Madalyn Murray O'Hair: The Most Hated Woman in America

I recently watched The Most Hated Woman in America, about Madalyn Murray O'Hair, on Netflix. I read a comprehensive biography of her some years ago, but my memory is a bit hazy:

LeBeau, Bryan F. The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O’Hair. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

See my previous posts on O'Hair for my notes on this biography.

The film begins with her and son and (grand?)daughter kidnapped with hoods over their heads. I would think the dialogue is completely contrived, because unless the murderer-to-be told the story, how would be know? Seems tasteless to me. The police have no interest in following up on their disappearance, and the born-again son doesn't want to be bothered.

The motive for the kidnapping is blackmail, for funds the kidnappers know O'Hair secreted overseas, unbeknownst to the IRS.

Then flashback to 1955 in Baltimore. Madalyn and her young son are living with their parents, particularly the nasty Christian judgmental father. Madalyn is pregnant again as an unwed mother, which makes her a pariah in 1955. They're watching TV, Negroes are protesting not being able to be served somewhere, and Madalyn does not approve of this treatment. She and her son become the only white people to join the protest. She is an acid-tongued rebel, contemptuous of Christian hypocrisy. Her son knows the word "nonconformist".

Then it's 1960 .... she is a social worker. I don't remember any of this, but I'm pretty sure Madalyn got her MSW at Howard University.

Jumps to 1961: violent harassment. Jumps to 1963 Supreme Court decision against compulsory school prayer: rednecks go nuts. Jumps to 1964.

Madalyn founds American Atheists. Fired from social work job in Baltimore. Famous speech. Challenges Baltimore school system again. Makes cover of LOOK magazine: the most hated woman in America.

Flash forward to hostage situation--weird. News media not interested in the Murrays' disappearance, except for this one reporter. The man who reported missing persons is black and gay, rejected by parents, taken in by O'Hair--I didn't know this.

Flashback decades past: more controversy, radio programs, attack. Madalyn is married now. Later, older son is married with child, doesn't want to remain in the maelstrom. Jump ahead in time again: Madalyn on Carson; son's wife files for divorce.

Jump to 1979: O'Hair now in Austin, with protests against her.

Son Bill is a drunk, Madalyn and Bill now hate one another. Momma's boy Bill abandons her. Madalyn on Donahu debating Rev. Bob Harrington. They go on the road, making tons of money. I know there were debates, but this chumminess--for real? Son Bill in AA, a wreck now praying.

Son Bill denounces Madalyn on TV, now a public Christian. Madalyn hires future kidnapper. 1993: Found out he was a killer; this didn't bother her.

1994: Big fight between Madalyn and future kidnapper at solstice party. Several flash backs and forwards. In the future, son Bill gets involved, files missing persons report, suggests kidnapping is an inside job.

1995: news report on O'Hair. Skip ahead to 1998: reporter still investigating. Flashback to the murders. There were 3 kidnappers: starts with the killing of Robin, then Garth, then Madalyn. They are sawed in pieces, buried in a field. One of the kidnappers murdered. David Waters confesses.

I don't recall enough of the actual biography to know where inaccuracies in this biopic are to be found. It is quite sad. In real life Madalyn was quite a pill. The film does capture at various moments something you will find more of in the biography: while an outspoken rebel, Madalyn wanted to be thought of at times as a normal person, emphasizing family. At some point in the kidnapping in the film, she says, maybe in a flashback or voiceover--I don't remember now--that she most wants to be remembered as a mother. Then we see the brutal murders of her atheist son and granddaughter and finally of her. We need to remember that she was already a pariah as an unwed mother in a repressive society. I'm guessing it was the hypocrisy of white Christian America that drove her to single out atheism as her central cause among all the injustices she saw. But her environment also induced a single-minded narrowness that the more genteel "humanists" of the '60s could afford not to have--their narrowness was of a different sort--that drove her to act like the Stalin of atheism.

Martin Luther King Jr. & Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant

I just came across an article I originally saw when it appeared, and it mentions me:

"How Martin Luther King, Jr. Used Nietzsche, Hegel & Kant to Overturn Segregation in America" by Josh Jones, Open Culture, February 11, 2015

I have been familiar with King's remarks about Hegel for many years. I think that the author is exaggerating about Hegel;s influence, and that the author's title is an embarrassing exaggeration. I am more impressed by the influence that various philosophers and theologians had in overturning MLK's fundamentalist indoctrination. It should also be known that MLK not only rejected fundamentalism but was an advocate of the separation of church and state, something the ignorant people I interact with in the city in which I live cannot fathom.

Here there are two links to my web site:

As King scholar John Ansbro discovered, King “stated in a January 19, 1956 interview with The Montgomery Adviser that Hegel was his favorite philosopher.” Later that year, King gave an address to the First Annual Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change in which he used Hegelian terms to characterize the Civil Rights struggle: “Long ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus argued that justice emerges from the strife of opposites, and Hegel, in modern philosophy, preached a doctrine of growth through struggle.”

Independent scholar Ralph Dumain has further catalogued King’s many approving references to Hegel, including a paper he wrote entitled “An Exposition of the First Triad of Categories of the Hegelian Logic—Being, Non-Being, Becoming,” the “last of six essays that King wrote” for his two-semester course on the philosopher.

The author also mentions the Du Bois - Hegel connection and Susan Buck-Morss's work that argues for the influence of the Haitian Revolution on Hegel. He even mentions the little-known 1925 study The Logical Influence of Hegel on Marx by Rebecca Cooper. Among the other interesting links in this article I will mention just this one:

Martin Luther King Jr. and Continental Philosophy, Ethicist for Hire, February 7, 2015

Chris Hedges vs. Sam Harris

The Wrong Conclusion
By Eric MacDonald, Choice in Dying (blog), 30 July 2011

John Gray and Steven Pinker are full of crap. And in this case, Chris Hedges.

The Blog : Dear Angry Lunatic: A Response to Chris Hedges : Sam Harris

Hedges is good on the "liberal class" and the fascist threat, a real douchebag on atheism.  Harris is politically backward and historically illiterate. This is a reminder that one cannot wholeheartedly belong to any individual social movement at this time. Some are at odds with others; they are all riddled with contradictions.

Religion, Violence, Entitlement (1)

From the website Against the Grain, a radio program broadcast on KPFA-FM, a Pacifica Network Station. It is unfortunate that such a program could never be broadcast on the Washington DC Pacifica station WPFW, where illiteracy, backwardness, and provincialism rule.

6.08.10| Religion, Violence, Entitlement

The first half of this program is described as follows:

Ron Hassner confronts the argument that religions are naturally conducive to peace. He emphasizes, among other things, the ambiguous and contradictory nature of religious texts and passages.[33 min. of 60]

Hassner begins by trashing Richard Dawkins' infantile lack of political or historical sagacity involving religion. But he also makes short shrift of the self-serving proclamations of the defenders of religion that all religions are inherently peaceful. Religion is not a private affair between man and God as the Protestant tradition would have it. Religions are not detached metaphysical positions; they inherently make claims about space, time, and behavior. There is, however, a perpetual problem of the interpretation of sacred texts, with and without their internal contradictions, with and without translations in foreign languages. Literalism is an impossibility. Justifying any course of action, warlike or peaceful, based on sacred textual authority is necessarily dodgy. When it comes to skewed interpretations, though, Hassner finds Sam Harris especially guilty of irresponsible cherry-picking from the Koran. Part two of this interview is forthcoming.

Michael Parenti's new book

New from Prometheus Books:

God and His Demons by Michael Parenti.

From the publisher's description:

Noted author and activist Michael Parenti brings his critical acumen and rhetorical skills to bear on the dark side of religion, from the many evils committed in the name of “holy causes” throughout history to the vast hypocrisies of its unworthy advocates past and present. Unlike some recent popular works by stridently outspoken atheists, this is not a blanket condemnation of all believers. Rather Parenti’s focus is the heartless exploitation of faithful followers by those in power, as well as sectarian intolerance, the violence against heretics and nonbelievers, and the reactionary political and economic collusion that has often prevailed between the upper echelons of church and state.

Here are some related references & links:

Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. Chapter 2: The New Age Mythology; pp. 15-25, 175-177.

Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth. July 2004.

Michael Parenti Political Archive

Mind of the Bible-Believer (prefatory note)

I never got around to writing a full review, but here's a fragment adapted from a post written 30 June 2007:

[In May 2007] I began reading this weighty, demanding 400-page tome (17 May - 3 June):

Cohen, Edmund D. The Mind of the Bible-Believer. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1986.

It will take some effort to fully digest it. There are several comments on the web, and a couple of mini-reviews from the Christian opposition as well as from liberal Christian semi-sympathizers, but there is only one real full review from the atheist camp (accompanied by the lyrics of a Zappa song), summarizing the Christian techniques of mind control:

"The Mind of "the Bible-Believer": a critique of the book by Edmund D. Cohen (Positive Atheism)

From other people’s criticisms, it seems that these are the main areas in which to evaluate the book:

(1) the schema of mind control techniques
(2) the psychological theories adopted by Cohen
(3) Cohen’s account of the history of Christianity, in general and in the USA
(4) Cohen’s thesis that the founders of Christianity fully intended to engage in mind control.

Cohen’s sympathizers are most sympathetic to (1), and most critical of Cohen’s take on (3) and (4).
My position going into this: I myself am not in a position to judge (3). But I am on the lookout for the incorporation of sociological factors. Psychology in isolation from sociology cannot do the job. Perhaps Cohen’s account of the conditions of the Roman Empire in which Christianity was generated will prove insightful. Perhaps Cohen will have a good explanation, as he purports to, as to why Christianity was so successful in penetrating all different types of cultures.

I still have not evaluated the book after reading it. There’s a heavy-duty Freudian and Jungian preparation, before an immersion into a couple hundred pages on the New Testament’s mind-control techniques. I will return with a more detailed critique.

The Big Religion Problems…Solved!

“The Big Religion Problems . . . Solved!” w/Gregory S. Paul
Equal Time For Freethought, Show 291, Jan. 18, 2009

The point of departure is paleontologist Gregory S. Paul's article "Religion, the Big Questions Finally Solved" in Free Inquiry, Dec. 2008/Jan. 2009 (vol. 29, no. 1), pp. 24-36.

Paul finds that Rodney Stark's hypothesis that religion thrives in the USA as opposed to Western Europe because of the free market and the absence of an established church is disconfirmed by accurate data. Serious religiosity decreases with rise of income and education. The USA is an anomaly with respect to other nations of comparable technological, industrial and political status.

Scientific analysis can refute the existence of a good God as well as other supernatural entities. Why then creationism and high religiosity in USA? Income disparity correlates with religiosity. We need universal health care and a social safety net. Corporate consumer culture tends to dampen religiosity. Polls show that Americans are becoming more progressive and secular. But is organized political power equivalent to raw numbers? Nevertheless, a look at the popular culture war shows that the right has effectively lost the culture wars.

But what about rise of progressive evangelicals? Paul responds that even they are helping to undermine religiosity. It is likely not accidental that the religious right opposes universal health care. But they will prove to be ineffective in the end. William F. Buckley was a fool to ally the religious right with corporate America, which undermines its culture. Opposite to Darwinism (creationism) and social Darwinism cannot coexist. Note that William Jennings Bryan did not ally the two. (Another example of capitalist culture: the decline of "blue laws".)

Religion is easily cast off. Make life secure and comfortable; religion will decline. Religion is a superficial way of dealing with hardship. Religion is not an intrinsic need.

The "new atheists"? The intellectual battle between religion is not essentially an ideological war, but a socioeconomic one. The corporate consumer culture enables the new atheists.

Paul's work will become one chapter in a forthcoming book, Atheism and Secularity.

COMMENT: While I agree with this correlation in general, the analysis of it doesn't seem to go deep enough; a more elaborate theoretical analysis is needed. A dialectical relationship has been revealed without being recognized as such. Progress does not merely eclipse regress; rather, exacerbated social tension tends to lead toward a social explosion or social breakdown. Perhaps Barack Obama has made Paul more hopeful? I remain skeptical of Paul's prognosis. I welcome Paul's thesis regardless, as it shows that social welfare and social equality are key to our problem, and therefore libertarian atheists deserve a good ass-kicking.