we on the secular right could do in a million years.
Christianity has been around for 2000 years, and has been the official religion in all of Europe for 1200+ years. Yet that didn't stop Europeans from defending their borders (against white Christians, no less), invading their neighbors (ditto) or conquering the world.
European and American destruction began with post-Christian nihilism.
The problem with modern Christianity is that it prefers to ignore all the embarrassing parts - mostly in the Old Testament - and focus on being a "religion of compassion." This is especially true of mainstream Protestantism, which is why those denominations are shrinking - no one needs to go to church to be reminded to be compassionate.
For Obama to be a Muslim would require him to believe in something higher than himself.
I think Mac put it better than Coulter.
Islam also accomplishes nothing. Islam despite the head start it had in the bread basket of the Ancient World (Egypt exported wheat to Europe in massive quantities in Roman times), and Mesopotamia, secure from barbarian invasions, they did nothing.
In 2000, the Arab Development Bank reported to the UN that in 1999, Spain translated more books into Spanish than the entire Arab World, had done in history.
Yes, Islam puts societies in amber, where they never, EVER change. But that resistance to change comes at a cost. Outsiders unencumbered by guilt, that DO CHANGE, and adapt to technology, can use said technology to crush them. Which is what the European colonial powers did.
Islam also puts a premium on mass manpower. Lots of bodies for human wave attacks (and is subject to massive internal bloodletting). All in all, a poor fit for the West.
The West's maladies are due entirely to its own making. No conspiracy, "Jews" or anything else but rich Western men and women, and those most Christian (read very Christian William Blake's poems describing Marriage as prison) at the heart of it. But that very weakness allowed technology to flourish, even if the Pope or Caliph said the Sun went round the earth and that was that.
Ann has it exactly right. Of course he's an atheist. What Muslim would sniff at people for clinging to religion, as if there's nothing that could possibly be more pathetic?
Wern't most of the founders atheist? Who cares, judge their works? If they were atheists maybe their religious beliefs were mistaken but their political compass was right on.
Can't undestand thios post - approval, irony?
Mac said..."For Obama to be a Muslim would require him to believe in something higher than himself."
No, for Obama to be a Muslim would require him to believe that there could be something higher than himself.
Along the same lines, for Obama to be an atheist would require him to believe that there is no god. And that's not what his mirror tells him.
In Obama, theism is narcissism writ large. Very large.
ricpic said...
Weren't most of our founders deists, which was the 18th century elites' way of making a gesture in the direction of conventional belief without having to participate in organized religion?
Anonymous said...
Christianity with its love thy neighbour universalist open the gates for the barbarians-ism, Zionism....
How does Christianity get blamed for the accomondatons made to Judaism by Deism/atheism?
Well put, Rrrrrroger.
Obama is obviously an atheist/agnostic but one who feels more sympathy for Muslims than Christians.
This is because of Muslim rhetoric that portrays themselves as morally superior perpetual victims who will someday through perserverance and militant separatism come into their own.
This, of course, is very much in line with the rhetoric of post 60's black leaders in the US.
Of course he's going to be drawn to it beyond and above his own blood ties to Muslims.
But he doesn't believe in much of anything beyond himself.
I love all the glib musings about Obama from both the left and the right.
I guess it would be too much to ask for anyone to simply consult the almost 500 page tome where he lays out his ideas in excruciating detail.
But I guess only one journalist could endure that painstaking task (Thanks Steve!).
whiskey: "Islam puts societies in amber, where they never, EVER change"
Oh they change, just not in directions that make any sense to non-Muslims. 50 years ago the great majority of Muslim intellectuals were secular and western oriented. I heard a Pakistani guy on BBC saying in the 60's he played ball in the streets and drank and ate in public during Ramadan and no one cared. They care now.
The problem with Islam vis-a-vis most other world religions is that in its purer forms (which have been in ascendency in recent decades) it does the poorest job of maximizing human capital. This can be seen almost anywhere where Islam buts up against another religion. Look at achievement rates of South Asian muslims and hindus in the UK for one example (or Christian vs Muslim Lebanese) or Malaysian muslims vs Thai buddhists (the examples pile up).
Are the people making quips like 'can't be Atheist coz he believes himself to be a god' yada yada yada part of the secular right, uncomfortable with the fact they're on the same plane as him?
The name I would give to Obama's religion is "Equalitarianism". You know the one:
* The highest moral good (all other moral considerations are secondary - or, perhaps, the *only* moral good) is movement towards the "Heaven" of political/economic/social/"respect" equality between members of different groups. Taking action towards this eschatology is the only true aim of a good human's life
* Saints such as MLK, Ghandi, Rosa Parks, and Mandela
* The highest moral good a "privileged" person can do is work towards the betterment of the "oppressed" masses (adopt a black orphan, work for a third world NGO, be Mother Theresa)
* The Protestant 'suffering just' has been 'brought up to date' and signifies Third World, gender, and lifestyle victims (h/t Paul Gottfried)
* Taboos (like the N-word, "racist", "sexist", "homophobic", etc thinking)
* Calling conservatives "evil" (which is, of course, religious word)
* Regular rituals of rooting out the witches (Watson, Stephanie Grace, Thilo Sarrazin, etc etc)
I think that America is locked in a religious war only slightly less bitter than those between the Huguenots and Catholics in Sixteenth Century France. In modern America, on one side are Christians, and on the other are the Equalitarians (a religion with such a hold over so many people's minds that we, unlike I imagine scholars in a couple hundred years, don't even label it as a religion).
Modern America celebrates as Federal Holiday the birthday of only two people, the patron saints of both Christianity and Equalitarianism (Jesus and MLK, respectively).
Some blogger recently said most modern American politicians are either genuine Christians or Equalitarians, with each group taking a dusting of the opposite overlaid as camouflage.
Obama clearly is a pious, driven, perhaps fanatical Equalitarian.
Obama likes to use moral and other religious thinking and language, expressing the morality of the Equalitarian religion. One example I could easily find would be his quote that the founders of the NCAAP "understood that unjust laws needed to be overturned; that legislation needed to be passed; and that Presidents needed to be pressured into action. They knew that the stain of slavery and the sin of segregation had to be lifted in the courtroom, and in the legislature, and in the hearts and the minds of Americans." "Unjust", "sin" ... we're living in the theocracy the Democratic direct-marketing fundraisers keep warning us Pat Robertson wants to impose, but the theocrats who are in power are expressing their religious morality by expanding hate crime laws, widening the jurisdiction of Title IX, and combing employment records for disparate impact (rather than, for example, teaching creationism and outlawing abortion).
Obviously, Rev Wright's teachings and church aren't anything one could truthfully call "Christian". "Militantly Equalitarian" fits better. And, I think, as another commentator said, Obama shows a strange interest in, respect for, and obsequiousness towards Islam, but that is most likely not because of anything about Islam per se, but more because how Islam fits in to Obama's equalitarianism, ie as a third world force of resistance to be respected and encouraged.
Obama may or may not believe in and worship a higher force, a Creator, a Divine Spirit. My guess, from what I've heard, is that he does. But my sense is that Obama's sense of God is that his will is most clearly enforced by creating new equality compliance offices in Federal agencies - ie it's an Equalitarianist God that Obama prays to, not a Christian or Muslim one.
Finally: for what it's worth, I've heard that Obama is/was called by his aides the "Black Jesus."
"Islam despite the head start it had in the bread basket of the Ancient World "
Islam didn't begin until the 7th century AD.
"David Davenport said...
My guess is as good as yours. My guess is that you're wrong.
....................
Mt. Riclic, bombastic atheists such as yourself are as boring as Jesus freaks getting in ones's face. Same thing really: a compulsion to proselytize."
Well said, sir, and good post. I actually find militant athiests to be even more tiresome than bible-thumpers, and I am an athiest.
I just wrote a long email to a close personal friend who is a liberal who is incensed that some conservatives dare to call Obama a Muslim. I'll spare everyone the repetition of the undisputed facts about his relatives and schooling.
I'm a little surprised that any of this is in anyway controversial. How many autobiographies does the SOB have to write?
No, I'd rather comment on the deism of the Founding Fathers. Yesterday the bible thumping Glenn Beck was quoting Thomas Jefferson writing about God - as if that put an end to the question.
One of my favorite atheist activists Christopher Hitchens, now close to death, wrote a short biography of Jefferson. Hitchens knows a lot about a lot of subjects but is not very interested in American history. He only chose Jefferson IMHO because he was a non-believer.
I don't think the question we should be asking is, did Jefferson believe in God but rather did Jefferson believe in Darwin? This is an interesting question because Darwin was just a teenager when Jefferson died. But if he had read "The Origin of Species" what would Jefferson have thought?
I think it's pretty clear that Jefferson would not have been a deist if he had had the opportunity to know Darwin. He would have been an atheist. Pre-Darwin there just wasn't much theory to hang your hat on if you doubted that the old man in the sky with a white beard made everything. Darwin provided a lot of answers - not all - but enough that you were no longer forced to believe in bible stories as the only explanations for why things are.
Albertosaurus
"and I am an athiest."
That does explain a few things.
Regarding Islam, its a shame that the west didn't adopt it. We woudn't be in the fine mess we are in now if we had adopted Islam. Its got a built in memetic immune system.
Thanks, Jinn. It would appear to me that Islamic countries are in more of a fine mess.
OneSTDV, I guess it would be too much to ask for anyone to simply consult the almost 500 page tome where he lays out his ideas in excruciating detail.
Yeah, like his detailed accounts of his college adventures travelling though Pakistan with his Muslim roommates. Yup, read all about them, didn't we?
Anonymous said..."Are the people making quips like 'can't be Atheist coz he believes himself to be a god' yada yada yada part of the secular right, uncomfortable with the fact they're on the same plane as him?"
I can't speak for others but my remark was not meant as a quip. The look on Obama's face during some of his rallies reminded me of the look of religious ecstasy on the face of people in old religious paintings. He adored being adored and obviously considered it as no more than his due. Godlike.
I'm not on the secular right. Having been brought up in the same denomination as that of the Rev. Wright's congregation (UCC), I have no use for organized religion in my own life at all. I am, however, a theist.
I don't know exactly what you mean by being on the same plane as Obama. I am very uncomfortable being in the same time/space continuum he is, though.
duh Anne, I've been saying this for years
The comments of Anonymous and ricpic illustrate the most obvious characteristic of members of the "secular right": an excessive interest in what religious people think of them. They're always on the prowl, looking for a slight. It may be that for the right they fill the ecological niche that lesbians take care of for the left.
Classic psychological projection by Rrrrrroger.
Christianists have an excessive interest in what non-religious people think of them, and are always on the prowl, looking for a slight. Rrrrrroger simply could not stand the thought of seculars and atheists posting here, so he had to intrude and start flinging his feces at the Unbelievers.
I have no idea what his lesbian remark is supposed to mean; I'm sure it's pretty asinine, though.
Note it was the religious people who picked a fight in this thread, not the atheists.
Simply observing that atheism is a lack of a belief in a God, and that one can be an ethical atheist (Obama ain't ethical; only Obama knows if Obama is really an atheist, or not), and that being an atheist is not by definition worst than being a Muslim, is not an attack on religion or on Christianity - but our "friend" Rrrrrroger and his fan club chose to interpret it as an attack anyway, because he's obviously butthurt that not everyone on the Right is a militant Christianist like himself.
some other anonymous,
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to say that by “secular right” I don’t mean the many atheists and agnostics (and people not religious enough to be atheist or agnostic) who don’t go around with chips on their shoulders, acting like ACLU rules apply everywhere. I think evangelizing “secular righters” are in the minority among people with their religious and political beliefs.
I’d be interested in an objective evaluation of the source of the whininess in this discussion. From my point of view, Mr. Sailer quoted Miss Coulter and almost immediately two comments popped up that seemed to me to be typical “secular right” feelings-hurt complaints. I pointed that out. I don’t think I’ve ever written that people shouldn’t say things because they hurt my feelings. And, it seems to me, that by far the whiniest comment on this topic is yours. You’re trying to tell me that I have a bad attitude, not telling me I’m wrong on the facts, but telling me not to write about your religious group because it shows that I care about what you think. I don’t think that’s true, but what if it is? Am I right or wrong on the facts?
To solve your little mystery, in a leftwing version of this blog, somebody like you would leave a comment, using your tone, complaining that a comment thread was heteronormative.
I don’t know where you get off saying that Obama is not ethical. It seems to me that he’s adopted a set of ethical beliefs. You’ve adopted a different set. You say his are unethical, but he’s not concerned. He says that yours are unethical. I don’t think you’ve moved the ball.
The fact is that if all the people who attended religious services this weekend decided to stop voting, the November 2010 elections would go down in history as the event that established the left’s complete and permanent control over the entire government. That probably wouldn’t be good for most members of the “secular right,” but I think there’d be an opening for you in the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
Finally, as I’m sure you know better than I, you express yourself in quite a crude fashion. It doesn’t bother me, but I’m sure it’s hard on people who are closer to you than I am.
"And that would be a bad thing?"
I dunno, you guys had a hard 20th century. How many deaths was it? A hundred million?
Whiskey: [I]n 1999, Spain translated more books into Spanish than the entire Arab World, had done in history.
What exactly do you mean by "had done"? Written? Translated into Arabic? Translated in Spanish?
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