Famous dead non-theists

[ŠoŠO_ŠeViL®]

Famous Dead Non-theists
A list of famous dead people who have rejected God and religion. This
list celebrates people throughout history who have advocated living
life without deference to a transcendent power. The list is in order
of birth date.

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:Anaxagoras, Greek philosopher (500?-428? BCE).
". . . probably the first freethinker we know of to be condemned for
his beliefs." "He regarded the conventional gods as mythic
abstractions endowed with anthropomorphic attributes. His writings led
him to a dungeon, charged with impiety, probably about the year 450
B.C.E." Only the intervention of the great statesman and orator
Pericles saved Anaxagoras from a death sentence. He had to pay a fine
and, according to some accounts, was banished. He lived his final
years in exile.

:Diagoras "the Atheist" of Melos, Greek poet, (5th cent. BCE).
Threw a wooden image of a god into a fire, remarking that the deity
should perform another miracle and save itself. The uproar this caused
in Athens prompted Diagoras to flee for his life. "Athens outlawed him
and offered a reward for his capture dead or alive. He lived out his
life in Spartan territory."

:Protagoras, Greek philosopher (481?-411 BCE).
"As to the gods, I am unable to say whether they exist or do not
exist"

:Democritus, Greek philosopher (460?-357 BCE).
The father of Materialism. Argued that mechanical relationships or
arrangements of the atoms account for various characteristics of
nature, the intimation here being that the natural order of the world
resulted from chance. Even morality, the soul, and all mental life are
reducible to mechanistic terms with physical imperceptible atoms as
their basic structure. Spiritual reality does not exist; what appears
to be spiritual is attributed simply to subperceptible atomic
structure or else to mere superstition. Hence, the Democritan
philosophy of mechanistic Materialism is complete, self-sufficient,
and self-contained. [History of Philosophy] [Visit The Philosophy
Garden]

:Epicurus, Greek philosopher (341-270 BCE).
As a Materialist, Epicurus accepted the idea that the soul consists of
atomic material which disintegrates at death, at which time all
sensation ceases. Consequently, he said, death need not be a matter of
anxious concern, inasmuch as it is merely the state in which all
sensation ceases. [History of Philosophy] [Visit The Philosophy
Garden]

:Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher (106-43 BCE).

:Lucretius, Roman philosopher and poet (96?-55 BCE).
Chief proponent of atomism. In On the Nature of Things he wrote "human
life lay foul before men's eyes, crushed to the dust beneath
religion's weight." Leah Kronenberg tells me that Lucretius was a
dedicated Epicurean, and thus gods do exist, but have no interest in
human affairs. His writings are full of invective against religion.
[Visit The Philosophy Garden]

:Lucius Annaeus Seneca "the Younger," Roman stoic philosopher, writer, and politician (4-65).
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as
false, and by rulers as useful."

:Gallus Petronius, Roman courtier and wit (1st cent.).
"It is fear that first brought Gods into the world."

:John of Lackland, English King (1199-1216) (1167?-1216).
John may not have been a bonafide atheist, but he moved farther in
that direction than was common in medieval times. From the biography,
Eleanor of Aquitaine (John's his mother) by Alison Weir, p. 234:
"John's bad press in the monastic chronicles may be attributed to his
failures as a king *and his cynical contempt for religion*; he
quarrelled with the Church during his reign and was excommunicated.
'He led such a dissipated life that he ceased to believe in the
resurrection of the dead and other articles of the Christian
faith...'(Medieval chroniclers Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris;
quoted in Weir). Once, upon seeing a buck slaughtered, at the end of a
hunt, remarked 'You happy beast, never forced to patter prayers nor
dragged to Holy Mass.'" (Paris, in Weir).

:Giordano Bruno, Italian philosopher (1548?-1600).
Not an atheist, but a "heretic" who was in conflict with the church
over his cosmological theories.

:Christopher Marlowe, English dramatist and poet (1564-1593).
"I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but
innocence." - the character Machiavel, in The Jew of Malta,
"Prologue." The lines are often modernized: "I count religion but a
childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance."

:Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher (1588-1679).
Not an atheist, but an early advocate for the subordination of the
church to the state. Here are some internet resources on Thomas
Hobbes.

:Aphra Behn, playwright (1640-1689).

:Francois La Rouchefoucauld, French writer (1650?-?).
An important source for Nietzsche's ideas.

:Thomas Otway, English classical poet (1652-1685).
"These are rogues that pretend to be of a religion now! Well, all I
say is, honest atheism for my money."

:Thomas Woolston, English writer (1669-1731) or? (1670-1733).
Was put under house arrest for the remainder of his life when he
voiced doubt about the resurrection and other Bible miracles. [Holy
Horrors]

:Francois Marie Arouet "Voltaire", French author and playwright (1694-1778).
Perhaps never really an atheist, nonetheless, Voltaire changed late in
life into a fearless crusader against religious cruelty and injustice.
"Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect
in horror."
"Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody
religion that has ever infected the world."
“If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.”
"Superstition, born of paganism and adopted by Judaism, invested the
Christian Church from earliest times. All the fathers of the Church,
without exception, believed in the power of magic. The Church always
condemned magic, but she always believed in it: she did not
excommunicate sorcerers as madmen who were mistaken, but as men who
were really in communication with the devil." [Philosophical
Dictionary, 1764]
"Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason
and common sense." [Philosophical Dictionary, 1764]
"When he that speaks, and he to whom he speaks, neither of them
understand what is meant, that is metaphysics."
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."

:Jean Meslier, French erstwhile priest (1678-1733).
A country priest who led an exemplary life, he died an atheist. He
left behind a memoir which was circulated by Voltaire. This expressed
his disgust with humanity and his inability to believe in God.
Newton's infinite space, Meslier believed, was the only eternal
reality: nothing but matter existed. Religion was a device used by the
rich to oppress the poor and render them powerless. Christianity was
distinguished by its particularly ludicrous doctrines, such as the
Trinity and the Incarnation. [A History of God]

:David Hume, Scottish philosopher and historian (1711-1776).
"No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless . . . its
falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to
establish." [Of Miracles]
"The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles,
but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person
without one."
"When I hear a man is religious, I conclude that he is a rascal,
although I have known some instances of very good men being
religious."
Visit The Hume Archives for more information on David Hume.

:Frederick the Great, Prussian king (1712-1786).
". . . you will certainly grant me that neither antiquity nor whatever
nation has devised a more repulsive and blasphemous absurdity than
that of eating your God. This is the most disgusting dogma of
Christian religion, the greatest insult to the Highest Being, the
climax of madness and insanity."
(from a letter to Voltaire, March, 19, 1776)
Here is a web page on Frederick the Great.

:Denis Diderot, French philosopher, author, and encyclopedist (1713-1784).
Editor of the first encyclopedia, Diderot was jailed briefly for
writing irreligious thoughts. [Holy Horrors]

:Thomas Paine, English born American author and revolutionary leader (1737-1809).
Labeled an atheist, but actually a deist, raised by Quakers, who was
extremely critical of organized religion. According to Carl Sagan in
The Demon Haunted World, "later generations reviled him for his social
and religious views. Theodore Roosevelt called him a 'filthy little
atheist.' . . . He is probably the most illustrious American
Revolutionary uncommemorated by a monument in Washington, D.C."
Paine wrote in The Age of Reason, "Whenever we read the obscene
stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous
executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half
the Bible [by which Paine means the Old Testament] is filled, it would
be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the word
of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and
brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I
detest everything that is cruel." The Age of Reason also attacks
Christianity as a system of superstition that "produces fanatics" and
"serves the purposes of despotism." When the book reached England,
several sellers were convicted of blasphemy and jailed.
"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is
always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by
law."
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or
Turkish appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify
and enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit."
You can see all the writings of Thomas Paine at the Internet Infidels
web site.

:Marquis de Sade, French libertine (1740-1814).
In his dialogue, Philosophy in the Bedroom, de Sade insults and
derides Christianity several times. In his novel 120 Days of Sodom, he
is quoted as saying "The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I
cannot forgive mankind." Also, the "Dialogue Between a Priest and a
Dying Man," which can be found online online is clearly the work of
someone with contempt for religion.

:Jeremy Bentham, English reformer, author, and philosopher (1748-1832).
Read about Bentham at the Utilitarian Resources web page.

:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German author (1749-1832).
Stoutly anti-Christian, but not atheist.
"This occupation with ideas of immortality is for people of rank, and
especially for ladies who have nothing to do. But a man of real worth
who has something to do here, and must toil and struggle to produce
day by day, leaves the future world to itself, and is active and
useful in this."

:Pierre Simon de Laplace, French mathematician and astronomer (1749-1827).
His major contribution to science was a detailed study of gravitation
in the universe; his conclusions were published in his five-volume
Traite de mechanique celeste (Celestial Mechanics)... Laplace
presented an early copy of this work to Napoleon, who studied it very
carefully. Sending for Laplace, he said, "You have written a large
book about the universe without once mentioning the author of the
universe." "Sire," Laplace replied, "I have no need of that
hypothesis. (Je n'ai pas besoin de cet hypothese.)"

:James Madison, American president and political theorist (1751-1836).
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of
Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in
all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility
in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution."
"In no instance have . . . the churches been guardians of the
liberties of the people."
“Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for
every noble enterprise.” [April 1, 1774]

:Mary Wollstonecraft, author (1759-1797).
Wrote Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman.

:Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor (1769-1821).
"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet."
"All religions have been made by men."
"as for myself, I do not believe that such a person as Jesus Christ
ever existed; but as the people are inclined to superstition, it is
proper not to oppose them." [paraphrased]

:Simon Bolivar, Venezuelan soldier and South American liberator (1783-1830).
Atheist. Excommunicated by the Catholic Church.

:Lord George Gordon Byron, British poet (1788-1824).

:Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788-1860).
There was, Schopenhauer believed, no Absolute, no Reason, no God, no
Spirit at work in the world: nothing but brute instinctive will to
live. [A History of God]

:Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet (1792-1822).
Thrown out of Oxford University for writing the essay, The Necessity
of Atheism in 1810.
"If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced."
"It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all
eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of
creating it."

:Auguste Comte, French philosopher and mathematician (1798-1857).
Comte is considered the father of sociology. You can find out more
about him at the Dead Sociologists Index.

:Ernestine Rose, Polish-born American feminist (?-?).

:Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach, German philosopher (1804-1872).
Feuerbach was a prominent materialist philosopher of the nineteenth
century. His book, The Essence of Christianity, quickly became a
classic of freethought literature. In that book he argued that
religion is the projection of human wishes and is a form of
alienation. He began his philosophical career as a Hegelian idealist
but soon moved in the direction of materialism thus encouraging the
Young Hegelians with whom he was associated to similiarly move. The
Essence of Christianity electrified the Young Hegelians, particularly
influencing the youthful Karl Marx who adopted and extended its theory
of alienation.
Other thinkers were also influenced by Feuerbach including Nietzsche
and Freud. Interestingly enough despite the fact that he was (or
perhaps because he was) a leading atheist a number of twentieth
century theologians have taken an interest in his thought including
Karl Barth, Martin Buber, Paul Tillich, and Karl Rahner amongst
others. [James Farmelant]
"Man first unconsciously and involuntarily creates God in his own
image, and after this God (Religion) consciously and voluntarily
creates man in his own image." [The Essence Of Christianity]

:Elizur Wright, American (1804-1885).
Elizur Wright was a life long social reformer. He was reared in an
evangelical Congregationalist family in Connecticut and Ohio. As a
young man he attended Yale with the intention of preparing for a
career in the ministry. While at Yale he became interested in the
anti-slavery cause. He graduated from Yale with growing doubts about
entering the ministry but he did spend some time working for the
American Tract Society and worked as a school teacher. Later he took a
position as a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at
Western Reserve College. There he became further involved in the
abolitionist movement moving from support for gradual emancipation and
colonization of ex-slaves in Africa to support for the more radical
position of immediatism. After he became a more committed Abolitionist
he eventually resigned his position at Western Reserve to work as
secretary for the American Anti-Slavery Society.
It was while working for the Abolitionist movement that Wright
gradually became disillusioned with the Christian churches and their
perceived tolerance for slavery and their general hypocrisy over this
issue. His disillusionment with the churches on moral grounds
gradually led down the road towards freethought and atheism while
still retaining the moral fervor of his evangelical background. In
1847 he wrote "Christianity is itself a total failure... so far as it
is a plan of saving souls for a future life without saving souls and
bodies for this." In 1860 he wrote to his friend Beriah Green--"I
don't believe in the God of books...I don't believe in anything but
facts appreciated by some degree of evidence." Wright in his old age
worked actively on behalf for freethought causes. He worked for the
National Liberal League in association with such prominent
freethinkers as Robert Ingersoll. Towards the end of his life Wright
openly described himself as an "infidel," an "atheist," and a "pagan."
He called himself a "materialist" in the tradition of Spinoza, Paine,
Darwin, and Huxley. He was quite partial to the Positivism of August
Comte.
Abolitionism and freethought were by no means the only causes that
Wright devoted himself to. He used his mathematical training to
establish himself as an insurance actuary and this led him to one of
other favorite causes--that of life insurance reform. His efforts in
that field eventually led to his being appointed commissioner of life
insurance in Massachusetts. As commissioner he sought to place the
industry on sound scientific actuarial principles. Another cause that
he devoted himself to was that of conservation. He successfully fought
for the establishment of the Middlesex Fells Reservation (the Fells
are a wooded plateau in and around Medford, Massachusetts) to preserve
the forested lands there from encroaching real estate pressures.
Wright's Pond and Wright's Boulder are named for him. [Abolitionist,
Actuary, Atheist: Elizur Wright and the Reform Impulse Lawrence
Goodheart (The Kent State University Press, 1990).

:John Stuart Mill, English philosopher and economist (1806-1873).
Freethinker, if not strictly atheist.

:Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italian general and nationalist leader (1807-1882).

:Charles Robert Darwin, English naturalist (1809-1882).
From the age of forty he was, to use his own words, a complete
disbeliever in Christianity. He professed himself an Agnostic,
regarding the problem of the universe as beyond our solution, "For
myself," he wrote, "I do not believe in any revelation. As for a
future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting
vague probabilities."

:Abraham Lincoln, American president (1809-1865).
In 2000 Years of Disbelief by James A. Haught, Lincoln is mentioned on
pages 125 through 127. From the material presented it would seem that
Lincoln was an avid anti-christian and most likely an atheist. Some
selections from Haught:
John T. Stuart, Lincoln's first law partner: "He was an avowed and
open infidel, and sometimes bordered on Atheism...He went further
against Christian beliefs and doctrines and principles than any man I
ever heard."
Joseph Lewis quoting Lincoln in a 1924 speech in New York: "The Bible
is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give
assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."
Lincoln in a letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield, after the death of Willie
Lincoln: "My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme
of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become
clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for
thinking I shall ever change them."
As a young man Lincoln apparently wrote a manuscript that he planned
to publish, which vehemently argued against the divine origin of the
Bible and the Christian scheme of salvation. Samuel Hill, a friend and
mentor, convinced him to drop it, considering the disastrous
consequences it would have on his political career.
William H Herndon, a former law partner, wrote a biography on Lincoln
titled: The True Story of a Great Life. In it Herndon discusses
Lincoln's religious views extensively.

:Mikhail Bakunin, Russian anarchist leader and writer (1814-1876).
For Bakunin religion represented an impoverishment of humanity.
Religion according to Bakunin was a weapon of the state that must be
abolished to make human self-determination possible.
"A jealous lover of human liberty, and deeming it the absolute
condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the
phrase of Voltaire, and say that if God really existed, it would be
necessary to abolish him."
From God and the State (New York: Dover Publications, 1970) p. 28.

:Elizabeth Cady Stanton, American suffragist (1815-1902).
She wrote of the Bible, "I know of no other books that so fully teach
the subjection and degradation of women." [The Demon-Haunted World]
"The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in
the way of women's emancipation."[Treasury of Women's Quotations]

:Karl Marx, German political philosopher and economist (1818-1883).
Marx saw religion as "the sigh of the oppressed creature . . . the
opium of the people, which made this suffering bearable." [Quoted in A
History of God]
You can find out more about Marx at The Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels
Internet Archive.

:Marion Evans "George Eliot", English novelist (1819-1880).
"The old religion said 'Heaven help us!' Our new one, from its very
lack of that faith in a heaven, will teach us all the more to help one
another"
A George Eliot web site.

:Walt Whitman, American poet (1819-1892).
Walt reportedly said, "God is a mean-spirited, pugnacious bully bent
on revenge against His children for failing to live up to his
impossible standards.$quot; Does this mean he believed this
mean-spirited bully didn't really exist? I'm not sure.

:Susan B. Anthony, American suffragist (1820-1906).
Called herself an agnostic.

:Thomas Henry Huxley, English biologist (1825-1895).
Huxley coined the term "agnostic."
"...inclined to think that not far from the invention of fire must
rank the invention of doubt"
"The only question which a wise man can ask himself is whether a
doctrine is true or false. Consequences will take care of themselves."
"Henceforward, I might hope to hear no more of the assertion that we
[Agnostics] are necessarily Materialists, Idealists, Atheists,
Theists, or any other ists, if experience had led me to think that the
proved falsity of a statement was any guarantee against its
reputation. And those who appreciate the nature of our position will
see, at once, that when Ecclesiasticism declares that we ought to
believe this, that, and the other, and are very wicked if we don't, it
is impossible for us to give any answer but this: We have not the
slightest objection to believe anything you like, if you will give us
good grounds for belief; but, if you cannot, we must respectfully
refuse, even if that refusal should wreck morality and insure our own
damnation several times over. We are quite content to leave that
decision to the future. The course of the past has impressed us with
the firm conviction that no good ever comes out of falsehood, and we
feel warranted in refusing even to experiment in that direction"
[essay "Agnosticism and Christianity"]

:Matilda Joslyn Gage, American feminist (1826-1898).

:Marilla Ricker, American feminist and activist (?-?).

:Sir Leslie Stephen, English writer and thinker (1832-1904).
Sir Leslie Stephen was one of Britain's most famous agnostics of the
nineteenth century. In fact while Thomas Huxley was the person who
coined the term agnostic it was Stephen who popularized it.

Leslie Stephen was born into a family of prominent Evangelicals of the
Clapham Sect. He was educated at Eton and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
At Cambridge he was made a fellow which in those days required taking
holy orders and he was ordained an Anglican priest. By 1862 his
developing religious doubts led him to resign his fellowship and by
1864 he left Cambridge for good.

He married Thackeray's daughter, Harriet Marian in 1867 but she died
in 1875 leaving him one child. He later married Julia Jackson
Duckworth and had four children including his best known child the
novelist Virginia Woolf.

After abandoning his academic career he made his living as a
journalist and writer. He edited the Dictionary of National Biography.
He also wrote extensively on history, religion, and philosophy.

Leslie Stephen's agnosticism was rooted in considerations of the
problem of evil. Attempts to resolve this problem by emphasizing the
transcendence and incomprehensibility of God was to him simply
evasiveness. Such apologetics was in his view simply a disguised
skepticism.

The rejection of belief in God for Stephen raised the question of how
to ground morality if there is no deity. That is he sought to answer
the Dostoyevskian question "If there is no God is not everything
permitted?" Stephen sought to answer this question in his book The
Science of Ethics. There he proposed a scientific ethics in which J.S.
Mill's utilitarianism would be synthesized with evolutionary theory.

In addition to The Science of Ethics, Stephen wrote many other works
including Essays on Freethinking and Plainspeaking (1873), An
Agnostic's Apology and Other Essays (1893), as well as History of
English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876), and The English
Utilitarians (1900). [James Farmelant]

:Robert Green Ingersoll, American politician and lecturer (1833-1899).
"The universe is all the God there is."
"Our ignorance is God; what we know is science."
"With soap, baptism is a good thing."
“The clergy know that I know that they know that they do not know.”
"Why should I allow that same God to tell me how to raise my kids, who
had to drown His own?" "For ages, a deadly conflict has been waged
between a few brave men and women of thought and genius upon the one
side, and the great ignorant religious mass on the other. This is the
war between Science and Faith. The few have appealed to reason, to
honor, to law, to freedom, to the known, and to happiness here in this
world. The many have appealed to prejudice, to fear, to miracle, to
slavery, to the unknown, and to misery hereafter. The few have said,
"Think!" The many have said, "Believe!" [The Gods, 1872]
For the works of Ingersoll online, visit The Secular Web.
For some longer excerpts from Ingersoll's speeches, visit The Great
Agnostic.

:Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist (1835-1919).
I was sent this quotation for Carnegie, "I don't believe in God. My
god is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have
solved the problem of life."
If you have information about where this quotation came from or about
Carnegie's beliefs, please send them.

:Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain", American author and humorist (1835-1910).
"Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
"'In God We Trust.' I don't believe it would sound any better if it
were true."
"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother
me, it is the parts that I do understand."
"Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he
believes and wishes he was certain of."
"There is no other life; life itself is only a vision and a dream for
nothing exists but space and you. If there was an all-powerful God, he
would have made all good, and no bad." [Mark Twain in Eruption]
"Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and
remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography
that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and
leading by contrast" [Reflections on Religion, 1906]
"O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our
shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of
their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the
shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their
humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of
their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them
out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the
wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports
of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in
spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave
and denied it..." ["The War Prayer"]
"[The Bible is] a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology."
["Mark Twain and the Bible"]
"Man is a marvelous curiosity ... he thinks he is the Creator's pet
... he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him;
sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out
of trouble. He prays to
him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea." [Letters from the
Earth]
"If there is a God, he is a malign thug."
Mr. Clemens was once asked whether he feared death. He said that he
did not, in view of the fact that he had been dead for billions and
billions of years before he was born, and had not suffered the
slightest inconvenience from it.

:Thomas Hardy, English author (1840-1928).
Poem Christmas 1924: "After two thousand years of mass, we've got as
far as poison gas"

:Ambrose Bierce, American writer (1842-1914?).
Author of The Devil's Dictionary. Here are some entries:
FAITH: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks
without knowledge, of things without parallel.
RELIGION: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the
nature of the Unknowable.
OCEAN: A body of water occupying about two thirds of a world made for
man- who has no gills.
SAINT: A dead sinner revised and edited.
In the definition of occident, he claims christians to be "a powerful
subtribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and
cheating, which they are pleased to call 'war' and 'commerce'".
For more information on Ambrose Bierce, visit the Ambrose Bierce
Appreciate Society.

:Friedrich Nietzsche, German philologist and philosopher (1844-1900).
"God is dead." [Thus Spake Zarathustra]
The Christian God, Nietzsche taught, was pitiable, absurd and "a crime
against life." [The Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist] He had
encouraged people to fear their bodies, their passions and their
sexuality and had promoted a puling morality of compassion which had
made us weak. There was no ultimate meaning or value and human beings
had no business offering an indulgent alternative in "God." [A History
of God]
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche suggests that to call god love is
a slander to love, since god wants also to judge, and love should
never even see sins in need of forgiveness.

:Thomas Edison, American inventor (1847-1931).
"Religion is all bunk."
"I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious
ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a
personal God."

:Octave Mirbeau, French author (1848-1917).

:Luther Burbank, American horticulturist and pioneer plant breeder (1849-1926).
"The Bible is an incomplete history and the folklore of an ancient
race, but no more inspired, I believe, than the works of Marcus
Aurelius and other great men of the day."

:Olive Shreiner, peace and anti-apartheid campaigner (1855-1920).
An atheist from age 17, according to a school book of nineteenth
century short stories.

:Sigmund Freud, Austrian physician and pioneer psychoanalyst (1856-1939).
"It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and
was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the
universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all
this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be."
"In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the
contradiction religion offers to both is palpable."
"The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that
to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think
that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above
this view of life."
Freud certainly regarded belief in God as an illusion that mature men
and women should lay aside. The idea of God was not a lie but a device
of the unconscious which needed to be decoded by psychology. A
personal god was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire
for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful,
protective father, for justice and fairness and for life to go on
forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and
worshipped by human beings out of an abiding sense of helplessness.
Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had been a
necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity. It had
promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that
humanity had come of age, however, it should be left behind. [A
History of God]

:George Bernard Shaw, Irish-born English playwright (1856-1950).
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the
point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one."

:Joseph Conrad, Polish-born English author (1857-1924).
"Christianity has lent itself with amazing facility to cruel
distortion . . . and has brought an infinity of anguish to innumerable
souls on this earth."
"Scepticism . . . is the agent of truth."

:Clarence Seward Darrow, American lawyer (1857-1938).
"I believe that religion is the belief in future life and in God. I
don't believe in either. I don't believe in God as I don't believe in
Mother Goose."
quoted in Manual of a Perfect Atheist.

:William Howard Taft, American President and Chief Justice (1857-1930).
Probably not an atheist, but I thought it was interesting that an
American president in this century said:
"I do not believe in the divinity of Christ and there are many other
of the postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe."

:Pierre Curie, French chemist and physicist (1859-1906).

:Jose P. Rizal, Phillipine national leader (1861-1896).
Rizal, the greatest son and hero of the Philippines and pride of the
Malay race, whose writings attacking the Catholic church and the
friars inspired the religious and political revolution against Spanish
colonial theocracy. He is considered the first modern Asian rational
humanist whose role in the liberation of the Philippines from the grip
of priesthood paralled that of Tom Paine whose writings inspired the
1776 revolution in the US.

Rizal was condemned to death for treason and sedition in 1896 by the
Spanish colonial government and executed on December 30 of that year.
The Spanish friars then libeled Rizal's good name by circulating a
forged document entitled "Retraction of Errors" where Rizal supposedly
retracted his affiliation with the Masons and admitted his errors in
all writings where he revealed the abuses of the Spanish friars.

On the eve of his execution, Rizal finished and succeeded in smuggling
out prison a poem he wrote popularly known as his "Ultimo Adios" or
"Last Farewall" which is considered even by Spanish literary critics
as one of the most poignant poems ever written in the Spanish
language.

:Voltairine de Cleyre, American feminist and activist (1866-1912).
"I die, as I have lived, a free spirit, an Anarchist, owing no
allegiance to rulers, heavenly or earthly."

:Herbert George "H.G." Wells, English author (1866-1946).
"It runs through the entire Christian story, and our case against the
Catholic Church is that, albeit it originated in a passionate
assertion of the conception of brotherly equality, it relapsed
steadily from the broad nobility of its beginnings and passed over at
last almost completely to the side of persecution and the pleasures of
cruelty." [From Wells' book Crux Ansata - An Indictment of the Roman
Catholic Church 1944, reprinted in 1981 by American Atheist Press.]

:Marie Curie, Polish-born French chemist and physicist (1867-1934).

:Joseph McCabe, English anti-religion campaigner (1867-1955).
One of the giants of not only English Atheism, but world Atheism,
Joseph McCabe left a legacy of aggressive Atheist and antireligious
literature that remains fresh and insightful today. His many works --
he wrote nearly 250 books -- could constitute a library of Atheism by
themselves.

Born in 1867, Joseph McCabe became a Franciscan monk at the age of
nineteen. But disgusted with his fellow monks and the Christian
doctrine, he left the priesthood for good on February 19, 1896.

Not long afterwards, he began to write -- first against the priesthood
itself and then for the position of Atheism. He was one of the
founding members of Britain's Rationalist Press Association, and was a
prolific writer for Haldeman-Julius Publications. He was also a
much-respected speaker, giving, by his own estimate, three or four
thousand lectures in the United States, Australia, and Great Britain
by the age of eighty. Still fighting against the injustices and
dishonesties of religion, he died on January 10, 1955, at the age of
eighty-seven. The epitaph he requested was "He was a rebel to his last
day." [The Secular Web]

:Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect (1869-1959).
"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."

:Vladimir Ilich Lenin, Russian revolutionary leader (1870-1924).

:Alfred Adler, Austrian psychiatrist (1870-1937).
Allowed that God was a psychological projection but believed that it
had been helpful to humanity; it had been a brilliant and effective
symbol of excellence. [A History of God]
I have had a report that Adler converted to Christianity in his old
age. (Maybe he lost his mental faculties!)

:Ralph Vaughn Williams, English composer (1872-1958).
The Internet Movie Database has a short biography, which includes,
"His professional career spanned more than six decades, with nine
Symphonies, several concertos, a ballet, a few operas and countless
choral works. The latter are often performed in church services, not
bad for an agnostic composer."

:Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, educator, mathematician, and social critic (1872-1970).
"I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a
doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive.
The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a
proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true."
"I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that
every kind of religious belief will die out."
"Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . . fear of the mysterious,
fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and
therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in
hand. . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it
as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the
human race." [quoted in Holy Horrors]

:Robert Frost, American poet (1874-1963).

:Culbert Olson, American politician (1876-1962).
The most openly Atheistic elected official was Culbert Olson, former
Governor of California. He became President of the United Secularists
of America (USA) in 1957, and remained in that position until his
death in 1962.

:Edward Morgan "E.M." Forster, English author (1879-1970).
"I do not believe in Belief (...but...) Tolerance, good temper and
sympathy."

:Leon Trotsky, Russian revolutionary and Soviet statesman (1879-1940).

:Albert Einstein, German born American threoretical physicist (1879-1955).
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious
convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not
believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have
expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called
religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the
world so far as our science can reveal it." [From a letter Einstein
wrote in English, dated 24 March 1954. It is included in Albert
Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman,
published by Princeton University Press.
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy,
education and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary.
Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear
of punishment and hope of reward after death."

:Periyar, Indian social campaigner (1879-1973).
Periyar campaigned throughout Tamil-Nadu for social reform, especially
empowerment for women and and end to the social oppression of
religion.
"He who created the god was a fool; he who spreads his name is a
scoundrel and he who worships him is a barbarian."

:Joseph Stalin, Soviet politician (1879-1953).

:Lord John Boyd-Orr, English nutritionist (1880-1971).

:W. C. Fields, American entertainer (1880-1946).
An acquaintance of Field's recounts the story of Fields, an atheist,
having once been found reading the Bible. When asked what he was doing
reading the Bible, Fields responded, "I'm looking for loopholes."
[Movie W. C. Fields: Striaght Up]

:Henry Louis "H.L." Mencken, American editor and critic (1880-1956).
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same
sense and to the same extent that we respect his theory that his wife
is beautiful and his children smart."
Religion is "so absurd that it comes close to imbecility." ["Treatise
on the Gods"]
"Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently
against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has
been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible
defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad
institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it
was an apologist for the divine right of kings."
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence
of the improbable. . . . A man full of faith is simply one who has
lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He
is not a mere ass: he is actually ill."
"God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the
miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind
of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them
above their betters."
“Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in
veneration--courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above
all, love of the truth.” [1925]
"Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to
believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."
"For centuries, theologians have attempted to explain the unknowable
in terms of the-not-worth-knowing."

:Kemal Ataturk, Turkish soldier and statesman (1881-1938).

:James Joyce, Irish author (1882-1941).
Joyce rejected Catholicism and indeed all religion when he was a young
man (as portrayed in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). He
considered Catholicism to be "black magic", and deplored its
anti-individuality. "For me there is ony one alternative to
scholasticism, scepticism." He also rejected the church's moralizing,
etc. etc.

:Virginia Woolf, English author (1882-1941).

:Margaret Sanger, American birth control activist, founder of Planned Parenthood (1883-1966).
"No Gods, No Masters."

:Diego Rivera, Mexican muralist painter (1886-1982).
From his autobiography, My Art, My Life: An Autobiography by Diego
Rivera Gladys March narrating an encounter with bigots at a church:
"Stupid people! You reek of dirt and stupidity! You are so crazy that
you believe that if I were to ask the portrait of my father, hanging
in my house, for one peso, the portrait would actually give me one
peso. You are utter idiots. In order to get pesos, I have to ask
someone who has pesos to spare and is willing to give some to me. You
talk of heaven, pointing with your fingers over your head. What heaven
is there? There is only air, clouds which give rain, lightening which
makes a loud sound and breaks the tree branches, and birds flying.
There are no boys with wings nor any ladies or gentlemen sitting on
clouds. Clouds are water vapor which goes up when the heat of the
sun's rays strikes the rivers and lakes. You can see this vapor from
the Guanajuato mountains. It turns to water which falls in drops, and
so we have rain. At the entrance of this place, I saw boxes to collect
money, and a man asking for more money. I also know the priest who
comes often to our house to drink my aunt's good chocolate and glasses
of liquor. With the money he collects for the church, he pays the
painters and sculptors to paint all these lies and puppets. He does
this to get more money to make stupid people like you believe that
these are truths and to make you fear the Virgin Mary and God. In
order to have the priest appease these idols to spare you because you
are cruel, dirty, and bad people, you give this money to the priest.
Does that fear stop the beggars, the poor people, and the jobless
miners from sneaking into the houses of the rich people, the grocery
stores, the clothing stores of the gabachos, and the haciendas of the
gringos, and taking from them a little of what they need? What about
you, you old fool? If there really is a Holy Virgin or anyone up in
the air, tell them to send lightening to strike me down or let the
stones of the vault fall on my head. If you are unable to do that Mr.
Priest, you're nothing but a puppet taking money from stupid old
women. You're no better than the clown in the circus coaxing coins
from the public. If God doesn't stop me, then there must be no God.
Get out of here! You see, there is no God! You're all stupid cows! "

:Arthur Rubenstein, Polish-American pianist (1886-1982).
During a radio interview with Rubenstein the conversation took a sharp
turn away from music when the interviewer suddeenly asked, "Mr.
Rubenstein, do you believe in God?" Rubenstein calmly replied, "No.
You see, what I believe in is something much greater."

:Sir Julian Sorell Huxley, English biologist and author (1887-1975).
"We should be agnostic about those things for which there is no
evidence. We should not hold beliefs merely because they gratify our
desires for afterlife, immortality, heaven, hell, etc."
From Religion without Revelation by Julian Huxley
"The sense of spiritual relief which comes from rejecting the idea of
God as a supernatural being is enormus."

:M.N. Roy, Indian political thinker (1887-1954).
Roy was one of the first Indian communists. M.N.Roy founded the
Communist Party of Mexico. He lived in the Soviet Union during the
1920s - he was the only man in the secret tribunal that tried Leon
Trotsky who did not believe in Trotsky's "guilt". The Soviets, of
course, chased Trotsky all over the world for the rest of his life.
Disillusioned with communism, M. N. Roy founded his own school of
philosophy - Radical Humanism. Many Indians consider M. N. Roy to be
the only original political thinker India has produced in the 20th
century.

:Irving Berlin, Russian-born American lyricist and composer (1888-1989).
In her biography of her father, Irving Berlin: A Daughter's Memoir,
Mary Ellin Barrett mentions her father's "agnosticism," (p.123) and
refers to him as a "nonbeliever," (p.124).

:Fenner Brockway, peace campaigner (1888-1988).
Brockway was a labor leader who opposed British imperialism and
advocated giving freedom to its colonies.

:Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian statesman (1889-1964).
A self-professed atheist, he said of India, "No country or people who
are slaves to dogma and dogmatic mentality can progress." [Key Ideas
in Human Thought]

:Sir Alfred Hitchcock, British film director (1899-1980).
Driving through a Swiss city one day, Hitchcock suddenly pointed out
of the car window and said, "That is the most frightening sight I have
ever seen." His companion was surprised to see nothing more alarming
that a priest in conversation with a little boy, his hand on the
child's shoulder. "Run, little boy," cried Hitchcock, leaning out of
the car. "Run for your life!"

:Phillip Randolph, American civil rights veteran and union leader, (1889-1979).

:E. Haldeman-Julius, American publisher (1889-1951).

:Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, British born actor, director, and producer (1889-1977).
"By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none."
quoted in Manual of a Perfect Atheist.

:H. P. Lovecraft, American author (1890-1937).
Here are extracts from Lovecraft; A Biography by L. Sprague De Camp:
"H. P. Lovecraft was strongly influenced, not only by his mother but
also by the books he read. . . . At five, he . . . (read) . . . a
junior edition of The Arabian Nights. He at once fell in love with the
glories of medieval Islam and spent hours playing Arab. . . . One
effect of dabbling in non-Christian traditions was to make Lovecraft
skeptical of the faith of his fathers. Before he reached his fifth
birthday anniversary, young Lovecraft announced that he no longer
believed in Santa Claus. Further private thought convinced him that
arguments for the existence of God suffered the same weaknesses as
those for Santa.

"At five, Lovecraft was placed in the infant class of the Sunday
school of the venerable First Baptist Meeting House on College Hill.
The results were not what the elders expected. When the feeding of
Christian martyrs to the lions came up, Lovecraft shocked the class by
gleefully taking the side of the lions. He wrote:

The absurdity of the myths I was called upon to accept and the sombre
greyness of the whole faith compared with the Eastern magnificence of
Mahometanism, made me definitely an agnostic; and caused me to become
so pestiferous a questioner that I was permitted to discontinue
attendance.

. . . My grandfather had travelled observingly through Italy, and
delighted me with long, first-hand accounts of its beauties and
memorials of ancient grandeur. I mention this aesthetic tendency in
detail only to lead up to its philosophical result - my last
flickering of religious belief.

". . . His skeptical view of the supernatural - his nontheism - and
his love of the Classical world were not the only lasting passions
formed in his childhood.

". . . he embraced eighteenth-century rationalism, which confirmed him
in his atheistic materialism."
[Chapter 2, pages 19-24]

:Rudolf Carnap, German-American philosopher (1891-1970).
A central figure of the Vienna Circle which was devoted to the
philosophy of logical positivism. In his Intellectual Autobiography
printed in The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap ed. by Paul Schilpp (La
Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1963) he described the basic worldview he
shared with the rest of the Circle in the following terms:
". . . the first is the view that man has no supernatural protectors
or enemies . . . Second, we had the conviction that mankind is able to
change the conditions of life in such a way that many of the
sufferings of today may be avoided . . . the third is the view that
all deliberate action presupposes knowledge of the world , that the
scientific method is the best method of acquiring knowledge and that
therefore science must be regarded as one of the most valuable
instruments for the improvement of human life. In Vienna we had no
names for these views; if we look for a brief designation in American
terminology for the combination of these three convictions, the best
would seem to be 'scientific humanism.'"

:Josip Broz, "Tito", Yugoslavian statesman (1892-1980).
I don't have good evidence that Tito was an atheist, but it seems
likely. Despite being raised in a Croat Catholic family, he became a
communist and, when he achieved power, he interrupted relations witht
he Vatican, accusing them of collaborating with the Nazis in Croatia
during the war. At the end of the war, he condemned Bishop Stepinac -
who was really old by then - to forced labor in jail. His problems
with Vatican lasted at least until the seventies.
If you have any more information about the beliefs of Tito, please "I
am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I
cannot think of heaven and the angels. I have enough for this life."
[Treasury of Women's Quotations]

:John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, Scottish biochemist (1892-1964).
Professor of genetics (1933-57) and biometry (1937-57) at London
University, he was an ardent Marxist,but left the Communist Party
after the Lysenko affair. His many writings include Science and Ethics
(1928), and Heredity and Politics (1938). In 1957 he emigraated to
India as a protest agains British policies.

Haldane was engaged in discussion with an eminent theologian. "What
inference," asked the latter, "might one draw about the nature of God
from a study of his works?" Haldane replied: "An inordinate fondness
for beetles."

:Mao Tse-tung, Chinese Communist leader and theorist (1893-1976).

:John Boynton "J.B." Priestley, English author (1894-?).

:Dora Russell, British author (1894-1986).

:Brock Chisholm, humanist campaigner (1896-1971).

:Naomi Mitchison, author (1897-?).

:Baroness Wootton, politician (1897-1988).

:Friedrich August von Hayek, Austrian-born English economist (1899-1993).

:Ernest Hemingway, American author (1899-1961).
"All thinking men are atheists." [A Farewell to Arms]
On page 144 of Paul Johnson's book Intellectuals, it states that
despite being raised in a strict Congregationalist houshold, Ernest
"did not only not believe in God but regarded organized religion as a
menace to human happiness", "seems to have been devoid of the
religious spirit", and "ceased to practise religion at the earliest
possible moment."
Other's have pointed out to me that Hemingway used the non-existence
of God as a theme in his books.

:Charles Laughton, English-born American actor (1899-1962).
Atheism mentioned in his wife's autobiography, Charles and I (Elsa
Lanchester, 1938)

:Noel Coward, English playwright, author, and performer (1899-1973).
Coward proclaims several times in his diaries (The Noel Coward
Diaries, Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1982, ISBN 0 75380 547 2) that he is
an atheist, at least during the time he was writing them (1941-1969).

:Luis Bunuel, Spanish film director (1900-1983).
His early surrealist films include L'Age d'Or (1930). He worked
largely in Mexico in the 1950s ... Bunuel was brought up as a Catholic
by the Jesuits. When asked, in later life, if he had been deeply
affected by his Jesuit education, he replied, "I am an atheist, thanks
be to God."

:Walter "Walt" Disney, American cartoonist, showman, and film producer (1901-1966).
I had one report that Disney was non-religious. Apparently, he was not
a member of any religion and did not attend services. Also, he
apparently had an entirely secular funeral. It was "very private" and
off-limits to the press, perhaps to conceal it was not religious.
There is no "In God we Trust" on Disney Dollars!
I have also heard, however, that Disney was a member of DeMolay, a
young men's group in which members swear on a Bible that they believe
in God. I guess Disney is in the DeMolay hall of fame. Maybe he got
wiser when he grew up?
This is obviously not much information. Can anyone confirm anything
about what Disney believed?

:Linus Carl Pauling, American chemist (1901-1994).
For information on Pauling, visit the Ava Helen & Linus Pauling Papers
project at Oregon State University.

:Guenther Anders, Austrian philosopher (1902-dead?).

:Langston Hughes, American writer (1902-1967).
I have no real evidence of Hughes's atheism, but it is perhaps
suggested by his short story, "Salvation," which tells of a childhood
memory in which Hughes stops believing in Jesus. Please write if you
know more.

:Elsa Lanchester, English-born American actor (1902-1986).
Atheism mentioned in autobiography, Charles Laughton and I (1938)?

:Corliss Lamont, humanist philosopher and civil liberities activist (1902-1995).

:Karl Popper, Austrian/British philosopher (1902-1994).
He was the author of such well-known works as The Logic of Scientific
Discovery, The Open Society and Its Enemies, The Poverty of
Historicism, Conjectures and Refutations, and many others. He was
particularly influential in the philosophy of science for his defense
of fallibilism and his critique of induction. Popper described himself
as an agnostic, and he was a member of the Academy of Humanism.
The magazine, Skeptic Vol. 6, No. 2 (1998) features a 1969 interview
with Karl Popper - "Karl Popper On God: The Lost Interview" by Edward
Zerin. In this interview Popper discusses his agnosticism, his
attitudes towards both Judaism and Christianity, the reasons for his
disbelief which he combined with a respect for the moral teachings of
both religions etc. Interestingly enough the interviewer, Edward
Zerin, is a rabbi.

:Sidney Hook, American philsopher (1902-1989).
Sidney Hook did his undergraduate studies at City College in New York
City and his graduate work at Columbia University where he studied
under John Dewey and Frederick Woodbrige. He wrote his thesis The
Metaphysics of Pragmatism under Dewey's direction. After receiving his
doctorate he pursued further studies in Berlin and Munich and at the
Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow. In 1933 he returned to the U. S. to
teach philosophy at New York University as one of the first Marxist
professors in the U. S. During the 1930's he attempted to synthesize
Marxism with Dewey's pragmatism - a project that I would consider to
be of still great relevence. He treated philosophy as the development
of a critical and scientific intelligence to the clarification of
human values and concrete social problems - a view he retained all his
life. In the late 1920's he prepared an English translation of Lenin's
Materialism and Empiro- criticism, Lenin's polemic agaist Ernst Mach.
In the 1930's he wrote Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx and he
wrote From Hegel to Marx which even today still stand as the most
significant pieces of Marxist scholarship produced in America. In the
early 1930's he was very close to if not an actual member of the
Communist Party but later in the decade he took a strong
anti-Stalinist position. He was a founder of the American Worker's
Party and later of the Socialist Worker's Party. By the 1940's his
polit- ical views began moving somewhat to the right. He supported
Norman Thomas' Socialist Party. By the 1950's he had become a staunch
anticommunist and argued for the expulsion of Communist professors and
students from the universities.
As a member of the "New York Intellectuals" his political and
philosophical views carried considerable weight amongst academics.

Regardless of what one might think of Hook's political views it seems
he was regarded as a great teacher and many of his students rose to
prominence in philosophy and other fields. Among his most well known
students rank Delmore Schwartz who was a poet and critic, union leader
Albert Shanker president of the American Federation of Teachers, and
philosopher Paul Kurtz.

Sidney Hook was an outspoken humanist and atheist. He was active in
such humanist organizations as the AHA and CODESH (which his former
student Paul Kurtz founded. Hook also wrote for the magazines, The
Humanist and Free Inquiry.
(Text for Sidney Hook contributed by James Farmelant)

:Harold Blackham, humanist campaigner (1903-?).

:Margaret Knight (1903-1983).

:George Orwell (1903-1950).
Orwell's biography calls him an atheist. His books also have themes
that are explicitly and/or suggestively anti-religious. In Animal
Farm, the parody was a raven named Moses who told the animals stories
about a great mountain in the sky that they would go to when they
died, called Sugar Candy Mountain. In 1984, the concept of Big Brother
is a parody of God: You never see him, but the fact of him is drilled
into so many people's minds that they become robots, almost. Plus, if
you speak bad against Big Brother, it's a Thoughtcrime.

:Burrhus Frederick "B. F." Skinner, American Psychologist (1904-1990).
In an interview with CBS radio a few weeks before his death, Skinner
was asked if he feared death. He replied, "I don't believe in God, so
I'm not afraid of dying."

:Joseph Campbell, American mythologist (1904-1987).
". . . god is a metaphor for that which trancends all levels of
intellectual thought. It's as simple as that."
"Too many of our best scholars, themselves indoctrinated from infancy
in a religion of one kind or another based upon the Bible, are so
locked into the idea of their own god as a supernatural fact -
something final, not symbolic of transcendence, but a personage with a
character and will of his own - that they are unable to grasp the idea
of a worship that is not of the symbol but of its reference, which is
of a mystery of much greater age and of more immediate inward reality
than the name-and-form of any historical ethinic idea of a deity,
whatsoever . . . and is of a sophistication that makes the
sentimentalism of our popular Bible-story theology seem undeveloped."

:Howard Hughes, American manufacturer, film producer, and recluse (1905-1976).

:Joseph Fletcher American ethicist (1905-1991).
Known for his situation ethics.
In the 1960's, Fletcher, while still a Christian and still teaching at
the Episcopal Theological School, published his famous book Situation
Ethics in which he challenged conventional thinking in both moral
theology and secular moral philosophy. He rejected the traditional
approach to solving moral problems by appealing to well validated
moral priciples. Instead he proposed a kind of act utilitarianism in
which agapean love was seen as the highest good rather than pleasure
and the avoidance of pain. Back in the 1960's the mainline Protestant
churches seemed receptive to Fletcher's ideas but later on as the
churches became more conservative the term "situation ethics" acquired
negative connotations. Situation ethics became widely portrayed as a
way of rationalizing immoral actions. In reality Fletcher had
developed situation ethics as a method for dealing with such difficult
issues in medical ethics as abortion, euthanasia, the question of
whether severely brain damaged newborn infants should be allowed to
die, etc. Fletcher showed that in dealing with such issues, appeal to
well validated moral priciples was likely to yield answers that are
profoundly inhumane. Joseph Fletcher eventually left the Christian
faith and became a humanist, annoucing that he was an agnostic.
Sources:
Harvey Cox, ed. The Situation Ethics Debate (Philadelphia: Westminster
Press, 1968).
Richard Taylor, "Joseph Fletcher's Situation Ethics," Free Inquiry
magazine (Fall 1995).
The Newsletter of The Humanist Association of Massachusetts. November,
1995.

:Charles P. Helin, American inventor and businessman (1905-1979).
This testimonial was received from Charles' son, Wally: My father is
known primarily to fisherman across the world. As a poor man with a
ninth grade education, my father invented the "Flatish" fishing lure
and in 1937 started the Helin Tackle Company. He started selling
millions of them across the world. The Flatish is still today one the
best selling artificial fishing lures. By 1942, he was a self-made
millionaire and was living in a 37 room mansion by 1944.
He was well known in the Grosse Pointe, Michigan area for his "rags to
riches" story. He was, as far as I know, a lifetime atheist and I was
raised as such. He used to tell me that when he died, I could "sweep
his carcass off the back porch" and then go on about my business.

:Ayn Rand, Russian born American author (1905-1982).
For information on Rand, visit The Ayn Rand Institute or The
Objectivist Center.

:Jean Paul Sartre, French philosopher and author (1905-80).
Sartre insisted that even if God existed [which he did not believe],
it was still necessary to reject him, since the idea of God negates
our freedom. Traditional religion tells us that we must conform to
God's idea of humanity to become fully human. Instead, we must see
human beings as liberty incarnate. [A History of God]
I have had a report that Sartre converted to Catholicism on his death
bed, but I am dubious. If you know, or know something about this
rumour, please write.

:Lord Ritchie Calder, philanthropist (1906-1982).
A journalist who wrote about science.

:Robert A. Heinlein, American science-fiction author (1907-1988).
Being a fiction author, all Heinlein left us is quotations from
characters in his novels. There are lots to choose from, here are a
couple from Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love:
"History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has
any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough
to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most
people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to
derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it."
"Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proven innocent."

:Richard Wright, American author (1908-1960).

:Quentin Crisp, English writer, actor and homosexual rights campaigner (1908-1999).
"The absolute nothingness of death is a blessing. Something to look
forward to."

:Simone de Beauvoir, French author, feminist, and philosopher (1908-1986).

:Maurice Merleau-Ponty, French philosopher (1908-1961).
Argued that instead of increasing our sense of wonder, God actually
negates it. Because God represents absolute perfection, there is
nothing left for us to do or achieve. [A History of God]

:Jacob Bronowski, scientist and author (1908-1974).

:Oskar Schindler, Czech born industrialist? (1908-1974).

:Alfred Jules "A.J." Ayer, British philosopher (1910-1989).
"Theism is so confused and the sentences in which 'God' appears so
incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or falsifiability that to
speak of belief or unbelief, faith or unfaith, is logically
impossible."
"If the assertation that there is a god is nonsensical, then the
atheist's assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical, since
it is only a significant proposition that can be
contradicted."[Language, Truth and Logic]
"I take it, therefore, to be a fact, that one's existence ends with
death. I think it possible to show how this fact can be emotionally
acceptable." [The Humanist Outlook, 1968]

:L. Ron Hubbard, American Author (1911-1986).
Stated that religion was a hoax and it only served to control people
(I do not know the exact quote) and then proved it by creating his own
religion, Scientology.
"Nevertheless I achieved my own ends beautifully. I took the pressure
off the boiler, oriented myself in the world, came to recognize what
was important and what was not important, defined for my own use such
things as morality and evil and ethics in general, and established
what satisfied me as being the true psychology and religion." [The One
Word, p. 3]

:Emile Mihai "E. M." Cioran, Romanian-born French philosopher and pessimist (1911-1995).
Books include The Trouble With Being Born, The Temptation to Exist,
Anathemas and Admirations, A Short History of Decay.
"My mission is to see things as they are. Exactly contrary of a
mission."
"'The Holy Ghost,' Luther instructs us, 'is not a skeptic.' Not
everyone can be, and that is really too bad."

:James Cameron, journalist (1911-?).

:Albert Camus, French author (1913-60).
Preached a heroic atheism. People should reject God defiantly in order
to pour out all their loving solicitude upon mankind. [A History of
God]

:Angus Wilson, author (1913-1991).

:Burt Lancaster, American actor (1913-1994).
A contributor recalls reading a TV Guide article about the time a late
1970s mini-series on Moses (staring Lancaster) came on TV -
apparently, in that article Lancaster was interviewed and he stated
that he was an atheist.

:James Miller, "Ewan MacColl," Scottish folk singer (1915-1989).

:Aziz Nesin, Turkish writer and activist (1915-1995).
"I don't need God because I want neither paradise nor hell."

:Sir Peter Brian Medawar, Brazilian-born British immunologist and science writer, Nobel prize, 1960 (1915-1987).
Here are some quotes from his essay, "The Question of the Existence of
God," which was published in Medawar's book, The Limits of Science
(1984) and later republished in The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice
and Other Classic Essays on Science (1996).
"I regret my disbelief in God."
"To abdicate from the rule of reason and substitute for it an
authentication of belief by the intentness and degree of conviction
with which we hold it can be perilous and destructive. Religious
beliefs give a spurious spiritual dimension to tribal enmities...".
"It goes with the passionate intensity and deep conviction of the
truth of a religious belief, and of course of the importance of the
superstitious observances that go with it, that we should want others
to share it - and the only certain way to cause a religious belief to
be held by everyone is to liquidate nonbelievers. The price in blood
and tears that mankind generally has had to pay for the comfort and
spiritual refreshment that relion has brought to a few has been too
great to justify our entrusting moral accountancy to religious
belief."

:Francois Mitterrand, French Politician (1916-1996).
Publicly called himself an atheist on several occasions.

:Jack Smith, American? journalist and pundit, (1916-1996).

:Richard Feynman, American physicist (1918-1988).
Some quotes online

:Primo Levi, author (1919-1987).

:Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American author (1920-1992).
"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've
been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was
intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it
assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say
one was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence to prove
that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn't that
I don't want to waste my time."

:Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek (1921-1991).
See statements by Roddenberry in the March/April 1991 issue of The
Humanist magazine, and the fall 1992 issue of Free Inquiry magazine.
In these he explains how his purpose with Star Trek was to create a
god-free, humanistic view of the universe.
"I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power
of rational decision, to drain people of their free will--and a hell
of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of
idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing
more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain."
"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing
all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for
his own mistakes."

:Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italian film director (1922-1975).
When asked at a press conference in 1966 "Why do you deal with
religious themes, you yourself being an unbeliever?", Pasolini
replied: "If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better
than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who
has a nostalgia for a belief."For biographical information see The
Internet Movie Database or this page dedicated to Pasolini.

:Charles Schultz, American cartoonist (1922-2000).
In an interview in 1999, Schultz said that although his philosophical
views evolved over the years, "the term that best describes me now is
'secular humanist.'" He went on to say, "I despise those shallow
religious comics. Dennis the Menace, for instance, is the most
shallow. When they show him praying--I just can't stand that sort of
thing, talking to God about some cutesy thing that he'd done during
the day. I don't think Hank Ketcham [Dennis' creator] has any deep
knowledge of things like that." Schultz cringed at the mention of
Family Circus, the strip by Bill Keane that is strewn with cutesy
references to Jesus (who wants to protect children on school buses,
but can't because of laws about separation of church and state!) and
those sickly-sweet images of invisible deceased grandparents looming
protectively over the kids. "Oh, I can't stand that," Schultz laughed.
"You could get diabetes reading them, couldn't you?"

:Marcello Mastroianni, Italian actor (1924-1996).
Escaped from a Nazi labor camp during World War II and later became
known for his roles as a harried "Latin lover."
From an interview with the actor at Cannes 96 in Le Monde:
Q: -Do you still have as much desire to act?
A: - I keep getting proposals. My friends tell me that I'm incredibly
lucky and it's true. I love life and life has been generous to me.
When I was young, I used to watch my mother go to church for
confession and I would ask her, "Why do you go to confession? You work
from morning to night and when things are miserable, Father slaps you.
When do you ever sin?" She told me that it was God's will and we must
accept it. I didn't like that. I don't believe in God but in life. But
in the end, my attitude is not far from my mother's. I accept things
as they come. When you're a star everybody makes a fuss over you and
everybody loves you. The acting profession is one of the best around
and on top of it, you're paid well. And yet we still complain. I am
amazed when I hear American stars talk about the pain and terrible
effort acting requires. What pain?

:Paul Van Buren, American theologian (1924-1998).
In the book, The Secular Meaning of the Gospel, he claimed that it was
no longer possible to speak of God acting in the world. Science and
technology had made the old mythology invalid. Simple faith in the Old
Man in the Sky was clearly impossible, but so was the more
sophisticated belief of the theologians. We must do without God and
hold on to Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel was "the good news of a free
man who has set other men free." [A History of God]
Van Buren's obituary from the New York Times.

:Richard Burton, Welsh actor (1925-1984).
According to the Denver Post, Richard Burton wrote this in his diary
in 1969: "The more I read about man and his maniacal ruthlessness and
his murderous envious scatological soul, the more I realize that he
will never change. Our stupidity is immortal, nothing will change it.
The same mistakes, the same prejudices, the same injustice, the same
lusts wheel endlessly around the parade ground of the centuries.
Immutable and ineluctable. I wish I could believe in a god of some
kind but I simply cannot."

:John Chancellor, American reporter, news anchor, and commentator for NBC (1927-1996).
Jack Thomas wrote in the Boston Globe, "Appreciation: Chancellor, the
wise man with ready wit," in which he recounted an interview he
conducted with John Chancellor earlier this year on his struggle with
cancer. After having asked Chancellor whether he feared death to which
he replied "not as much as I would have thought..." Thomas then asked
what he thought would happen to him after death. Chancellor replied
"I've been an agnostic for as long as I can remember... so I don't
know where we go. But if it turns out that the lights are just turned
off and nothing happens, well, that's OK."

:Olof Palme, Swedish prime minister (1927-1986).
Palme is said to be partly responsible for the current state of
wide-spread disbelief in Sweden. He had conflicts with the Church of
Sweden during his administration, because he wished to separate it
completely from the state. He said, "human beings will find a balanced
situation when they do good things not because God says it, but
because they feel like doing them."

:Brigid Brophy, author (1929-?).

:Anton Szandor LaVey, American (1930-1997?).
Here is some information about LaVey, provided by Aaron Jacques:
LaVey Was most definitely an anti-christian, and despite his
recommendation of "using" various gods, I am quite certain he was
atheist. He formed the Church of Satan, not only to frighten the
status quo, but more as an alternative to secularism. He wrote that it
was necessary for man to have a fantasy element in his life. LaVey's
satanism provides this in the form of rich ceremonies. The idea behind
which is not that one is praying to an actual being, but is unleashing
mental/emotional/physical energies which have the power to alter the
state of one's existence. Most satanists don't believe in satan or any
other deity in a physical sense but more as a force of nature. In the
introduction to The Satanic Bible, Burton H. Wolfe recalls a story
told to him by LaVey about his youth, when he worked in a traveling
carnival:

"On Saturday night, I would see men lusting after half-naked girls
dancing at the carnival, and on Sunday morning when I was playing
organ for tent-show evangelists at the other end of the carnival lot,
I would see these same men sitting in the pews with their wives and
children, asking God to forgive them and purge them of carnal desires.
And the next Saturday they'd be back at the carnival or some other
place of indulgence. I knew then that the Christianchurch thrives on
hypocrisy, and that man's carnal nature will out no matter how much it
is purged or scoured by any white-light religion"

:Carl Sagan, American astronomer and author (1934-1996).
There was an article, "In the Valley of the Shadow" in the March 10,
1996 issue of Parade Magazine in which Sagan discussed his atheistic
beliefs in the face of his own death.

In a March 1996 profile by Jim Dawson in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune,
Sagan talked about his then-new book The Demon Haunted World and was
asked about his personal spiritual views.
“My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about
it,” he said. “An agnostic is somebody who doesn't believe in
something until there is evidence for it, so I'm agnostic.”
When asked how he would explain a “genuine mystical experience,” Sagan
responded: “Your question presupposes the existence of a genuine
mystical experience and I'm not sure what that is. People have vivid
hallucinations. How do you distinguish between altered states of
consciousness? “If someone who has had an experience that tells us
something about the universe that we didn't know and that later turns
out to be true, then we'd have to say, ‘My goodness.’ ” But that, he
said, “would have to be more than the anecdotal reports that typically
are used to support religious experiences.”

:Turan Dursun, Turkish writer (1934-1990).
According to his son, Yücel Dursun, Turan Dursun was an Islamic holy
man before he became an atheist, rejecting religion and God. After
rejecting religion he wrote several books on the Qur'an and on
religion in general. He claimed that Islam is not consistent with
reason and science, and he argued that holy books didn't come from
God. His books include: Din Bu I-IV (This is Religion), Kutsal
Kitaplarin Kaynaklari (Resource of Holy Books), Kur'an Ansiklopedisi
I-VIII (Qur'an Encyclopedia). He also wrote several shorter papers on
religion. He was shot and killed by terrorists.

:John Lennon, British musician (1940-1980).
Lennon rejected religion and dogma, but he was not really an atheist -
he espoused a sort of vague spirituality. I resisted adding him to the
list for years, but his name was repeatedly submitted by contributors,
along with the opening lyrics to "Imagine,"
Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
living for today
. . .
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
No religion too

From the song, "God,"
God is a concept
By which we measure
Our pain
I don't believe in magic
I don't believe in I-Ching
I don't believe in Bible
I don't believe in Tarot
I don't believe in Hitler
I don't believe in Jesus

And, from the song, "I Found Out,"
There ain't no Jesus gonna come from the sky
Now that I found out I know I can cry
I found out!

:Frank Zappa, American musician (1940-1993).
"Who you jivin' with that cosmic debris?"
"Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be."
"If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have
people love you, fine -- but to hang all this desperate sociology on
the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you've
been bad or good -- and CARES about any of it -- to hang it all on
that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working." [The Real
Frank Zappa Book, ("Church and State" chapter) by Frank Zappa and
Peter Occhiogrosso, p. 301]

:Phil Ochs, American folk singer (1941-1976).

And I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone
And I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone
Can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

:Michael Zaslow, American Actor (1944-1998).
Zaslow acted in daytime drama series "The Guiding Light" and "One Life
to Live." He died of ALS.
--
Greetingz,

ÐoÐO_ÐeViL®
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If Christ died for our sins, dare we make his martyrdom meaningless
by not committing them? - Jules Feiffer
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I am an agnostic pagan. I doubt the existence of many gods.
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