Madalyn Murray O'Hair

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Madalyn Murray O'Hair laughs in the face of your Bronze Age sky daddy.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair (1919-1995), "the most hated woman in America," was the founder of American Atheists and noted (rhetorical) bomb-thrower. O'Hair was raised a Christian but said that in her early teens she read the Bible through and afterwards became an atheist.[1]

Contents

[edit] Lawsuits

O'Hair fought some noteworthy lawsuits. She won in the Supreme Court case of Murray v. Curlett in 1963, which helped end school prayer along with the contemporaneous decisions of Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) and Engel v. Vitale (1962).[2]

One of her genuinely nuttier actions was filing a lawsuit against NASA for Apollo 8 astronauts' reading from the Book of Genesis during their mission on December 24, 1968.[3]

[edit] Quotes

Your petitioners are atheists and they define their lifestyle as follows. An atheist loves himself and his fellow man instead of a god. An atheist thinks that heaven is something for which we should work for now - here on Earth - for all men together to enjoy.
Murray v. Curlett, Petition for Relief, 1959
An atheist knows that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist knows that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated.
Murray v. Curlett, Petition for Relief, 1959
Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.
—American Atheists charter[4]

[edit] The end

She and her family were abducted and murdered in 1995 by an employee of American Atheists.[5] Though the FBI, ATF, and Dallas Sheriff took the case seriously, the Austin Police Department were criticized for giving these crimes a low priority.[6] In the end, the motive turned out to be a combination of petty revenge and the theft of some gold coins that O'Hair had.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

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