Obama plans fence-mending speech to atheists
By: Scott Ott
Examiner Columnist
June 9, 2009
News fairly unbalanced. We report. You decipher.
Riding the wave of Muslim approval after his historic speech from Cairo last week, President Barack Obama will reportedly travel to a major secular capital next week in an effort to "hit the reset button on relations with the Atheist World."
"The president knows how it feels to be marginalized," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, "So he won't be going there to lecture the Atheist World on morality or to try to impose American values on them, like the U.S. has done so often in the past."
Administration sources say the president will talk about the contributions of atheists to American society, and he'll quote from respected atheists like Bertrand Russell, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Jodie Foster.
The speech will also include some rather pointed rebukes to the Christian World for its oppressive treatment of atheists -- including its efforts to evangelize them, make them the subject of prayer, and to characterize atheists as 'people without God', a negative stereotype.
"Most peace-loving atheists want nothing more than to be left alone to pursue sensory stimulus, pass along their DNA, and then to allow their carbon molecules to reunite with the soil," said Gibbs, "but instead they bear the reproach of those who blame them for the actions of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and George Soros."
The president believes the Atheist World and America share common values that he plans to highlight in his speech.
"Like most Americans, atheists want safety for their offspring, those charming little vessels of genetic code," said Gibbs. "They want the right to elect representatives who will make laws guaranteeing survival of the fittest. They want freedom to speak whatever ideas the electro-chemical reactions in their brains happen to produce. Ultimately, they just want the liberty to exist until entropy draws their meaningless existence to a close."
Examiner columnist Scott Ott is editor in chief of ScrappleFace.com, the family-friendly news satire site, and anchor of ScrappleFace Network News (SNN), seen on YouTube.
Examiner columnist Scott Ott is editor in chief of ScrappleFace.com, the family-friendly news satire site, and anchor of ScrappleFace Network News, seen on YouTube.
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