Dr. Newdow:
And you thought that George W. Bush with his prayer meetings, faith based grants and evangelicals praying in the name of Jesus was the low point of Church State separation.
We could have hoped that once Obama got elected he would start to reverse Bush's infusing religion into more aspects of government, but this article in The Washington Post, Obama Raises Profile Of Prayer, indicates quite the opposite.
It's no longer just a matter of our attempting to prevent prayer at the inaugural, or the revision of the constitutional presidential oath to include "So Help Me God." It has now gone much further.
Here's the extent of it, as I excerpt from the article:
Prayer has become more common at presidential appearances under the Obama administration, including at nonreligious events such as stimulus rallies.
snip-
The policy, first reported in U.S. News & World Report, appears to continue a new White House approach to religion: invite piety and spirituality at every opportunity, but with a new emphasis on interfaith participants and atheists.
As the person in the forefront of eliminating the establishment of monotheism as the de facto national religion, there seems to be a logical inconsistency in this report.
Atheists by definition do not believe in a higher being. So just how do we do "spirituality" without believing in an object for such ineffable communion. And then there's "piety" which is the act of being "pious" defined as :
1 a: marked by or showing reverence for deity and devotion to divine worship b: marked by conspicuous religiosity
I'm not so concerned that the reporter and editors of the Washington Post has no sense of oxymoronic logical inconsistency, but I have to wonder exactly what our President is thinking.
Perhaps someone should simply explain to him that atheists do not believe in prayer, and no amount of inclusionary verbiage can change that.