This thread is inspired by a comment by Eve in this thread over here. Her comment was:
Now I know practically nothing about MMOH other than what I’ve read in short articles here and there, or from people directly. I’ve heard this sentiment expressed a lot (being an atheist, I know a lot of atheists), and I have also heard her be the joke of many a theist. My questions are: Why are some atheists ashamed of her? And why do some theists hate her? In short, why do people hate her?
I put this in Great Debates because I expect there to be diversity of opinion on the matter. I did read up on her bio on the American Atheists website before posting this thread. The bio seems to treat her with an understated reverence while carefully articulating that she was human and fallible. It makes me wonder if there’s more to the story.
Well, however she managed it, she managed to make herself into a one-woman buzzword. Anything with “Madalyn Murray O’Hair” in it was guaranteed to end up being forwarded on prayer chains around the world.
Viz and to wit, this glurge is still floating around the Internet. I still get it forwarded to me every so often.
If Eve is ashamed of O’Hair, it’s probably because she was as arrogant, self-righteous, annoying. shrill and intolerant as any fanatical Christian evangelist. If religious believers hated her while she lived and despise her memory now, it’s because, in addition to all of that, her activism upset the comfortable “Judeo-Christian” cultural compromise of the Eisenhower era. From the Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madalyn_Murray_O’Hair:
While I am a atheist, I am not in the militant camp, and I don’t buy into her must-be-hostile-to-religion view of things. Not to mention, she seemed a bit nutty. The whole ‘American Atheist’ compound bit is a tad too reminiscent of Dave ‘Jesus’ Koresh for my likings.
Bigoted freaks who claim lots of things, including “Christian” but are, in fact, less Christian than the average rubber flip-flop sandal, have Fred Phelps. Christians, conversely, have only the thankless and seemingly unending task of repeatedly disclaiming any affiliation with that creature and the perverted, violent, dangerous and wholly unchristian vomit he spews from the hellhole which masquerades as his filthy mouth.
The problem here is that you can’t just pick and choose whether someone is a part of your religious background or not. Phelps is a Christian… a particularly vile one, but he’s just as legit of a Christian as other Christians. He just picks and choose different Bible versus and preconceived ideas to focus on than others do.
Agreed, but let’s clear up the equivocation. He may be a Christian in the sense of the religious body politic. But whether he is a follower of Christ is a different question, and it is a question for Christ to decide based on His own standards. Likewise, O’Hair was an atheist in the sense of the broadest possible definition, but she is essentially nothing like Sentient Meat, Gaudere, or Spiritus Mundi.
That’s an amazing bit of circular reasoning. So a Christian isn’t someone who believes in Christ and tries to do what he or she think Jesus wants, it’s someone that Christ believes is really doing what he wants?
Unless you can have Jesus show up and testify in front of Congress or something to figure that all out, that’s a horribly impractical definition. It’s so completely out there that it’s completely useless. And if Christ isn’t God (hey, this is an atheism thread), it’s not just impractical but completely wrong.
I would hope the Straight Dope would be a place where we could dispense with such observe self-serving nonsense.
Perhaps you ought to read and quote complete sentences, rather than just dependent clauses. I realize that you are angry with me over our scuffle in the Pit, but there is no need to suspend all reason and carry it over here.
The complete sentence was, “*But whether he is a follower of Christ is a different question, and * it is a question for Christ to decide based on His own standards.” (Emphasis added by me to what you deleted.) The point, as I stated and you ignored, was to differentiate between a Christian and a disciple of Christ — thus avoiding equivocation.
If you disagree, then you would doubtless find it appropriate for me to call myself a follower of Dan Norder even as I espouse gang rape as an ethical means of self-gratification. The mere declaration of a man that he represents Christ does not constitute actual representation. Since you are given to equivocation, you’re likely confusing this principle with a No True Scotsman fallacy, but they are not the same. It is not a matter of the difference between a Christian and a True Christian, but of the legitimacy of an epistemic claim.
And yet, Liberal, I’ve frequently seen you refer to vehement atheists as “hand-stabbers”, which is, I believe, a direct reference to Murray-O’Hair, and surely is an application of double standards, since she’s as fringe to atheism as Phelps is to Christianity.
Though I suppose you’re not really applying double standards whether she was a true atheist, since according to you Jesus gets to decide about Phelps, whereas ::nothing whatsoever:: gets to decide about Murray-O’Hair…
Except that I’m not saying that Phelps is not at the fringe of Christianity, or even that he is not a Christian. He IS a Christian, as I wrote before, “in the sense of the religious body politic.” Likewise, as I wrote before, O’Hair “is essentially nothing like Sentient Meat, Gaudere, or Spiritus Mundi.” I recommend reading my actual posts as opposed to the chopped up pieces provided by Dan Norder.
Yep, that pretty much sums it up—she gave us a very bad public image.
By the way, when she vanished, Tom Brokaw referred to her on the news as “having the dubious distinction of being the world’s leading atheist.” I wrote to him and asked if he would refer to the Pope as “having the dubious distinction of being the world’s leading Catholic,” and Tom—to his credit—apologized and said I was absolutely right.
I am quite surprised that line got by the editors at ABC-TV. “Dubious” is one of those words with an obvious slant. It shouldn’t be used except in cases of criminals, etc.
BTW, I was rather disappointed when O’Hair’s body turned up. Until then, my working theory about her mysterious disappearance was that the Rapture came and went, and O’Hair was the only one Christian enough to make the cut!
“If there’s a group that gets coverage more biased than Muslims, it’s non-believers. An NBC report on the disappearance of Madalyn Murray O’Hair began with Tom Brokaw’s comment “She had the dubious distinction of being known as America’s most outspoken atheist” – and included a soundbite from a Christian evangelical: “If she is indeed dead, then she’s burning in the fires of hell.” Many Christian fundamentalists believe Catholics and Jews also burn in hell – it’s hard to imagine NBC quoting one upon the death of the Pope or a famous rabbi.”
I suspect what whoever wrote that was thinking is it should have been “She had the distinction of being known as America’s most outspoken atheist, although many atheists considered her a dubious spokesperson”. O’Hair was stridently anti-religious, while most atheists just don’t believe in god, rather than openly attack those who do believe in god. As for the condemnation by Chrsitians, this is a distinction that O’Hair sought. The status of being America’s most outspoken atheist wasn’t something she saw as dubious. She wore it like a badge.
Tom Brokaw’s NBC, not ABC. I didn’t expect him to apologize on-air—but to send me a hand-written apology, I thought, showed some class, considering his busy schedule.
By the way, anyone else think no one looked very hard for her after the kidnapping because of who (and what) she was?
