James Pine Has A Blog

“We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and nonbelievers.” – President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, 2009-01-20

I interpret this to mean Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus are believers, or more generally, believers are people who ascribe to a religion. However, why shouldn’t it be the other way around, that the nonbelievers are the religious people who don’t believe in science, logic, reality etc.? Maybe nonbeliever doesn’t carry a negative connotation, maybe it just flowed better than, “people with no religious affiliation”.

IMHO, it’s unfortunate that religion still plays a significant role, even if sometimes just superficially, in our government. Sure, it was one of the primary reasons the piece of land we now call The United States of America was settled by Europeans, but the Constitution and its amendments only mention religion twice, once in the first amendment and once in article six, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States”. Yet, that doesn’t seem to be true in practice as there has never been a non-Christian president. In recent times, it’s almost become expected for a president to have strong religious convictions. God and the Oath of Office.

We finally have a black president, when are we going to have a non-Christian one, or a non-religious one, or a female one, or a gay one or one with no legs? Will this be a fall of the Berlin Wall of sorts?