The Pew Research Center released the results of a new national survey yesterday. The survey looking into public opinion regarding President Obama’s religion concluded that, “A substantial and growing number of Americans say that Barack Obama is a Muslim, while the proportion saying he is a Christian has declined.”

Survey results show the number of Americans who believe the President is a Muslim climbing by 7 percentage points, from 11% in March 2009 to a whopping 18%. That’s nearly 1-in-5 Americans. This increase was matched by an even larger decrease in those who believe him to be a Christian, which dropped from 48% to only 34%. Of note is the fact that the survey was completed in early August, before the President’s remarks on the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” so numbers are likely to tilt still further.

Of course, it probably doesn’t require being stated, but the survey also showed that the change in opinion was much greater amongst his opponents. More than a third (34%) of the conservative Republicans polled now believe him to be a Muslim, up from only 18% in the prior poll.

A separate poll, conducted earlier this week by Time magazine, shows the numbers have tilted still further since the President weighed in on the Cordoba House issue. The Time poll resulted in 24% of those interviewed stating that he was a Muslim, but did show fewer undecided, with 47% believing Obama to be a Christian.

So, let’s see: does President Obama turn, face Mecca and kneel and pray 5 times each day? Does he attend a mosque? How about a church? Does he profess to be a Muslim? Has he ever?

If President Obama is a Muslim, he has got to be the worst Muslim on the planet. Muslim’s believe that the Salah, their prayer, is obligatory. It’s to be done 5 times every day, on a strict schedule that divides the day into parts. It’s central to the faith and one of the Five Pillars. To neglect performing even a single prayer is a great sin — to disregard the entire practice would be certain damnation.

True faith is found in a person’s heart, and the only way we have to know a person’s faith is by what they profess and the way they act. The Bible tells us that, “Each tree is recognized by its fruit.” Christ’s most famous sermon states that good people bring good things and bad people bad things, both from what is stored in their hearts. This is how we are to know a person’s true faith, because “Out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.”

Whether you’re Christian, Muslim, or Jew, whether you believe in deity or not, this simple rule rings true. President Obama’s faith is evident in his words and actions. This is how we are to know him. It matters not the faith of his father, even though he was a “confirmed atheist.” And the fact that he attended elementary school in Jakarta, at the age of 8, is immaterial, whether or not the school was a madrassa, which it wasn’t. The President professes to be a Christian, and his actions are in concert with that declaration, therefore anyone without ulterior motives must accept it as so.

If you believe in the Bible, or simply practice common sense, then it should be obvious that President Obama is not the person whose faith should be questioned. No, that distinction should be reserved for those who profess faith but spread lies, for those who would sacrifice the many for the sake of the few — for those who would discredit a good man for their own selfish gain.

As a footnote, when I visited the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (the Blue Mosque) in the 1970s, I took off my shoes as well. Does that mean that I’m now a Muslim?

In the latest round of campaign numbers released yesterday, Meg Whitman reported that her spending had topped $99 million. Undoubtedly displeased by the lack of a “Buy It Now” button for the governor’s office, $91 million of that total came from Whitman’s own money. But being a billionaire, with wealth estimated by Forbes at $1.3 billion, there’s no question that the former CEO of eBay can afford the expense. The real question is, “can California afford Meg Whitman?”

With California sitting at over 12% unemployment and facing a $20 billion budget shortfall over the next 18 months, Whitman is running as the person who can cure these economic woes. In order to accomplish this, she intends to focus on three key initiatives: creating jobs, cutting spending, and fixing education.

Having no prior experience in government service, the Whitman campaign is relying mostly upon her record at eBay to substantiate claims that she has the savvy to succeed were others have failed. Spot on is Whitman’s focus on job creation, and her campaign wants voters to believe that she is the person who can make it happen. They claim that since Whitman’s time at eBay resulted in a growth of employees from 170 to over 15,000, she alone has the experienced required.

But is this prima facie evidence that Ms. Whitman can create jobs in California?

Unlike her Republican counterpart running for Senate against Barbara Boxer, there is no doubt that Whitman knows how to run a company. She did preside over a period of extreme growth for eBay, but one has to ask themselves, how much of that growth was due to Whitman. When she arrived at eBay, although small, they had tapped into a previously undiscovered niche in Internet commerce. They already had a successful product and were set to expand. Whitman did a commendable job of overseeing the expansion, but to give her credit over product and timing is naïve.

As CEO, the job is largely strategic, and a sound argument can definitely be made that many of Whitman’s efforts in that area were less than successful. In fact, her single biggest strategic move was the purchase of Skype at a price of $2.6 billion. Yet she pushed this through without a clear concept of how eBay would make money from the endeavor. The company was forced to write down the value of Skype in 2007 to a little more than half of what it had paid — $1.4 billion. Another of Whitman’s acquisitions, StumbleUpon, was left for her successor to lift into the black. But having no real fit with what eBay does, Skype was finally sold and StumbleUpon was spun off.

So, if a candidate has no government experience, has only created jobs in an environment of rapid growth, and is arguably a bit weak in the strategic leadership department, what exactly are voters to believe makes Meg Whitman a good candidate for governor?

More about that in Part 2 — a look at the Whitman job plan.