Why do Atheists hate Mother Teresa ?

Eric_PK

There are a couple of things here.

First of all, there’s the fact that the vatican is tremendously wealthy and many of their adherents are extremely poor. Apparently corporate wealth rather than individual wealth is a loophole in Matthew 19:24.

Second, missionaries in general have a pretty good history of caring about the spiritual health of the people they work with above the physical health. In this case, it was pretty clear that the care wasn’t very good.

Finally, in this specific case, mother Teresa was great at fundraising, but apparently not at spending that money through to the people she worked with. Here’s a good account from one of her nuns.

If you are holding somebody up as a paragon of charity, then one of the reasonable questions to ask is how efficient their organization is at taking funds and passing them on to those who are in need. Charity rating organizations generally consider a charity that spends 75% of what it takes in on aid to be pretty good, though there are many that do better.

Having said all that, I don’t hate her. I do think she was misguided – like many religious people are – and put her desires for other people above their own desires, but that’s hardly unique.

I also think that the media decided ahead of time what her story was, and just went with it. A nun that really didn’t help the people she worked with that much isn’t a comfortable story to tell.

vjack www

I do not hate Mother Teresa at all. I don’t buy the whole saint thing, but that does not mean I hate the woman.

I don’t agree with much of what Christopher Hitchens says, and I certainly wouldn’t claim to speak for him here. He’s entitled to his opinion and should be prepared to explain it. Of course, none of this means I hate him.

I think you’ll find that most atheists are perfectly capable of disagreeing with someone without hating them or finding it necessary to demonize them. It seems like many religious believers could learn something from us.

logicel

Because she was despicable?

And just as despicable are the gullible fools who crave to believe that someone is all good and thus ‘saintly.’

Mother Theresa was a clinically depressed individual who was ignorant of the professional way in which to deal with severely ill people. She caused great harm to extremely vulnerable people and to boot, was given praise for the ‘good’ she has done. I say that is despicable behavior both on the part of Mother Theresa and the idiots who believed the hype.

What gives theists? Why are you so gullible?

Maxx Power www

The picture painted about Mother Teresa comes primarily from her encounters with Malcolm Muggeridge, a man who was a born-again Christian and thus susceptible to gullibility insofar as Teresa’s divine influence is concerned. He was heard to remark that some camera shots, which had been deemed useless due to poor lighting conditions, were divinely made useful. In actuality the shots were done using a new type of film developed by Kodak which were designed to be used in low-lighting, though Muggeridge glossed over this particular point.

Nevertheless, this started a spiralling set of reports, documentaries and so on in which Teresa’s worth and actions were raised up beyond their station. As is the way with media the Teresa story was a good angle which was driven into the dirt. Teresa’s own life and work is dubious at best; she believed in the divine warrant in the suffering of others, never putting in money to cure people, merely to keep them comfortable as they died. She was also something of a closeted non-believer, giving her choice to allow people to suffer without need an extra insidious angle.

In short the picture you may have of Mother Teresa is something which was fabricated in the West for the sake of selling news. Her actual life was not something to be praised.

Mike the Infidel www

It’s a bit silly to call Christopher Hitchens our savior and assume that we all think exactly the same way he does. The reason he finds Mother Teresa distasteful is that she privately held severe doubts about her faith, yet allowed herself to be used as a figurehead for the Catholic church to bring in massive donations. There’s also the fact that she expressed the opinion that suffering was somehow divine. I don’t think that earns her much more venom than most televangelists, though.