Living at the centre of the democratic convention, it’s a hard task to avoid political polarisation. While it’s understandable that issues such as the right to abortion and off-shore drilling are sensitive issues, the continued push of republicans for creationist teaching in schools is bizarre. Going through the Irish primary school system, Catholicism was a fundamental part of the curriculum. While the incentive of financial rewards associated with each additional sacrament did ease your mind, once you start thinking for yourself, you naturally begin to question the fable vs fact aspects (how big was this ark of Noah? Did Lazarus only get raised from the dead because Mary Magdalene was his cousin, i.e. you need to pull strings to get saved?). In that regard, Jehovah's witnesses are particularly astute, and produce some nice literature as an attempt to reconcile the bible’s teachings with scientific fact, e.g. the six days that the world was created were ‘heavenly days’ which correspond to many millennia, and the resulting evolution was directed towards the pinnacle of us homo sapiens. The sad thing is that on one side you have religious blind beliefs, while on the other you have the well-informed condescending attitude of people like Richard Dawkins, who can produce some wonderful books, but do little to help rectify the minds of people at large. Obama isn’t the final cure, but he’s definitely as step in the right direction: “religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking”.