Friday, June 27, 2008

Your Brain Lies to You

Neuroscientists Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt write in the NY Times:
False beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found. Thus it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation.
There are some good reasons for confusion on that last point. Barack Obama has a Mohammedan name. His father and step-father were both Mohammedans. His mother was an atheist. He spent some of his formative years in Indonesia, a Mohammedan country. Mohammedan doctrine is that once he is a Mohammedan, he is always a Mohammedan.

Obama claims to have converted to Christianity as an adult, but he did it by joining a racist and anti-American church that seems foreign to American Christians. He is reluctant to criticize Mohammedan terrorists, and he fails to support American efforts to contain violent Mohammedan jihadists. He seems insincere as he panders to his political constituents. There is no way to know for sure what his beliefs are. I don't think that poll is so wrong because Obama certainly does have some peculiar Mohammedan sympathies.

1 comment:

Darkwingpuck said...

Actually Barack is a Swahili name with it's origins in the Arabic Baraka which means "blessed". Barack is also similar to the Hebrew Barak which means "lightning" in Hebrew and was also the name of a Military leader in The Book of Judges. It's not an uncommon practice at all. The name Roger, for instance, has it's origins as Hrodger (Great Spear)in the Germanic language but is now primarily used in U.S., England and France.

Not trying to defend Barack or anything, although I clearly to not hold the ire toward him that you do, I simply think that his opposition would serve my interests more in the current political and economical climate. However, this is something I happen to know about and people often times confuse the entomology of Mr. Obama's unfortunate name (Considering the ire most Americans hold today for anything resembling Islam).