Is Obama an Atheist?

Others have suggested that despite his professions to be a Christian, Obama is secretly an atheist.

Is there any evidence that he’s an atheist? Here is the kind of evidence usually cited:

• Obama standard Enlightenment views about religious pluralism and secularism, except that he’s a bit about separation of church and state.
• Obama’s “guns and religion”
• Obama after leaving Jeremiah Wright’s church
• Obama’s father was an atheist by the time by the time he married Obama’s mother
• Obama’s stepfather was non-religious
• Obama was mostly raised by his mother, a scientific atheist who thought religion was irrational and destructive, and raised Obama with a secular education in all major religious traditions
• Obama’s political aspirations in America essentially required that he profess Christianity, whether or not he really believed

For example, is an Obama tale woven by (who writes very smart stuff about and , and some dumb stuff about ):

I suspect [Obama] cynically got a copy of Michael Barrone’s Almanac of American Politics and looked to see which Congressional District in the U.S. was the most black. There, he learned it was the First District of Illinois, better known as the South Side of Chicago.

So he moved there in spite of having absolutely no connection to Chicago. He dumped the white girlfriend for a more politic black one, changed the name he went by from Barry to Barack, heard that if he wanted to go into politics on the South Side of Chicago he needed to join Jeremiah Wright’s church, and did so. In other words, he did not discover Christ as he claims. He discovered that he was a smooth talker, played his father’s race for all it was worth, and hung around with Jeremiah Wright for vote-getting purposes, not because he has any interest in religion.

…When he realized he could do the Senate and the Oval Office, he was way too slow to realize Wright’s church was not as attractive to the wider population of voters as it was to “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” and his neighbors. Obama barely threw Wright and that church under his famous bus in time to win the presidency… For Obama, religion is just another lie he tells to get elected.

Okay, so that’s pretty far-fetched, but it’s at least more plausible than the idea that Obama is a secret Muslim.

Also, it’s worth remembering that despite his non-religious early life, Obama claims to have adopted religion in his adult years – specifically, the mid-80s. This was before he made any political moves, and around the time he moved to Chicago and met Michelle. It’s not like he’s the first person to have become religious while adult, and when developing a new relationship with a significant other.

If Obama has been secretly an atheist for three decades, and all his closest friends and family have helped him hide the truth, that’s one hell of a successful conspiracy.

So is Obama an atheist? Probably not. It’s slightly more plausible than the “secret Muslim” theory, but for now I’d have to guess he’s a Christian like he says he is.