THE ANGRY ATHEIST
As a teenager during the 1960's I became aware of the famous atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair. I didn't know at the time that she had been responsible for one of the court cases that was successful in removing prayer from public schools. Her son Bill was used as a pawn in her scheme to bring this about. William J. Murray III, or Bill Murray ultimately rejected his mothers atheism and became a Christian pastor. His mother disowned him. Not until I was in my late 40's did I begin to learn the real meaning of the 1st Amendment in regard to religious liberty. Although I was a Christian I sided with O'Hairs interpretation of the Constitution and belief in a so called separation of church and state. By chance I ran across a small book in a Dollar Tree by William J. Murray III called Let Us Pray.
It was ironic that the boy that was used to eliminate prayer in public school would grow up to write a book that would explain the true meaning of the 1st Amendment and make a brilliant case for prayer in public schools. This book changed my life. His book is also a biography of his mother. Bill described her as an angry embittered woman and described her this way. " Her atheism seemed to grow out of some deeply personal place, an inarticulated anger remarkable in it's depth. Mother was never a serious theorist of atheism." This is the way that I remembered her as a young man when she debated Christian ministers and others. I was always turned off by her anger more so than what she had to say.
Most of her arguments seem ridiculous today. Murray says that his mother married a man before WW2 named John Roths. After Pearl Harbor he joined the Marines and fought in the Pacific. She joined the Women's Army Air Corps and served as a cryptographer in North Africa and Italy. She had an affair with a married Army Air Corps pilot named William J. Murray Jr. Bill Murray was conceived in this extramarital affair in September 1945. The same month that Japan surrendered and the war ended. William J. Murray Jr., Bills biological father, was a wealthy Catholic and refused to get a divorce from his wife because he said that his religion wouldn't allow it. Bill's mother returned to the U.S. and was shocked to find that her parents had moved. They were so poor that they were living in a shack with a dirt floor and no inside plumbing. Madalyn had been sending money home to her parents to save for her. Upon returning she found out that her father had squandered the money on alcohol. Bill said that " God became the focus of her hate and the symbol of her abandonment".
During a thunderstorm after lightning nearly struck her parents house she ran out in the yard and demanded that God strike her and her unborn baby dead. Because God did not kill her she claimed that it was "irrefutable" evidence that God did not exist. When her husband John Roths returned home from the war he discovered that his wife was pregnant by another man. He was willing to forgive her and raise another man's baby. Madalyn was still hoping that the father of her child would change his mind and marry her. She filed for divorce from John Roths. Madalyn named her baby William J. Murray III and he was born on May 25, 1946. Regardless of the fact that William J. Murray Jr. would not marry her she took his name anyway calling herself Madalyn Murray.
When Bill was nine Madalyn joined the Socialist Labor Party and subscribed to every Communist publication she could get her hands on. Eventually she would become a full fledged Communist. Madalyn had another affair with a married Catholic and a 2nd child was born in 1954. She wasn't interested in marrying him, however; and her 2nd son would be named Jon Murray. In 1960 she tried to defect to the Soviet Union with her two children. She first approached the Soviet embassy in Washington DC and they expressed no interest in her. Madalyn then flew overseas with her children to Paris. There she approached the Soviet embassy and because of her poor work record the Soviets warned her that people who did not work would go to labor camps at half pay. Madalyn had trouble with authority and hopped from job to job in the U.S. The possibility of spending time in a labor camp was not appealing so she gave up and returned to the U.S.
Madalyn had written a letter to the State Department renouncing her American citizenship. Upon her return to the US she re-enrolled Bill into Baltimore's Woodbourne Junior High. They arrived during homeroom. It was quiet as they headed for the counselors office. Passing an open door where children were reciting the pledge of allegiance she asked Bill if they did this everyday. At another room she stopped dead in her tracks when she saw children with their heads bowed reciting the Lords Prayer. Spewing out a string of obscenities she asked Bill " Why didn't you tell me about this?" Upon arrival at the counselors office she asked him "Why are those f- - -ing children praying? It's un-American and unconstitutional." On the way home she instructed Bill to take notes in school on what happened during the school day. Anything that even hinted of religion she wanted to know about. When he asked why, she replied "The United States is nothing but a fascist slave labor camp run by a handful of Jew bankers in New York city."
After much publicity and ironically with the help of a Jewish lawyer who worked for the ACLU, her case was combined with another case. A case that came to be called Abington School District vs Schempp. In 1963 the Supreme Court ruled that " state sponsored devotional Bible readings in public schools constitute an impermissible religious exercise by government." Engle vs Vitale in 1962 combined with Murray's case in 1963 essentially ended public prayer in government schools. In my view this is a prime example of judicial tyranny. The Federal government has no jurisdiction over the way a state conducts it's religious affairs. The separation of church and state that Jefferson talks about in his letter to the Danbury Baptists is between the Federal government and the states not between the Federal government and the people. The Bill of Rights describes what the Federal government cannot do. Not what it can do.
I believe atheism is based on anger more than unbelief. Like Madalyn Murray O'Hair many if not most atheists have been hurt by something or somebody. Christian's know that God is not the blame for the bad things in the world. The Bible says that satan is the king of this world. He is behind all the bad things that happened to us but somehow God gets the blame. I was so fortunate to have been raised by a loving God fearing mother. I experienced true love and I was secure in that love. My mother prayed with me every night before I went to bed. She taught me that no matter what I could not permit myself to hate anyone. I should hate their actions but never the person. This is a belief that I have never abandoned. She taught me to respect everyone regardless of their station in life. I was never to use racial or ethnic slurs. Profanity was not allowed. Seemingly innocuous words like darn were not even permitted. I could not call someone a liar. She taught me to say that they were a story teller.
My father killed my mother on January 16, 1963. I will never forget the grief that I experienced that day when my cousin Howard Wilkinson told me the news in the driveway of Bailey Jr. High school. I wailed like a wounded animal. The news was too overwhelming to absorb. My mothers love and teaching spoke from beyond the grave. Whether I knew it or not her love prepared me for that moment in time. I could not have survived without it. Never at any time did I blame God for what happened and that was because of her. She planted the seeds for my later conversion. Christians are constantly blamed for the bad that have happened in history. The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials. The Bible, however; talks about a remnant of believers. A remnant is defined as that which is left over or that which remains. This is common theme throughout the Bible. Only 8 people were saved out of the worlds population during the flood. Only Lot and his two daughters survived the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah. A comparatively small group of Jews or true believers returned to Israel after the Babylonian captivity. The majority became comfortable and blended in with the Babylonian pagan culture. Jesus encouraged his believers to enter in through the narrow gate because broad was the road to destruction.
In heaven there is the Book of Life that lists the names of professed believers and the Lambs Book of Life that only contains the names of the true believers and those who will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Your name can be crossed out of the Book of Life but not from the Lambs Book of Life. The remnant are those Christians who are still around after the persecution. They are not the persecutors. The remnant are not Crusaders, inquisitors or witch hunters. They are not the Christian militia in Lebanon or the Ku Klux Klan. The remnant is blamed for the sins of the pseudo Christians and the false Christians are what gives Christianity a bad name. John 10:27-28 says that "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man ever pluck them out of my hand.
I have a friend that was raised as a Muslim but he is now an atheist. Like Madalyn Murray O'Hair he has been hurt. My friend hates all religion, Christianity and Islam alike. He married a professed Christian who, if he is telling the truth, acts like a devil. She curses like a sailor and is turning his kids against him. I cannot convince him that all Christians are not like her. He constantly cites the crusades and other so-called Christian atrocities. What he doesn't realize is that atheism is responsible for far more deaths than even pseudo Christianity. The French Revolution was an atheistic revolution that worshiped the cult of reason. Over 300,000 Frenchman were killed by the guillotine and by other means. It is estimated that Mao Ze Dong of China killed upwards of 78 million people. Stalin killed untold millions and Pol Pot of Cambodia killed 1.7 million out of a population of about 3 million. Kim Il Sung of North Korea killed 1.6 million people. Tito of Yugoslavia killed 570,000 people. Suharto of Indonesia killed 500,000. Ante Pavelic of Croatia killed 359,000 people. Ho Chi Minh over 200,000 people. V.I Lenin over 30,000. Adolph Hitler over 12 million. Hitler was influenced by atheist writers such as Nietzsche and Wagner.
There are many more atheistic regimes that can be listed. For the atheist that is being consumed by hatred the true believer understands the value of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not for the benefit of the offender but the offended. The most powerful example of forgiveness comes from the story of God taking on a human form and bearing torture along with a slow agonizing death in order to make it possible for people to inherit the Kingdom of God. Incredibly in those last hours he was still able to say forgive them Father for they know not what they do.
It was ironic that the boy that was used to eliminate prayer in public school would grow up to write a book that would explain the true meaning of the 1st Amendment and make a brilliant case for prayer in public schools. This book changed my life. His book is also a biography of his mother. Bill described her as an angry embittered woman and described her this way. " Her atheism seemed to grow out of some deeply personal place, an inarticulated anger remarkable in it's depth. Mother was never a serious theorist of atheism." This is the way that I remembered her as a young man when she debated Christian ministers and others. I was always turned off by her anger more so than what she had to say.
Most of her arguments seem ridiculous today. Murray says that his mother married a man before WW2 named John Roths. After Pearl Harbor he joined the Marines and fought in the Pacific. She joined the Women's Army Air Corps and served as a cryptographer in North Africa and Italy. She had an affair with a married Army Air Corps pilot named William J. Murray Jr. Bill Murray was conceived in this extramarital affair in September 1945. The same month that Japan surrendered and the war ended. William J. Murray Jr., Bills biological father, was a wealthy Catholic and refused to get a divorce from his wife because he said that his religion wouldn't allow it. Bill's mother returned to the U.S. and was shocked to find that her parents had moved. They were so poor that they were living in a shack with a dirt floor and no inside plumbing. Madalyn had been sending money home to her parents to save for her. Upon returning she found out that her father had squandered the money on alcohol. Bill said that " God became the focus of her hate and the symbol of her abandonment".
During a thunderstorm after lightning nearly struck her parents house she ran out in the yard and demanded that God strike her and her unborn baby dead. Because God did not kill her she claimed that it was "irrefutable" evidence that God did not exist. When her husband John Roths returned home from the war he discovered that his wife was pregnant by another man. He was willing to forgive her and raise another man's baby. Madalyn was still hoping that the father of her child would change his mind and marry her. She filed for divorce from John Roths. Madalyn named her baby William J. Murray III and he was born on May 25, 1946. Regardless of the fact that William J. Murray Jr. would not marry her she took his name anyway calling herself Madalyn Murray.
When Bill was nine Madalyn joined the Socialist Labor Party and subscribed to every Communist publication she could get her hands on. Eventually she would become a full fledged Communist. Madalyn had another affair with a married Catholic and a 2nd child was born in 1954. She wasn't interested in marrying him, however; and her 2nd son would be named Jon Murray. In 1960 she tried to defect to the Soviet Union with her two children. She first approached the Soviet embassy in Washington DC and they expressed no interest in her. Madalyn then flew overseas with her children to Paris. There she approached the Soviet embassy and because of her poor work record the Soviets warned her that people who did not work would go to labor camps at half pay. Madalyn had trouble with authority and hopped from job to job in the U.S. The possibility of spending time in a labor camp was not appealing so she gave up and returned to the U.S.
Madalyn had written a letter to the State Department renouncing her American citizenship. Upon her return to the US she re-enrolled Bill into Baltimore's Woodbourne Junior High. They arrived during homeroom. It was quiet as they headed for the counselors office. Passing an open door where children were reciting the pledge of allegiance she asked Bill if they did this everyday. At another room she stopped dead in her tracks when she saw children with their heads bowed reciting the Lords Prayer. Spewing out a string of obscenities she asked Bill " Why didn't you tell me about this?" Upon arrival at the counselors office she asked him "Why are those f- - -ing children praying? It's un-American and unconstitutional." On the way home she instructed Bill to take notes in school on what happened during the school day. Anything that even hinted of religion she wanted to know about. When he asked why, she replied "The United States is nothing but a fascist slave labor camp run by a handful of Jew bankers in New York city."
After much publicity and ironically with the help of a Jewish lawyer who worked for the ACLU, her case was combined with another case. A case that came to be called Abington School District vs Schempp. In 1963 the Supreme Court ruled that " state sponsored devotional Bible readings in public schools constitute an impermissible religious exercise by government." Engle vs Vitale in 1962 combined with Murray's case in 1963 essentially ended public prayer in government schools. In my view this is a prime example of judicial tyranny. The Federal government has no jurisdiction over the way a state conducts it's religious affairs. The separation of church and state that Jefferson talks about in his letter to the Danbury Baptists is between the Federal government and the states not between the Federal government and the people. The Bill of Rights describes what the Federal government cannot do. Not what it can do.
I believe atheism is based on anger more than unbelief. Like Madalyn Murray O'Hair many if not most atheists have been hurt by something or somebody. Christian's know that God is not the blame for the bad things in the world. The Bible says that satan is the king of this world. He is behind all the bad things that happened to us but somehow God gets the blame. I was so fortunate to have been raised by a loving God fearing mother. I experienced true love and I was secure in that love. My mother prayed with me every night before I went to bed. She taught me that no matter what I could not permit myself to hate anyone. I should hate their actions but never the person. This is a belief that I have never abandoned. She taught me to respect everyone regardless of their station in life. I was never to use racial or ethnic slurs. Profanity was not allowed. Seemingly innocuous words like darn were not even permitted. I could not call someone a liar. She taught me to say that they were a story teller.
My father killed my mother on January 16, 1963. I will never forget the grief that I experienced that day when my cousin Howard Wilkinson told me the news in the driveway of Bailey Jr. High school. I wailed like a wounded animal. The news was too overwhelming to absorb. My mothers love and teaching spoke from beyond the grave. Whether I knew it or not her love prepared me for that moment in time. I could not have survived without it. Never at any time did I blame God for what happened and that was because of her. She planted the seeds for my later conversion. Christians are constantly blamed for the bad that have happened in history. The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials. The Bible, however; talks about a remnant of believers. A remnant is defined as that which is left over or that which remains. This is common theme throughout the Bible. Only 8 people were saved out of the worlds population during the flood. Only Lot and his two daughters survived the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah. A comparatively small group of Jews or true believers returned to Israel after the Babylonian captivity. The majority became comfortable and blended in with the Babylonian pagan culture. Jesus encouraged his believers to enter in through the narrow gate because broad was the road to destruction.
In heaven there is the Book of Life that lists the names of professed believers and the Lambs Book of Life that only contains the names of the true believers and those who will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Your name can be crossed out of the Book of Life but not from the Lambs Book of Life. The remnant are those Christians who are still around after the persecution. They are not the persecutors. The remnant are not Crusaders, inquisitors or witch hunters. They are not the Christian militia in Lebanon or the Ku Klux Klan. The remnant is blamed for the sins of the pseudo Christians and the false Christians are what gives Christianity a bad name. John 10:27-28 says that "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man ever pluck them out of my hand.
I have a friend that was raised as a Muslim but he is now an atheist. Like Madalyn Murray O'Hair he has been hurt. My friend hates all religion, Christianity and Islam alike. He married a professed Christian who, if he is telling the truth, acts like a devil. She curses like a sailor and is turning his kids against him. I cannot convince him that all Christians are not like her. He constantly cites the crusades and other so-called Christian atrocities. What he doesn't realize is that atheism is responsible for far more deaths than even pseudo Christianity. The French Revolution was an atheistic revolution that worshiped the cult of reason. Over 300,000 Frenchman were killed by the guillotine and by other means. It is estimated that Mao Ze Dong of China killed upwards of 78 million people. Stalin killed untold millions and Pol Pot of Cambodia killed 1.7 million out of a population of about 3 million. Kim Il Sung of North Korea killed 1.6 million people. Tito of Yugoslavia killed 570,000 people. Suharto of Indonesia killed 500,000. Ante Pavelic of Croatia killed 359,000 people. Ho Chi Minh over 200,000 people. V.I Lenin over 30,000. Adolph Hitler over 12 million. Hitler was influenced by atheist writers such as Nietzsche and Wagner.
There are many more atheistic regimes that can be listed. For the atheist that is being consumed by hatred the true believer understands the value of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not for the benefit of the offender but the offended. The most powerful example of forgiveness comes from the story of God taking on a human form and bearing torture along with a slow agonizing death in order to make it possible for people to inherit the Kingdom of God. Incredibly in those last hours he was still able to say forgive them Father for they know not what they do.
Good stuff Greg. Amen. I did not know that MMO had formed debates with people in defense of atheism. I study formal arguments for the existence of God a lot so I will go seek out those debates to see how she fared. No doubt, poorly.
ReplyDeleteI just found this:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/InP1ploUE2s