• Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    My favorite Madalyn Murray O’Hair quote is:

    I’ll tell you what you did with Atheists for about 1500 years. You outlawed them from the universities or any teaching careers, besmirched their reputations, banned or burned their books or their writings of any kind, drove them into exile, humiliated them, seized their properties, arrested them for blasphemy. You dehumanised them with beatings and exquisite torture, gouged out their eyes, slit their tongues, stretched, crushed, or broke their limbs, tore off their breasts if they were women, crushed their scrotums if they were men, imprisoned them, stabbed them, disembowelled them, hanged them, burnt them alive.

    And you have nerve enough to complain to me that I laugh at you.

    • kool_newt@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Who is this Madalyn Murray O’Hair? She sounds awesome.

      in 1964, Life magazine referred to her as “the most hated woman in America”.

      Yup

      • BottleOfAlkahest@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Honestly most people who knew her didn’t seem to really like her much as a person (everything she did to further Atheism seems to be why most put up with her attitude).

        She actually went missing with her younger son and granddaughter and most people assumed she just stole from the American Athiests foundation and took off. In reality, She was actually held for several weeks and eventually murdered after some kids unknowingly stole the ransom money. It’s a pretty crazy story if you’re into true crime.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        By all accounts, she really was a pretty awful person, but she did a lot on behalf of atheists. Ironically, her son became an evangelical.

        • rosymind@leminal.space
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          11 months ago

          I was just thinking about her the other day. If I’m remembering this properly, her son stopped people from praying for her after her death (maybe at her funeral?) Saying something like: “don’t, she wouldn’t like that.”

          For some reason that stuck with me. It pops into my head every-once-and-a-while. I always wondered if he gave in to stop the harrasment, of if he really did believe