Obama is probably an atheist

Is Obama a Muslim?

People have lately become concerned that Obama is a secret Muslim. I think he’s a secret nothing.

He says he’s a Christian. But if you look at his life, that seems very unlikely. His mother was an atheist. Not just a person who had no interest in religion but a militant atheist. Look it up. His white grandparents who raised him when his mother returned to Indonesia were also atheists.

Obama’s biological father was nominally a Muslim. That family were what anthropologists call African Negroids, but they affected being Arabs because it was more prestigious. (My maternal grandfather told us he was German but since-released census recods seem to indicate he was Hungarian—apparently a similar behavior to Obama’s paternal ancestors.)

Part of the Kenyan Obama family affectation was Arab names like Barack Hussein. Another part was the Muslim religion. As far as I can tell from reading about him, Barack Obama, Senior was a deadbeat dad, bigamist, alcoholic, no account who probably did not give any more of damn about anti-alcohol Islam than he did about his wives and kids.

Obama’s Indonesian step-father was by all accounts a practicing Muslim and enrolled Barack in a Muslim public school in Indonesia and wrote “Muslim” into the religion space on the enrollment form. But I doubt Barack was a Muslim even then. He was a kid.

Barack’s mom got divorced from the Indonesian, returned to the U.S. then decided to go back to Indonesia as a single mother for whatever reason. Barack said no way. He wanted to stay in Hawaii with his atheist grandparents rather than return to Indonesia with his atheist mom and half sister.

By his own account, Barack spent high school in part getting drunk on alcohol and high on cocaine and marijuana—neither Muslim nor very Christian behavior.

All the adults in question are dead: both of his biological parents, his stepfather, and his white grandparents.

He seems to have been a stealth student at Occidental College and Columbia College. No one from his class can be found who remembers him. A reader sent me a URL http://ohforgoodnesssake.com/?p=7434 which purports to 2o Occidental people who remember “Barry” as they called him. I am not aware he was anywhere but sound asleep with a hangover like most of the other students at those schools on Sunday mornings. (My oldest son and I spent an unofficial recruiting visit weekend at Occidental when he was a high school senior. Occidental was recruiting him for football. My son spent the weekend with the players living in the dorm and going to their football game and parties. My son was also recruited by Columbia, Dartmouth, and Yale and played football at Columbia from which he graduated in 2003. Every time I visited him I saw a mobile emergency alcohol poisoning truck parked in the main quad.)

I read somewhere that Obama spent his first year after college working for an international business newsletter in Manhattan (the only real job he ever had) while living with his white girlfriend. After that, my best guess is he decided to become a black guy and have a career as a Congressman. He seems to have figured he could wow the black rubes somewhere in the U.S. with his Ivy League degree and Ivy polish. He apparently did not aspire to be a Senator or president because he was half black and figured that was unrealistic. I suspect he cynically got a copy of Michael Barrone’s Almanac of American Politics and looked to see which Congressional District in the U.S. was the most black. There, he learned it was the First District of Illinois, better known as the South Side of Chicago.

So he moved there in spite of having absolutely no connection to Chicago. He dumped the white girlfriend for a more politic black one, changed the name he went by from Barry to Barack, heard that if he wanted to go into politics on the South Side of Chicago he needed to join Jeremiah Wright’s church, and did so. In other words, he did not discover Christ as he claims. He discovered that he was a smooth talker, played his father’s race card for all it was worth, and hung around with Jeremiah Wright for vote-getting purposes, not because he has any interest in religion. Hell, the “church” he joined is best known for black liberation theology. That’s not a religion. It’s a political party.

That particular church made all the sense in the world when he thought the highest he could go in politics was Congressman from the South Side of Chicago. When he realized he could do the Senate and the Oval Office, he was way too slow to realize Wright’s church was not as attractive to the wider population of voters as it was to “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” and his neighbors. Obama barely threw Wright and that church under his famous bus in time to win the presidency.

Obama said he was Christian because he believed he could not get elected to Congress from the South Side of Chicago or Senate in Illinois or president if he admitted to being an atheist (agnostic, unreligious, whatever) or, worse, said he was a Muslim. That’s probably correct. For Obama, religion is just another lie he tells to get elected.

I was raised as a Catholic but stopped associating with that when I went to college. At my college, West Point, we were required to go the “chapel” every sunday. We could choose Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. I chose Protestant because they had more interesting speeches than the Catholics and did not kneel repeatedly during the service. Mostly just stood up to sing hymns and sit down to listen to the guest speaker. Many West Point cadets chose Jewish in spite of not being Jewish. That enabled them to join the Jewish chapel choir which got them much-sought-after trips away from West Point. Could they have done the same in the Protestant or Catholic choirs? Yes, but those were competitive. You had to be a good singer. There were very few Jewish cadets so anybody who signed up for Jewish chapel was automatically in the choir if they wanted to be.

Forcing cadets to go to chapel was obviously unconstitutional. They did not even do it for religious reasons. Rather, when they built the fabulous, expensive, new protestant chapel, hardly any cadets showed up which embarrassed the brass. So they made chapel mandatory for show. Since I graduated, someone finally got a court to order West Point to knock off the mandatory chapel crap.

Within Catholicism, they have what are called Easter and Christmas Catholics. That is, they only go to church on those days. Mormons have what they call “Jack Mormons.” Those are Mormons in name only. Many Jews refer to themselves as “non-practicing.” So Obama is a non-practicing, doesn’t even go to church on Christmas or Easter, Jack, BlackBerry Baptist, or, to state it more succinctly, he’s an atheist.

The final piece of evidence is that after he won the presidency, he stopped going to church altogether. His wife and school-age daughters also stopped. His claim that he gets daily “devotionals” via his BlackBerry is about as lame as can be. We all get daily bullshit in our email, both solicited and unsolicited. All you have to do to get that crap is give some Web site your email address. A devotional is a Readers Digest condensed version of a religious service. Gimme a freaking break.

So why does he suck up to Muslims so much?

That’s not religion. That’s trying to prove he’s a real black man.

Apparently, there is some affinity between blacks and Palestinians. I don’t know why. Maybe professional victims enjoy a misery that loves company.

Obama is nouveau noir. That phrase is a takeoff on nouveau riche which means newly rich. By nouveau noir, I mean newly black. Obama had a white mother. Biologically, he also had a Kenyan father, but he never laid eyes on the guy when he could rememmber until a brief photo op when he was 10. His father abandoned him around his first birthday never to return again except for that brief airport visit when Obama was 10.

The probem with the nouveau riche is they do not now how to behave with their new money. They tend to try to live up to Hollywood cliches about what rich people are like. Old money rich behave quite differently and regard the nouveau riche as comical dopes. I expect there is a similar dynamic between life-long African-Americans and nouveau noirs like Obama.

Similarly, a former white guy like Barry Obama does not know how to act like a black guy because he was raised entirely by whites, grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii where black role models are sparse at best, and attended predominanly white colleges and grad school (Occidental, Columbia, Harvard Law School). Living with a white girl friend in Manhattan after college only deepened his whitness. So he has been playing catch up on the black man thing since he was around 24. He got lessons from Michelle, although she is no expert on how to be a black man. He got additional lessons from Jeremiah Wright. And so on. This explains Obama’s affinity for Palestinians and Islam which is the artificially and recently (1960s) adopted official religion of proud African-Americans.

He also has that “I can bring any two enemies together and get them to stop disliking and fighting each other” delusion. Obama is not a Muslim, but he plays a guy who competely understands and loves them on TV.

They’re almost all atheists

I expect that Bill and Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, John McCain, and so on are all atheists. They were sybarite hell raisers during college. George W. Bush famously said when he was young and irresponsible he was young and irresponsible. Read, not religious. When George W. Bush ran for congress he lost and later said he was out-Christianed and never would be again. McCain was a drunken sailor, Tailhook Association carouser, not a deacon. They got religion only when they decided to go into politics. They dropped it when they got out of politics. Seen any photos of Bill and Hillary coming out of a church service lately?

Does it matter whether Obama is an atheist?

Nah. Ronald Reagan followed a similar pattern, not going to church much after he won the presidency. Kennedy probably only went to church because it is mandatory in the Catholic religion and he would have been criticized if he did not. Pelosi says she is a Catholic, but she is pro-abortion which the Catholic church most certainly is not. Politicians are hypocrites not least about religion.

Will the nation shrivel up and die if we do not have a Christian in the White House? Nah. Hell, we almost shriveled up and died economically with that idiot “born-again-Christian” Jimmy Carter in the White House. He was probably the last president who really gave a damn about religion. We seem to muddle through with atheists who are not religious guys but who play one on TV.

But it does matter whether Obama is a liar

Whether Obama is a Christian or an atheist does not matter for doing the job of president. Whether he is a liar, however, does. When it comes to his religion, he appears to be lying. That is wrong and subtly undermines his moral authority, one of a president’s greatest tools for doing his job.

Does it matter whether Obama is a Muslim?

If Islam is just another religion like Presbyterian or Catholic, being a Muslim does not matter. But the more unsolicited education I get about Islam, the more concerned I become about whether the U.S. Constitution and the Koran and Sharia Law are compatible. That causes me to tentatively conclude that true Muslims are not sincere when they take the standard oath regarding government service in the U.S.

The Koran and Bibles are quite similar. When secular historians look at them, they conclude from the language, words, and content that they were written by various adult males in the seventh century. They can tell more than one guy wrote them by the different writing styles. The date stems from the technology and various beliefs and practices described in the books. Apparently, there is no record of such books before the seventh century and so on. Both books are okay with slavery (e.g., Thou shallt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, goods, or slaves). Both are okay with trying to convert others to the religion in question and, failing that, to murder the infidels (e.g., Crusades). Both say to treat women and children as chattels of the husband-father. Both are big on cruel and unusual punishment like an eye for an eye (Leviticus 24; 19-21).

Anyway, the main difference between them appears to be that Christians and Jews no longer truly believe in the out-of-date portions. But many Muslims still do. To the extent that is the case, sincere Muslims would appear not to be qualified to serve in government. Horror of horrors! That’s illegal discrimination by religion! Actually, that’s not the issue. The issue is the oath. For becoming president it says,

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The Congress oath is,

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

All enemies foreign and domestic may mean Muslim countries. Will devout American Muslims really kill fellow Muslims—jihadists—to protect the U.S. Constitution?

And here is the U.S. oath of citizenship which goes further,

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

Note that only naturalized U.S. citizens are required to take this oath.

To the extent that the Constitution conflicts with the Koran and Sharia Law, the oath says the Constitution trumps the Koran and Sharia Law.The legal question is whether the oath taker believes that the Constitution trumps the Koran and Sharia Law. I suspect that many Muslims serving in the U.S. military and civilian government positions think the Koran and Sharia Law trump the Constitution. If so, they cannot serve.

There have been several incidents where Muslim U.S. military personnel murdered fellow soldiers pursuant, they said, to their religious beliefs. True, many others have not done that, but the devotion of many Muslims to the Koran and Sharia Law is well known and constitutes probable cause for official investigation into whether many of them are sincere in their oath to protect and defend the Constitution.

Wikipedia says,

Under the laws of a [nation] it may be considered treason or a high crime to betray a sworn oath of office.

Those are part of the Constitutional grounds for impeachment:

Article II, Section 4:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

During the McCarthy era, many Americans were forced to swear loyalty oaths. This was repugnant and later outlawed because there was no probable cause to question the loyalty of the persons in question. With many U.S. Muslims, however, it appears that there is probable cause. If they take a government oath when they enter the military or civilian government service, then voluntary and repeatedly attend a mosque where they make religious statements that conflict with the government oath or implicitly approve of instructions that conflict with the government oath from the clerics who address the congregation, it seems to me that we can legitimately question the sincerity of their oath promise to protect and defend the Constitution. No sincerity, no government service. Indeed, no sincerity with regard to the U.S. citizenship oath, no naturalization.

So whether Obama is a Muslim is a very important question on three grounds:

• did he lie about his religious beliefs?
• was he sincere when he took the oath of office for Illinois State Senator, U.S. Senator, and president?
• has he betrayed any of those oaths?

If a person says I believe it is right to murder American civilians, he is probably not going to get a U.S. government job requiring a background check. But if he says I believe in a religion that sanctions jihad, including murdering American civilians, he probably will get a U.S. government job because we do not discriminate against people by religion. That is an extremely stupid application of an otherwise constitutional law (14th Amendment equal-protection clause). It makes the word religion a sort of wild card that excuses you from sincerity when taking solemn oaths regarding national defense. Such wild cards only exist in kid games like the safe base in a game of “You’re it” or hide-and-seek.

Reader feedback

One reader said he believes Obama is not an atheist but an agnostic.

That is a distinction without a difference as far as I am concerned. So is a person simply not being religious. Pick whichever one you want. My point is that Obama has no religious faith, that his claim to be a Christian is almost certainly a lie for political purposes, and his apparent pro-Mulim bias is nothing but the typical efforts of a convert (to being black in his case) trying to prove himself to be a “real” black by being in favor of the things popular with some born-and-raised blacks like the since-1960s affection of blacks for things African.

Other readers have said I have not applied my usual tight fact checking to the Koran, Bible, etc. Correct, and I’m not going to. If you could fact check religion it would not be religion. Biblical scholar true believers argue endlessly about what the Bible says or really means. Ditto Koranic scholar true believers. I have zero interest in that stuff. I do not know how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, or care.

Two readers said the Dead Sea Scrolls prove a pre-Christ origin date, not the seventh century, for the Hebrew religion. I am leery of, and do not plan to study, purportedly 2100-year old parchment and papyrus found in caves in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and later sold through a tiny classified ad in the Wall Street Journal in 1954. To me, this is more “how many angels on the head of a pin” debate. The origins of the Bible an the Koran are both in the Middleast and they seem to have been written in the same era. Most Christians and Jews quietly ignore the out-of-date portions of their ancient authorities. Many, if not most, Muslims do not ignore the out-of-date portions. That makes them avowedly in conflict with parts of the U.S. Constitution which they vow to protect and defend when becoming U.S. citizens or obtaining government jobs.

The oath sincerity of devout muslims need to be investigated and where there is probable cause to suspect a conflict, the Muslim in question needs to be denied both U.S. citizenship and U.S. government jobs. That is both common sense and Constitutional under the constitutional prohibitions against treason.

John T. Reed