Obama and Non-believer

In his inauguration speech Obama mentioned all of America:

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers.

I wrote about this in an earlier post. Many of us atheists were quite pleased that we would be included as Americans, we usually aren't.
However, there are still a lot of people who think we aren't part of America: Non-believers

Earlier this week, Jackson was a guest on the popular conservative Christian radio show 'Janet Parshall's America,' where a succession of callers, many of whom identified themselves as African-American, said they shared the concern, and were perplexed and put off by the president’s shout-out to nonbelievers.

Gee, what a terrible thing for Obama to acknowledge that we exist and are actually citizens. I wonder what Rev. Jackson wants to do, round us all up and put us in ghettos? Maybe just shot on sight? Fortunately, in a poll on the same site 73% say they weren't offended by Obama's remarks.

Everyone seems to be having a problem with Obama's desire to include everyone in his America. Including atheists is going too far for some. Did they not understand what Obama meant or did they think he was just kidding?

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Obama Mentions Non-believers

In his inauguration speech yesterday Obama mentioned us:

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers.Image via Wikipedia

Not a big mention but I did point it out when I reviewed his speech. I liked it but didn't think it was any big deal. IsThatLatin over on Wrong In Their Mind Tanks has a very different take on it:

Obama listed the big religions, and ones emerging, in our country, and then, after the briefest of pauses, he added us. I prefer not to read that pause as a hesitation. That pause seemed added so as to prepare the nation for what he was about to add--that he knew it was the first time, that it meant a lot. To my ear, it read like poety--not in some deep, sentimental way, but in it's construct. We were at the end, and maybe some cynics would prefer we were at the start, or mixed in the middle. But that pause, and that final word--"non-believers"--acted as punctuation. To my ear, that word became bigger and louder than the others. Maybe Muslims and Hindus feel the same way, but, as polls show, America hates us most.

I'm not really sure it's that big a deal but I got a real kick out of how excited she was over it, had me smiling for over an hour. And that is something that is always good for me these days.

Now, maybe she will pop over here and explain the name of her blog.

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