GakuseiDon

Additionally, Acharya S has stated that she adopted a nom de plume "for safety's sake". In Price's original review of her "Christ Conspiracy", he used her real name. She responded:

"With evident cynicism and vituperation, Price has chosen to name his critique of me "murdock.htm," apparently gleefully rubbing it in that in 2001 Price unprofessionally and unethically revealed my real name, after obtaining it from a trusted source who is mortified by his appalling behavior. I am disgusted that Price felt the need to expose personal and private information about me, endangering me and my family. Like many others, I had chosen to remain anonymous for safety's sake, which should have been obvious, considering the contentiousness of the material and the fact that, not all that long ago, people were killed or jailed for questioning in this manner."

I'd like to know who the "many others" are. Given that she is repeating a lot of material from the 19th C, a time when AFAIK no-one was jailed or killed for publishing the material she uses, that does sound overly dramatic.

Toto

Several centuries ago, people were killed or jailed for religious thought crimes.

Things are better at this point in time, but there was a period within living memory in the US when atheists or heretics found themselves the subject of social ostracism, job discrimination, various forms of harrassment, or worse. I would not dismiss this as overly dramatic.

Solo

...but only slightly so, right ?

...heretics....what heretics ?

...worse... like what, when ?

I am sure you wouldn't.

Jiri

Toto

This is getting a little off topic. I realize that what American atheists have had to put up with hardly seems significant to Europeans, but I would not view Acharya S's desire for privacy overly dramatic. You don't know what her personal situation was.

Solo

What did American atheists had to put up with, Toto, other than staying silent during school prayers ? And the Supreme Court voted for Madalyn Murray O'Hair ruling the practice unconstitional in American public schools, did it not ? O'Hair was badmouthed (back) because she was both, an atheist and a communist.

So, what other terrible things did atheists in the U.S. suffer that the Europeans could not possibly inderstand ?

BTW, Acharya S, switched back to her real name, D.M. Murdock by her own choice FWIU. Given the connotations of divinity the name has in Hinduism, she might have decided it was not an appropriate way of promoting herself.

Jiri

Toto

Social discrimination, job discrimination (illegal but unprovable), lost ties to family, and general harrassment by Christians. Google atheist discrimination.

O'Hair was not a communist. She won a legal verdict, which is still hard to enforce.

Jeffrey Gibson

Isn't all this irrelevant?

The issue is not what happened previously, but whether Murdock was over the top (and was playing the "martyr for the truth" card) in painting herself as she did as one who would likely be persecuted for publishing what she published, especially since she actually had little reason to think the following:

(a) that, given the venue in which she made her work available (a vanity, new age press) very many people would ever take notice of what she published,

(b) that, given its poor level of scholarship and its lack of originality, it would be regarded by anyone except herself and her acolytes as a real threat to peoples' beliefs, and

(c) that, given the present demonstrable tolerance (as well as an alarming wide spread acceptance) of "new age" material, people in the present age would still (let alone actually do) react to the material that she produces in the way that she alleges the public did with respect to work similar to her own "not very long ago.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

What a brave man Dan Brown was, then, for not only doing what Murdock was fearful of doing (i.e., writing under his own name) but by attempting (and succeeding) in publishing his work not through a vanity press but through a major publishing house!

Jeffrey

Toto

It is off topic on several levels. Authors write under pseudonyms for their own reasons.

Jeffrey Gibson

But we heard what Murdock's were -- "for safety's sake" and for fear of being treated as she claims those of her ilk were "not so long ago".

Jeffrey