The President-Elect calls for unity on faith

We're going to have to jump back in time a little here for this one, it's Obama talking about the nature of faith in a modern America back in June. YouTube link here. I caution readers to disregard the title given to this video by the poster.

I really found this speech to be quite admirable, however much the President-Elect and I may disagree on theological matters. It's quite clear that Obama has a clear grasp on the intent on the First Amendment and despite his personal religious beliefs has a clear grasp of the arguments on the dangers of faith put forward by the Neo-Atheists.

This speech, reinforcing as it does the idea that America is a secular nation that happens to have a large base of religious believers, is a breath of fresh air. The key point to this clip for me is probably around 2.23, where Obama says that:

'...in a pluralistic society we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality....To base one's own life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy-making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.'

Bravo, sir! An administration based on the rule of reason is exactly what the world needs right now. As you went on to say, I am also tired of seeing faith used as a tool for attack.

Which brings us neatly onto the horrible debacle that is the North Carolina Senatorial race. As I'm sure you know by now, Kay Hagen has taken the senatorial seat from incumbent Elizabeth Dole. This particular senatorial race grabbed a lot of headline attention because (aside from being a crucial seat) of the nature of the attack ads run by the desperate Dole claiming that Hagen, who is a Sunday School teacher for her local Prebyterian church, was in the pocket of the Godless Americans PAC and was herself an atheist, complete with out of context quotemining and a fake voiceover which was implied to be Hagen herself saying 'There is no God.' If you've not seen it, you can find a link here.

I do sympathise with Hagen's position, but I'm saddened by the vehemence of her denial and by the fact that implicit links to a pro-secularist group can actually be used as an attack by a political opponent. There is far too much of this nonsense that America is 'one nation under God' and the talking heads who pronounce this revisionist view seem to have credibility because a large proportion of the electorate remain unaware that those words were added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, in the middle of McCarthyist anti-Communism hysteria. Our current climate of distrust of atheists is partly due to this attitude and partly due to misunderstandings (both inadvertent and intentional) of the nature of atheism amongst the faithful majority. One nation under God...but which God? Jehovah, Yahweh or Allah? Krishna, perhaps? The Deist God of the founding fathers, maybe. Maybe Spinoza's Deus sive Natura, God and Nature being interchangable terms for the same thing; certainly an idea that Einstein found and Hawking appears to find palatable.

Ultimately the very fact that we have strident voices raised insisting that we ARE one nation under God strikes me as the most powerful argument in favour of returning the Pledge of Allegiance and our currency to their previous, secular state.

While an implied lack of a belief in God remains a social embarrassment sufficient that it must be responded to with legal threats America cannot make serious claims to be the pluralist society the President-Elect claims it to be.