An atheist epic: Bill Murray, the Bible, and the Baltimore Board of Education

An Atheist Epic tells the dramatic story of how fourteen-year-old William J. Murray III and his mother Madalyn Murray (later O'Hair) challenged the compulsory recitation of the Lord's Prayer and forced reading of the Christian Bible in the public schools of Baltimore.. It tells of the beatings young Bill received with the approval of school authorities, police, and courts, and of the attacks on the Murray home instigated and led by good Christians - attacks that led quite directly to the fatal heart attack suffered by Mrs. Murray's father. It describes the Christian execution of little Garth's kitten and the sorry demise of the two "atheist dogs" that Bill and Garth had as companions after loss of the kitten. Virtually all the religious attacks upon the First Amendment-mandated separation of state and church that America has endured since 1963 have been in retaliation to Murray v. Curlett - the case that Madalyn successfully took all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to obtain the ruling that forced prayer and Bible reading were unconstitutional.. The improbable series of events that led to that decision are painted here in colorful detail.