Anne Nicol Gaylor, a pioneering Madison businesswoman and abortion rights activist who was the principal founder of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the nation’s largest group of atheists and agnostics, died Sunday at Agrace HospiceCare in Fitchburg. She was 88.
The cause of death was complications from a fall. She had suffered a slight skull fracture, and there was some bleeding in the brain and heart arrhythmia, said her daughter, Annie Laurie Gaylor.
For decades, the elder Gaylor was the face and sometimes biting voice of the foundation, a Madison-based group that is one of the country’s most determined proponents of the separation between church and state.
Read more: http://host.madison.com/news/local/anne-nicol-gaylor-prominent-feminist-and-atheist-dies-at/article_2e3cd9b9-5be7-5747-8bc9-0ef71a27a3ff.html#ixzz3dGN6nq3X
Gaylor, in most Christian minds, was about equal to the devil. She and her organizations would file lawsuits to get religion out of the public, especially in government.
Perhaps, in the beginning, had some merit but then they went to the extreme. Like trying to get crosses off of cities emblems like in Los Angeles and Wauwatosa, WI., Christmas trees out schools, crosses out public lands, trying to ban someone saying God Bless you, after someone sneezes....Well, maybe not the last one but saying team prayers before a game should be outlawed is just as crazy.
But, one thing I find ironic is that she died on the Lord's Day, on a Sunday.
Also, the hospice is far from being having atheist views.
I've always wondered why athiests don't leave the option that there is a god, no matter which religion they believe in.
But just think, if she is right that we are just life forms on earth, she won't know.
But if she is wrong, I cannot imagine the surprise and/or shocked look on her soul when she finds out there is a God and probably yell "Oh Sh#%^T" when she found out.
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Here's my take, as your friendly blogging atheist. If, upon death, I find myself at pearly gates, and I'm queueing up to St. Peter, I will be nervous of course. But I'd think anyone would be, right? Pete's going to say, "Ah, an atheist, eh? Well, don't you feel foolish? Wait over here, God will be right with you".
ReplyDeleteAnd if this God is *really* the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving being that believers claim he is, he's going to glean something very quickly: I have honest disbelief. It's not belligerence, it's not willful denial of something I secretly believe to be true. I just honestly didn't believe the stories as they were presented to me. When I took Sunday school classes, and backed out of confirmation at the end, it was honesty. It was integrity--I think--to not pretend, to not go through with a charade, when I didn't believe.
If I'm banished to unimaginable suffering and torment for all eternity for honest disbelief, this being is NOT the being of love and justice you guys believe him to be. And there you go.