It amazes me how tone deaf some people are. The faith stuff @

the end of the speech was a hat tip to the culture of the folks in the Gulf.

Obama was acknowledging something that the fisherman do. Obama was not advocating prayer as a way of solving the issue. He was using it as a way to let the people know I heard you and I understand you. Obama was connecting to them, they are the ones with the oil in their backyards, they are the ones with the toxic fumes in their noses and mouths. I may not have liked the speech but I'm glad he was talking to the people who are dealing with that shit in their daily lives. They deserved to have Obama all to themselves last night. Hopefully I'll get a chance to get off my ass and do what Will Pitt said we should do, is go down there and show BP they can't push 10,000 of us around and take back our fucking access to the disaster zone so the real news about the situation gets out.

I cannot believe so many supposedly culturally sensitive liberals went off the fucking deep on the last portion of the speech.

So, let me repeat, the speech wasn't that great because he wasn't talking to y'all (us), he was talking to the folks in the gulf.

Now, you can be pissed about that and angry and demand that Obama speak to us but that is another topic altogether.

I was disappointed in the speech for a lot of reasons but his talking about prayer did not bother me as it seems it did some.

I know that religion isn't popular around here, but it makes some people feel good. If that's what it takes, then so be it.

and show BP. My guess is - no.

Obama may well have been talking to the Gulf folks, but, this will impact many more folks than the Gulf ones. The talks should be addressed to all of 'us', not just the ones in the immediate area. Don't you think?

he gave where people say he was cold and professorial the early days of this thing, he was talking to us.

But last night, the first oval office speech, the big kahuna.... he reserved it for the folks in the gulf.

He will also talk to us in the future just like he has been.

I'm no Obama cheerleader but lets get real DU. Rachel. Keith. Tweety. Y'all are over the fucking top.

You can bank on that.

Why is nobody ever "culturally sensitive" to atheists? There's always gotta be a tip of the hat to the Sky Wizard. Makes me want to vomit.

Every President invokes deities in some way. Who cares? Did you bother to look at the rest of the speech, or were you too busy kneeling in front of the toilet.

You're an atheist. That's nice. It's irrelevant to this oil disaster, though.

time he gives a little shout out to a cultural past time of praying for god to watch over fisherman people go ape.

the first president to give a shout out to atheist gets blasted by them when he gives a minimal shout out to prayer.

WHAT THE FUCKITY FUCK!

remember, this is also the president who, when a judge overturned the law establishing the National Day Of Prayer as unconstitutional, decided to have a National Day of Prayer anyway.

What, we're supposed to be happy with one mention, and that's it? He's been doing god talk since he broke onto the national stage. He's fully supporting the Office of Faith Based Initiatives. He mentions god all the time. But we're supposed to shut up and take it because he deigned to mention us in one speech?

Right.

exist and objecting to all mention of them by people who do believe they exist.

I'm quite content in my disbelief. That someone else believes is a matter of little interest to me. Most people do have some sort of belief in deities. There it is.

but I do object when the President decides to do something that has been found unconstitutional. I have to accept that he's going to refer to deities; indeed, I haven't even objected to the prayer mention last night. I was responding to a specific point that was raised.

He can believe all day long, but when he's establishing official Days of Prayer, he's crossing a line, IMO.

and the Gulf disaster?

I was responding to a specific point made in that post, that atheists should basically shut up about Obama and religion because he mentioned us in the inaugural address, and that Obama only made one little mention of religion. I disagree with those claims.

I understand that he has to pay at least lip service to religion to survive politically in this country, but at times he's gone further than lip service. There was no reason to mention religion last night. Nobody would have noticed if he had, instead, gone into a bit of detail about the technical aspects of what's going on in the Gulf.

well said

as well as all the other Buddhists, Hindis, Jews, Muslims, and atheists in the Gulf states and the greater US

I've been to several "Red Masses," even though I'm not Catholic, & everyone regardless of religion, or lack thereof, participates & is made to feel included.

Oh & btw, many Vietnamese are Catholic.

dg

Obviously you haven't visited Louisiana and haven't met a whole lot of Vietnamese.

There are a few Buddhists but most are Catholics. And just as there are Catholic/voudoun there are a few catholic/Buddhists.

http://www.nolaviet.com/vni/


They attend catholic churches especially to participate in sacrements. The Blessing of the Fleet is multicultural even though it is performed by Bishops or Monsignors. The blessing of fleets goes back to when humans first took to the sea.

Very frustrating, this endless search for things to find wrong with everything President Obama does.

The one does not imply the other.

find me on the front lines. So far, I haven't seen that from Obama. Have you? You're as free not to worship deities as others are to do as they please.

What I'm saying is that, as an atheist, I can freely grouse about the president resorting to goddball tactics. I am well within my rights as a citizen to do so.

This does not make me part of any conspiracy to find fault with everything Obama does. I often find myself defending Obama from such people.

The two issues are separate. I can be in favor of the president without losing the right to speak out when I think he's wrong.

Are you always this hostile or are you making a special effort on my behalf?

this is not about placating anyone's religion (or lack thereof)

Pathetic. :puke:

Lighten up, Francis

/25 year atheist, here

I'm just saying, I thought the appeal to prayer was bullshit. The rest of the speech, though a little light on details, was fine.

EDIT: grammar nazi'd myself

I loves me some xultar, but I hate religion. Each and every one. All it does is give cover to bigots. It is the cause of most wars.

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. And I'd like to think Obama knows better.

But sing his praises anyway! For he gave us dominion over the Earth, to pillage it and rape it, as that devout Christian, Ann Coulter says.

...as a means of solving problems, I freak out just a bit. Perhaps Nancy Reagan might loan the White House her astrologers, too. And I think I've got some goat entrails around here somewhere.... I'll bet we'll find a solution in there!

:thumbsup:

PB

from the hysteria.

It is not cute.

"...because we all know how effective THAT can be!" Praying to one's invisible friends is NOT an effective solution for environmental catastrophes. Pandering to the delusional who think it is isn't helpful either. it's LAME.

Gee. Why don't we all just link hands right now and ask jeebus to fix it all up, huh? I don't know why we've messed around with all these deep sea engineering attempts to shut off the well when ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS ASK JEEBUS TO TURN IT OFF FOR US!

Yeah, I think a little hysteria is warranted.

"Tonight, we pray for that courage. We pray for the people of the Gulf. And we pray that a hand may guide us through the storm towards a brighter day. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America."

As you correctly noted, he prayed for courage. He prayed for the well-being of the local residents. He prayed for guidance. Nothing about praying for the oil to stop. The deity he believes in had nothing to do with that. That was BP.

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BEcause everybody knows courage doesn't come from prayers. Courage comes when you are bitten on the penis with a viper on the first new moon of Autumn, but only before the Maenads have sacrificed to Dyonisis.

I sensed Barack was praying for his own courage. Remember the prayer he'd inserted into the Wailing wall in Jerasalem, which some creepy Yeshiva student pulled out?


Barack Obama is a Christian, as he has said.

Courage comes from within us, not from God.

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After Katrina, I stocked up on magic supplies!

Which would be a vast improvement on his looks.

Instead you are participating in cruelty to small defenseless amphibians. Shame on you! (OK, it's a lizard - I don't have a newt or sslamander gif.)

I would never divulge my magic supply source.

and that is how the majority cope... I can't begrudge them that, especially at this time in their lives. Obama's tailoring his message to them is absolutely ok in my book. They deserve it.

...so my southern creds are strong and genuine. I was raised in that tradition. I have lived in every state bordering on the Gulf except Texas. Yes, I know how pervasive religious insanity is in the south. But Obama's speech was not a private conversation with southerners-- and frankly, even if it was, buying into religious delusion is still lame. I'm reminded of what my mother told me about people who go along with the general will even when they know better--"If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?"

But as I said, this wasn't a private conversation with some pastor from the Gulf states. It was a national speech, and the president of the United States invoked a belief in magic to solve some problem, whether the oil spill itself or lack of courage, whatever. It's the lamest suggestion I could possibly imagine from an intelligent person. It shocks me. It scares the hell out of me. There isn't much hope if the inmates have completely taken over the asylum and sent all of the rational adults home.

faith.... Being rather agnostic myself, I am sensitized to the ridiculous way in which politicians use religion and I cringed when I saw some prayer gathering in the Gulf among those actually expecting a divine solution. I wanted to shake them all and scream at them to go fix the problem themselves!

But, as I said, if it brings some of these folks hope, comfort, and the ability to keep moving forward, I don't begrudge them that. And, I really think that is all that was intended.

That's what it sounds like. You honestly believe that at the end of that speech he was literally invoking magic and superstition?

He invoked prayer. Belief in the efficacy of praying to invisible people who run the universe from an equally invisible "heaven" is certainly a belief in magic and superstition, IMO. At best. At worst, its a sign of mental illness.

If you are willing to swallow talking snakes, virgins who have babies and a boy who sets up house in the belly of a whale, then you are liable to swallow anything.

...and insects flew from the butts of decaying animals. Malaria was caused by bad air. And so on. The number of people sharing a delusion has no bearing at all on its veracity. Half the people-- as you refer to them-- are simply delusional if they believe in invisible, all powerful supernatural sky people. See my sig line.

Nothing else does.

It never registers with them. "Watching Over" doesn't mean the Sky Fairy is going to do anything, just so that he's to do a peeping tom thing by orders of the President, who outranks the Sky Fairy.

attempts to minimize what President Obama is doing. That's a real shame.

I'm a strong atheist, but I don't give a damn if the President invokes a deity in his speech. The majority of the population claims belief, so there you go.

:hi:

was that it was a substitute for details and a convincing plan.

details in a frickin Oval Office address.

Details are for press conferences.

I think Obama is a great president and a very smart man, but that speech was damn near content-free. He made a lot of statements about what he was going to do, but completely glossed over how he meant to go about doing it. I was unsatisfied.

Oh, and by the way...

Transparency, remember? It's a good thing. If the details are still being hammered out, he should have said so, and then presented a basic framework of what he's going for.

I fully support the "what" that he presented. I just want more info on the "how." (As I said in another thread.)

mortgage. There were people down there who had no income.
Remember, he's behind on this. All of this should have been done a month ago.

Two hands working will accomplish more than a thousand clasped in prayer, as the saying goes. If I were among the affected in this disaster, being told to pray harder instead of being told how the president intends to accomplish his good intentions would piss me off to no end. It's bullshit, and I feel perfectly justified in calling him on it.

One of the reasons I'm an atheist is that I think theists rely on faith to see them through, and thus fail, when real-world planning and attention to detail would have brought them success. I don't like to see my leaders (especially a smart man like Obama!) resorting to that kind of behavior.

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I also shoot fireballs from my eyes, and lightning bolts from my arse. The English never knew what hit them. :rofl:

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Lotta name dropping and the like, many wonkish sitrep type details.

But nothing on HOW and WHEN the feds are going to act to mitigate the ongoing catastrophe - shaking a stick at BP doesn't stop the oil from hitting our shores. And that's what people were really looking for.

The message got through, intended or not: If you're on or near the Gulf Coast, you're on your own - the government does not care to help you and would not be competent to do so if it did.

because we are all experts here in every field and we could pick at and play with the details for weeks. He should have bored the public to death with technical diagrams and discussions of engineering.

Then they'd complain about too much info.

"First, the cleanup. From the very beginning of this crisis, the federal government has been in charge of the largest environmental cleanup effort in our nation’s history -- an effort led by Admiral Thad Allen, who has almost 40 years of experience responding to disasters. We now have nearly 30,000 personnel who are working across four states to contain and clean up the oil. Thousands of ships and other vessels are responding in the Gulf. And I’ve authorized the deployment of over 17,000 National Guard members along the coast. These servicemen and women are ready to help stop the oil from coming ashore, they’re ready to help clean the beaches, train response workers, or even help with processing claims -- and I urge the governors in the affected states to activate these troops as soon as possible."

There are some details from the speech that are to your point.

"We now have nearly 30,000 personnel who are working across four states to contain and clean up the oil."
How, exactly?

"Thousands of ships and other vessels are responding in the Gulf."
Doing what? Is this just throwing numbers at the problem, or does quantity yield quality?

"And I’ve authorized the deployment of over 17,000 National Guard members along the coast. These servicemen and women are ready to help stop the oil from coming ashore, they’re ready to help clean the beaches, train response workers, or even help with processing claims -- and I urge the governors in the affected states to activate these troops as soon as possible."

This last part was decent. There should have been more of this, but he changed the subject soon after. He talked about what he was going to do to BP (Good, needed more specifics), clean energy (Good, and had some specifics, but not immediately relevant to the crisis resolution), and the goddball stuff (Nice if you believe in that stuff, I could personally have done without the superstition.)

are available. Google helps. You may not find them here as easily. Educate yourself. It's worthwhile.

Inquiring minds...

questions prior to the speech? I'm sure he would have answered each and every one in it.

Everyone has questions. Everyone wants answers. Most of your questions have answers you can readily access. This speech had another function, and answering your specific questions probably wasn't that function.

As I said, the information you want is out there already.

Silly me, I thought "What have you done, what do you mean to do, and how will you go about it" were fairly common queries. And as I said, his speech was -fair- in that regard, just lacking in detail. It was the Palin-esque part of the speech that I take issue with.

To be clear:
I dislike being made a second-class citizen by the President's tacit endorsement of a preferred religion.
I dislike the implication that Big Daddy up above is going to fix this mess because we ask him really, really earnestly.

Is that unreasonable?
And hey, wait, I thought you had other things to do? :P

Some specific goals would have been appropriate. Okay, so he's not going to lay out some detailed legislation. How about something along the line of "before the end of this decade...." You can do that kind of speech pretty quick. How about a commitment to carbon reductions on a timetable? How about a commmitment to a percentage of renewable/nonfossil fuel use by a certain time? How about a committment of resources to the problem over a period of time?

There are all kinds of "details" and I have to give them everyday in my job, and I don't get two hours to present them.

he's got no plan? and that he was doing this all as a substitute? Do you think he was asking for God's help and doing absolutely nothing about the oil spill?

it didn't make its way into the speech.

On the one hand, we get told that BP is responsible for doing the cleanup.

On the other, state and local governments all along the coast are being told they can't implement defensive measures without federal permits... which due to the slowness of the bureaucracy can't be issued in time to stop the oil from doing permanent damage.

This leaves Obama in the dubious position of preventing the efforts to protect the coastline rather than leading it.

Either the federal government is in control of the situation or it isn't. If it is, then leaving the cleanup to BP is an abdication. If it isn't, it needs to get the hell out of the way and let people do what they need to do to save their lands and livelihoods.

The following is not news on the Gulf coast but apparently would surprise a lot of people in DC: a liability escrow account, no matter how large, doesn't do a damn thing to prevent permanent destruction of coastal properties and marine life.

And religion has been one of my biggest personal beefs with Obama as both a candidate and a president.

As you say, he was connecting to the Gulf residents, as well as doing a preemptive strike against those who claim that everything he does is the work of a godless socialist. As if that were a bad thing. ;)

Sure, I could criticize him on what he didn't say in his speech; but I won't criticize him for the political maneuvering at the end.

What a horrible characterization of the people of the Gulf that is. To think that they'll accept empty words instead of actual solutions to the problems facing them.

You must not have a very high opinion of those people.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x342594

I have a higher opinion of them then I do of some posters at DU.

and maybe the writing should have helped him a little more. It would have been fine for him to ask the country to send their support to the Gulf Coast and then to address those people himself directly with a personal message of faith.

Sometimes his writers drive me a little nuts but that's a habit of mine.

And he does not know how to adapt them for the purpose. It drives me more than a little nuts. This time again, the way it was done, the way they have done 'faith' in the past, far more than the doing of it, the way of it is just all wrong. And they leave him unsupported in basic ways.

that we should resort to prayer to fix this. Unnecessary, imo.

:thumbsup:

:hi:

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If it resonated with those in the Gulf, the way it was intended to, then it was a good thing.

There are areas of the speech I wasn't satisfied with, but that was far from one of them.

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:rofl:

As a result I never assume what a person's intentions are and always ask.

Having read your other posts on this thread I see you have chosen a more, shall we say, obnoxious method than myself to express your secularism. Which does explain somewhat your previous reply.

After all that, I have very little patience left for them. As such, I make no apologies for my obnoxiousness.

Just saying.

Just saying.

You know God and all that stuff.

He knew it would touch a chord with them and it did.

Me? Not so much but I knew why he did it.

My dad started crying"

Edited on Wed Jun-16-10 11:08 AM by impik
"For whatever it's worth, I'm a native of and currently live in Louisiana, about 20 miles outside of New Orleans. My dad is a Cajun river rat in the truest sense, born and raised in Southeastern Louisiana. His father's native language is Cajun French -- literally, he had to learn English as a boy. My dad has never fished commercially, but it defines his out-of-work, weekend persona -- it dominates his spare time. He often talks about a dream life living in a shack somewhere out in the marsh, fishing all day. He's a product of the cultural fabric of southeastern Louisiana.

My dad comes home from work these days depressed about the oil spill. He thinks about it all damn day, and, like many here, he has no shortage of outrage at everyone involved in this mess.


When Obama pivoted to his remarks about "The Blessing of the Fleet," my dad started crying".

______________________________________________________


"Maureen Dowd can talk all she wants about these amorphous, nebulous standards like a "Clint Eastwood moment" or whatever, and Anderson Cooper is free to think he knows the people here better than anyone because he's been here for a few weeks, but Obama connected with my dad last night -- of that I can be sure. And trust me, my dad isn't exactly a pushover".



http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/20...

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the prayers were not sincere, that the believers did not have the faith of a mustard seed, that it wasn't in god's plan to solve shit, etc.

"Tonight, we pray for that courage. We pray for the people of the Gulf. And we pray that a hand may guide us through the storm towards a brighter day. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America."

"Tonight, we pray for that courage."
So, as stated elsewhere, (lack of courage) == (the problem.) Prayer is being utilized to solve a problem. This is bad.

"We pray for the people of the Gulf."
This does not help them. Prayer accomplishes nothing beyond converting "sitting on your ass" into "doing something."

"And we pray that a hand may guide us through the storm towards a brighter day."
Presumably "the storm" is the whole catastrophe. No "hand" is going to guide us through it, we have to fix it ourselves. Relying on prayer for some magical father-figure to come fix it for us is worse than useless.

I caught that too, but thanks for saying it better than I could have.

I truly wish I were in a position to pack up and head down there, but I am not. Feeling helpless is the worst part about this whole debacle.

is thrown under the bus by those who think we are some how deluded and not worthy of our opinions....oh well to each their own.

Just the ones who want to somehow detract from the overall speech by changing the subject. Too bad for them.

;)

I ask merely for information.

It might not have been a very good joke, but that's in the eye of the beholder.

:D

I would have thought they would be the opposite. Or used to be.

You're right. Crap!

MineralMan, for instance, has not been doing that at all.

But there are a noisy enough few who really are getting tedious on the subject.

I am a college educated, progressive liberal person of a relatively high intelligence. I am capable of cogent conversations, can think critically and deal well with my mundane world. But, since I am a person of faith, I am derided here as "deluded", having an "imaginary friend" or worshipping something that should be on a plate in an Italian restaurant.

Weird.

Thanks for piping up about this. More need to.

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Do you think that alienating a huge chunk of the Democratic/Liberal populace because of your personal beef with religion is going to come to any good end? Outside of maybe satisfying your planet sized ego?

who believe differently. I feel no need to insult them, deride them or flash my supposed intellectual superiority. There are intelligent, progressive people of all faiths and of no faith. I also could care less about that statement the Prez made. Talk about not focusing on the real issues -- is incessantly discussing that prayer statement going to help the oil spill?!?

And since the President didn't us any concrete plans for fixing the problem in the Gulf other than to try and pray our troubles away, what would you have us discuss?

The topic is clearly of some interest to you, or else you wouldn't have chosen to respond.

And in addition, he has, unlike other Democratic politicians, made use of extremely controversial clerics, including a couple of America's worst hate preachers, who, along with the President himself, strongly connected his definition of 'faith' as one of exclusion and discrimination, a thing not shared by all Americans, by order of the very god he invoked last night. All of that existed prior to the platform gusher.
I guess each time he has invoked his faith against my community and family, he was 'not talking to us all'. Just about us all.
I say to you, if a person really respects their faith, and feels the need to call upon it in a public role in times of national crisis, that person should keep that faith sacred, and avoid tying it to the petty politics of division and hold it as a precious thing. Such a person does not use that faith to pander, nor to insult, and most certainly would never use it to talk to some people about other people to gain worldly advantage.
Some actual thoughts as to why there is dander up about this. He brings baggage when he talks faith, baggage he himself packed. I never thought those were good bags to be lugging, and I still don't.
So yeah, it made my nostrils flair. And the fault is his, and Donnie's and Joshua DuBois's, not the faith's nor the fisherman's. Thank you for listening.

Incredible. Especially for a group that prides itself on tolerance and openmindness.

Maybe DU had a sale on really BIG crucifixes that match his drapes.:shrug:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x342594

K&R

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along with pestilence and bad perms. I have faith that he is right and that Obama has just prayed for our destruction and eternal damnation of bad perms!

You tell me what it means. Word for word, line for line. Please don't leave out the part where it explains just how RATIONAL praying to invisible sky people is. Sheesh.

The problem is that we DO know what it means to the religious folks in the Gulf states. It validates their craziness. It enables their delusions. The rest of us are left to wonder whether the president is sane or not. Clue: there are no invisible people living in the sky, answering prayers. None. Nada. Zip.

You seem more eye-bulging angry at the very thought of a prayer to comfort people in a time of need, than a religious person would be if they outlawed prayer everywhere.

Truly ponderous.

...and talk about me rather than about the fisherman's prayer.

and that says more about you than anything you could possibly post.

He was not speaking to atheists like me.

You don't have to practice, believe, like, accept, or even respect faith but you do have to deal with it. No plausible law that allows others to practice and believe is going to also make it so you can avoid some expressions of faith, spirituality, or religion.

Sorry, its not going to be forced underground as some dirty little secret.
That's not a reasonable understanding of the law or it's intent.

I got your back 1000% on beating back establishment, funding church school, and things along those lines but I can't back repression or demands for pretending religion doesn't exist. I think some have so twisted the establishment clause that they believe it is enforced secularism in all public places and the commons.

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at least on DU where there's at least one thread a day that tries to be as offensive to believers as possible, especially if they are Christian.

But so much as look cross-eyed at an atheist here, & your thread is disappeared in a heart beat.

dg

And a real black mark on an otherwise great forum.

Christians... poor, persecuted majority. The eternal victims.

Anybody who has spent any amount of time on DU knows that it's not friendly to people of faith. Why, I'm not sure, but that's how it is.

You're still here.

.

:hi:

Thanks for bringing it all into clarity.

... or in your case Drama Queen. Either way, you are getting a lot of mileage out of your stunted emotional maturity.

This is a political site not a religious one. Maybe you should find a "faith site". YMMV.

but there is a huge chunk of the Democratic population in the US who are religious. In fact, many of its most powerful leaders were people of faith. Maybe the name Martin Luther King rings a bell.

throughout history in the name of religion... especially all of the ones represented by your 4 tokens. They were good people despite their faith, not because of it.

I really didn't hate to tell you that.

killed the most people in the shortest time in human history? Are ya sure you wanna go down that road? It wont end up good for you.

Yes. Let's go down that road!

It's still delusional.

Go! Into the west, and diminish!

Too much truth for some, I think.

Mods, I am disappoint.

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Funny how Frankenstein is an evil scientist for re-animating the dead, but Jesus re-animating the dead is a "miracle". :shrug:

A few here ask why I'm so snarky. It's because when you can't reason with someone, the only thing left is poking them and pushing their buttons.

It is based on as small minded, angry denunciation of anyone who disagrees with it, and a belittling of any conflicting viewpoints.

I'm an atheist. And if you'll take a look a my few postings in this thread, you'll see that I've been backing Obama's use of faith in this speech.

Broad brush attacks don't help anyone. You'll notice that you are just as guilty of the actions you accuse the adherents of "today's atheism", (whatever the heck that is), of doing. Namely, making angry denunciations and belittling conflicting viewpoints. Oops.

Oh, and the lack of belief in gods or an afterlife is not a religion. I don't believe in the tooth fairy either, does that institute the grounds for a religion? Not so much.

Cheers.

I'm only giving the more rabid fundamentalist atheists a taste of their own medicine. If they don't like it, perhaps they should stop being jerks & calling those who believe in God "idiots" & "morons." :think:

Thank you for being one of the very few who've stood up for Obama's use of faith. But from what I've seen demonstrated on DU, atheism is a religion, with its own belief system.

dg

Three lefts however, do. :silly:

And it's fine that you feel that atheism is a religion; however, that doesn't make it one. Lack of belief in something does not a religion make.

Which oddly enough, makes many militant atheists today more "religious" than I am, as a person of faith.

Sure, it may be a sign of it, but that does not make it the cause of it.

So your analogy involving your 'militant atheists' doesn't hold up. Sorry. It simply means that they feel strongly about the subject. As do you, apparently.

By the way, does that make you a 'militant religious person', since you feel strongly about your faith? I thought not.

Cheers.

A few of us atheists have an agenda to get as many people freed from the shackles of religious dogma and superstitious beliefs as possible.

Many Religious people have and agenda to characterize atheism as a religion to make them selves look clever and to distract other people from seeing that the religious believes in boys who can live inside whales, fairies who influence money, virgins who have babies, talking snakes, eggs that can sit on walls but fall easily so the King's horses can't use their hooves to fix him, and a marshmallow kingdom in the sky where we play a harp all day.

"A few of us atheists have an agenda to get as many people freed from the shackles of religious dogma and superstitious beliefs as possible. "

This is so easy.

It's easier for me.

Atheist missionaries. I never thought I'd see that day.

And unless it's Halloween, you won't ever see the day.

call it anything you want, but you can't get away from the fact that Atheism is a religion.

dg

What a turnabout this one has become.

That is not the same as, or translatable to "I believe that no god exists."

Mine is a negative declaration. The other is a positive affirmation. Two very different statements.

Atheists do not believe. The religious people thinking atheists have a belief system is a belief held only by the religious people themselves, and they're (you're) projecting.

Just as you say "fact". It does not make it one, but it does leave me an opening to challenge you to prove it with supporting, tangible evidence.

The atheist fundamentalist is on the other side of the Taliban coin. Both are just as obnoxious.

Save it up! I'm sure you'll get big applause at the coffee & sweet rolls "fellowship" in the church basement after your Sunday services.

td

and that ties your panties in a bunch, in the worst way.

And enough about my panties. I told you time and again, I will not have sex with you!

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you'd set aside your arrogance & bigotry enough to understand why the President mentioned the Blessing of the Fleet ceremony & what it means to the Gulf culture, as well as understanding why it was not "government endorsing religion."


dg

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which is saying quite alot.

Broaden your horizons. When you defame fellows here of faith, you do much more than defame Christians.

Perhaps this is just a personal beef of yours, based on some past pain?

Agree 100%. He may have been talking to the whole nation, but he was talking specifically to the people who are feeling this disaster the most. The southeast is a very religious region, and one that is far from friendly to Obama's politics. Yet he was reaching out and showing great compassion for them.

Don't like it? Get an oil spill of your own and perhaps you'll get a presidential speech that's framed a bit differently.

It's a very special occasion. If your work is fishing, your job-site can sink. it's a comfort to acknowledge the fear and pray/wish for the best.
The second the POTUS expressed those sentiments, I knew that people would get on his case.

There's plenty that can be done to reassure and enthuse people without invoking the divisive clubbiness of religion.

It was wrapping himself in goodness and sweet little kitties and mom and apple pie taken to the supernatural extreme, and it further reminded those who don't believe that we are merely tolerated inferiors in this vision of the country.

The constant reminder that God MUST be invoked in politics is not a good thing, and will help the pernicious seeping of religion into government. It doesn't play fair, and it plays for keeps.

Besides this fear and disgust, it was simply unnecessary. Plenty of reassurance and positiveness could have been brought to bear without playing the chickenshit cosmic trump card. If it really is true that our President simply cannot help himself and he's so fixated on religion that it colors his every waking moment, then I'd expect he would attempt to feign the decency of faking some pluralism in his attempt to speak for us all.

Once again, for the aggressively thin-skinned religious bellyachers: there's pro-religion, anti-religion, and religion-neutral. Nobody is asking for anti-religion, we'd just like to see neutrality on the subject. Plenty of other practical and emotional things can be said without invoking this fractious assumption, and asking that it merely be toned down a tad is mighty accomodating of a trait that is aggressive and demands sway.

My snakes are all perfectly well-oiled, so I'd like to not have to hear about this at every turn.

I would like to say that to Marcus Garvey, were he standing in front of me.

and saying what he thought might work.

Lying through his fucking teeth.

I am in the Keys and the oil is going to get here eventually.

You know what? I don't think praying is going to help us. And none of us are going to fall for that.

Can't really grasp the intolerance towards it...

and did it right at the end of the speech, and after he'd said stuff like "we'll get through this even if we're not sure how." It did not make for a confident-sounding leader. Rather, he reminded me of a pilot who's lost control of his plane and instead of making plans for an emergency landing and preparing the passengers, he just tells the flight attendants to go tell the passengers to pray for a safe landing. A lot.

I think was the problem. A little touch of "god bless" here and there sounds natural from Obama. As a matter of tone, I think it (religious talk) rings hollow when he tries to expand on it, because he clearly isn't giantically religious man.

Just as an aside, I don't think you can fairly characterize everyone on the Gulf Coast as being deeply religious. It's not a monolithically rural region, and we're not talking about just "bayou folks" at this point. Key West?

fanatics here at DU make me sick at times. People on BOTH sides of that aisle seem to not understand the meaning of freedom of religion.

Having learned about the local Cheseapeake Bay one. And yes, although I am an atheist and his speech did make me uncomfortable I do realize he was speaking to the watermen of the Gulf Coast. The invocation of the blessing of the ships was an indicator of it.
And lets not forget ALL of the politicians do that. From Hillary and her Prayer Warriors to even Dennis Kucinich's Catholic (and at one time pro-life) faith.

...that is exactly what it sounded like to me, he talked about the tradition they have every year of blessing the fleet in good times and bad, then proceeded with a prayer.

I do not belong to any organized religion. I am adamant on the separation of church and state. I had no problem whatsoever with that part of the President's speech.

with that speech of his.

If Obama had pushed muslim, buddist, or hindu beliefs in the end of that speech of his, people would have gone berserk!

So please spare those of us who actually BELIEVE IN THE CONSTITUTION your piss poor excuses! :puke:

It is, however, an unwritten guiding principle which I believe in, as you do. I have to say I do not see how President Obama trying to bring some comfort to the people of the Gulf (the vast majority of whom are religious in some way) is a terrible violation of anything. Sometimes what is called for is just a little humanity.