A female atheist named Madalyn Murray O'Hair?

To quote Johnny Carson, yet again in this blog, "I did not know that!"

Yesterday, I was reading (and getting lost in) this meandering essay by Susan Jacoby (whose writings usually make a lot more sense than this one) in which I did come across some biting sentences and a whole lot of new stuff.  I loved the way she pointed out that just because we are atheists it doesn't mean that all the atheists agree on everything:

[One] of the big differences between atheism and religion is that no atheist is obliged to agree with every single thing another atheist says. Richard Dawkins is not the pope, Sam Harris is not a cardinal, Christopher Hitchens is not the Holy Ghost, and I am most definitely not a nun. 

Pretty cool the way she structured that argument.  Now, those are sentences that I fully agree with her :)

Jacoby writes:

I must also mention the seemingly anomalous fact that the best-known atheist in the United States in the 1950s and early ’60s was the founder of American Atheists, Madalyn Murray, known as “Mad Madalyn” to her detractors. (She later married a man named O’Hair and took his last name—something I found curious at a time when many women were beginning to keep their own last names.) Now she had not, for the most part, said anything more forthright or abrasive to Christians than have Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens—but let’s not forget that she made her points at a time when atheism was much more demonized than it is now. And, above all, she was a woman. She frequently described religion as lunacy and silliness, and the fact that she was a female without any special academic or professional credentials made it much easier for the rest of society to dismiss her as a nut case.

Huh?  Mad who?  This was news to me.  After all, it is not that I have pursued atheism, ahem, very religiously, to know about such trailblazers.  Something new everyday, I thought.

And then today, I read this piece about how Buzz Aldrin had communion on the moon.  He did what? 

Before Armstrong and Aldrin stepped out of the lunar module on July 20, 1969, Aldrin unstowed a small plastic container of wine and some bread. He had brought them to the moon from Webster Presbyterian church near Houston, where he was an elder. Aldrin had received permission from the Presbyterian church's general assembly to administer it to himself. In his book Magnificent Desolation he shares the message he then radioed to Nasa: "I would like to request a few moments of silence … and to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours, and to give thanks in his or her own way."
He then ate and drank the elements. The surreal ceremony is described in an article by Aldrin in a 1970 copy of Guideposts magazine: "I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup. It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements."
He also read a section of the gospel of John. During it all, Armstrong, reportedly a deist, is said to have watched respectfully but without making any comment.

Talk about lunacy right there on the lunar surface!

Intrigued, I continued to read it and Madalyn Murray O'Hair pops up there too:

The story of the secret communion service only emerged after the mission. Aldrin had originally planned to share the event with the world over the radio. However, at the time Nasa was still reeling from a lawsuit filed by the firebrand atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair, resulting in the ceremony never being broadcast. The founder of American Atheists and self-titled "most hated woman in America" had taken on Nasa, as well as many other public organisation. Most famously, she successfully fought mandatory school prayer and bible recitation in US public schools.After the Apollo 8 crew had read out the Genesis creation account in orbit, O'Hair wanted a ban on Nasa astronauts practising religion on earth, in space or "around and about the moon" while on duty. She believed it violated the constitutional separation between church and state.

Seriously?  The Genesis and communion on Apollo missions?  And one woman fought against it and made NASA understand the separation of church and state?  I did not know that!

I agree with my fellow-atheist, Susan Jacoby, when she concludes that in "our larger mission of freeing society from anti-rational, supernaturally based restrictions":

We need more women on the front lines of this battle, and we need them now.

Girl Power!