Far more significantly, he took this same notion of moral equivalence for all religions (and no religion) to a dubious and in fact dangerous extreme in his talk’s most noteworthy single passage. “We subscribe to different accounts of how we came to be here and where we’re going next – and some subscribe to no faith at all. But no matter what we choose to believe, let us remember that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate. There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know.”

With this sweeping simplification, the President of the United States offered instant exoneration to those who follow the false Gods of fanatical Islam or, for that matter, bloodthirsty Marxism.

“No God who condones taking the life of innocent human beings”? Three days after the National Prayer Breakfast, British MP John Whittingdale, Chairman of the House of Commons Media Select Committee, condemned Al-Jazeera’s English language network for broadcasting live sermons by esteemed cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi “celebrating the Holocaust and praying for the killing of all Jews.” Every Friday without exception, radical mosques in various corners of the planet conduct prayerful services not only condoning, but demanding, the massacre of innocents – services often followed by riots and violence. If President Obama paused to consider the nineteen deeply devout hijackers who slaughtered 3,000 Americans on 9/11, and if he reflected on the tens of millions of Muslims around the world who celebrate these killers as “the Magnificent Nineteen,” could he honestly conclude “that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate”?

And in view of the continuing nightmare of Communist tyranny (from Cuba to North Korea), and the murder of at least 100 million human beings in the name of various Marxist utopias, would the president truly insist that it’s “no matter what we believe”? If Communism truly represents “The God That Failed” (as the title of an indispensable 1949 essay collection famously proclaimed) then wasn’t that system precisely the sort of God who sanctioned the mass murder of the blameless?

Moreover, there’s another problem with the President’s conclusion that “there is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being.” Days before delivering this resounding declaration, Mr. Obama re-authorized the expenditure of US taxpayer money to finance abortion providers abroad. In a recent case in Florida, the operator of an abortion clinic cut the umbilical cord of an unintentionally delivered baby and, while the infant writhed and gasped for air, placed her inside a biohazard bag which was promptly tossed into the trash. Wouldn’t this constitute “taking the life of an innocent human being”? If “no God” condones such killing, why would the President and his supporters insist on a Constitutional right to partial birth abortion under strikingly similar circumstances?

These questions amount to more than nit-picking for a president who wants to win the trust and support of religious believers. When speaking to Washington’s biggest religious event, his misattribution of both Biblical and Talmudic citations displayed the sort of sloppiness and disrespect that would have brought stinging denunciation of George W. Bush, or of Bill Clinton, for that matter.

He also offered a fraudulent summary of the history of the prayer breakfast which disguised the event’s original, inconveniently conservative message—that trust in God represented a more liberty-loving and life-affirming alternative than trust in government.

His suggestion that “faith has always been a guiding force in our family’s life” combined with recollections of his “skeptical” mother as the most “spiritual person I’ve ever known,” underlined the long-standing position of smug secularists that “organized religion” bears no connection to “spirituality.”

Finally, by absolving all faiths of preaching “hate” or condoning senseless mass killing, President Obama not only ignored but denied the core difference between the United States and our Islamo-Nazi adversaries. He pointedly refused to acknowledge the religious fanaticism at the very heart of the deadly forces that threaten us.

Yes, the president earns credit for choosing to appear at the prayer breakfast—overriding demands by separationist militants that he become the first chief executive in fifty years to shun the occasion. He also took pains with his mostly devout audience to express sympathy and support for the general role of religion in American life. But the substance of his remarks deserves more examination than their style, and in this regard the President of the United States served up a breakfast repast with no nourishment at all and even a sour hint of toxicity.