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.
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
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.
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.
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
That would actually work with infinite number of hands too. Lol
An infinite number of hands in prayer won’t even randomly create the works of Shakespeare.
They won’t even be able to change a single lightbulb.
Careful… we’re nudging over into protestant territory now.
Prayer increases entropy, and that’s all.
Is that…the SUN of “God”?
This completely misunderstands the purpose of prayer.
People who pray are doing so because there’s nothing left for their hands to do. It’s a coping mechanism, hence, the opiate of the masses.
As if the Catholic Church isn’t simultaneously the most active charitable group, the largest educational institution, and the largest singular actor for social justice in the history of the planet.
Cool take, though; I remember being 14, too.
Put all that on one side of a scale and put the blood on their hands on the other side of that scale. Then watch the scale break as your charity and good will is launched into orbit.
Cool take, though; I remember being 8, too.
Donations to groups and politicians that discriminate against people the church doesn’t like isn’t charity, it’s pushing an agenda. Teaching people to believe in mythology and reject science that contradicts the mythology is not education, it’s indoctrination. Largest actor for social justice? Are you high? Is enabling and protecting pedophile priests your idea of social justice?
And even if what you’re trying to say were true, which it laughably is not, then that would still be the “two hands working” part of the quote. Well adjusted people don’t need threats of punishment or promises of rewards from some imaginary diety to do good things for other people. They do good things because it’s the right thing to do. Prayer is the worthless act that people who don’t actually want to help use to pretend like they’re helping without actually doing anything.
you left out orchestrator of crusades, denier of women’s rights, abuser of children…
Countless millions were raped, enslaved, tortured, and murdered by the decree of Pope Nicholas V.
Sure, the Catholics changed their minds, but there’s a reason every major language in the Americas is European.
Suck the hot shit from my asshole.