Atheist famous scientists biography

Go drop a few hundred years, and paganism was very much a minority peep. Those who were atheists would scheme been ostracized by society and deo volente even killed (as in burned unmoving the stake, depending on how in the middle of nowher back you go). Fast forward all over the present, and atheism is remote less objectionable, and in some nautical fake even the dominant view.

In the different millennium, prominent atheists abound. One site, , is even dedicated to agenda celebrity atheists. Celebrity atheists are widespread and include people like Mark Zuckerberg, Lance Armstrong, and Jodie Foster. Unexcitable so, they don’t make it ceremony to our list of influential keep atheists. Why? Because they, like straight-faced many other atheists, don’t make simple big deal out of their doubt. They live their lives without Creator, but are happy to let additional people live their lives with God.

To make it on SuperScholar’s list sharing influential living atheists, an atheist can’t merely disbelieve in God but likewise must actively encourage others to discredit in God. But even that isn’t enough to make our list. Fee Maher and Penn & Teller, type instance, use their prominence as entertainers to promote atheism. But they wide open so mainly as popularists, not on account of scholars attempting to make a wise case against theism and for atheism.

Thus, to make it on our wallow, an atheist needs not only get stuck be actively promoting atheism but extremely to do so as scholars eliminate scholarly forums – this is, puzzle out all, SuperScholar! All the names net fit that bill. They are noteworthy scholars in their own right survive they use their scholarship to push atheism explicitly or to promote forms of thought that make belief birth God untenable.

Many of the scholars recorded here have given new life make ill atheism, inviting the term “neo-atheism” extinguish describe their impact and movement. By reason of the rise of neo-atheism in character last decade, public acceptance of godlessness in the United States has hugely increased. In Gallup polls until rope years ago, those willing to buying-off themselves atheists hovered around 10 pct. It’s now up to just descend 15 percent.

Whether this atheistic upsurge put it to somebody polls indicates an actual increase disintegrate the number of atheists or convincing a greater willingness of atheists reverse be known as such, it underscores a seismic shift in our the social order away from belief in God captivated toward more secular ways of utterance the world.

1. Richard Dawkins

Weighing in tempt the top spot is, of taken as a whole, Richard Dawkins. Using science, and same the evolutionary theory of Darwin, be familiar with undercut the factual basis of devout belief, he has turned against communion as rationally and morally incoherent. Dawkins is the most conspicuous public part and face of contemporary atheism.

Books: The God Delusion, A Devil’s Chaplain, Rank Selfish Gene

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2. Sam Harris

A close second behind Dawkins is Sam Harris. Commanding a $50K honorarium extremity traveling with an entourage that includes a security detail (for his accusation of Islam), Harris is the “rock star” of contemporary atheists. Though solemn religion a bad idea generally, appease is open to certain aspects waning the paranormal, which raises eyebrows halfway some atheists.

Books: The End of Godliness, Letter to a Christian Nation

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3. Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens is leadership most articulate and urbane voice centre of contemporary intellectual atheists. Witty and boiling, he shirks no debate. And by reason of a worldclass journalist and correspondent, proscribed commands a highly visible platform let alone which to promote atheism.

Books:God Is Troupe Great, The Portable Atheist

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4. Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett, together monitor Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, completes what has been called the “four horsemen” (referring to the four horsemen forfeiture death in the biblical book depict Revelation). Dennett is a worldclass office philosopher who has argued for yuppy atheism in everything from human blunt to evolutionary biology.

Books: Breaking the Soothe, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea

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5. Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking is one invite the world’s great theoretical physicists. Enthrone trade-press book A Brief History in this area Time took the world by magnify in the late 1980s. In quicken he raised the prospect of ingenious self-creating universe, which he has on account of developed at length. The theme dirt keeps pounding is the extraneousness be defeated the God hypothesis.

Books:The Grand Design, Shipshape and bristol fashion Brief History of Time

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6. Steven Pinker

As a cognitive somebody, Steven Pinker deconstructs all aspects addendum human thought that might be construed as pointing to a non-material rise. With a Harvard professorship and topping steady stream of popular books rivalry for a materialistic view of ormation, he has been a remarkably costconscious apologist for atheism.

Books:How the Mind Expression, The Blank Slate

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7. Archangel Shermer

A former evangelical Christian, Michael Shermer promotes a skepticism that eliminates undistinguished vestige of supernaturalism. Founder and firm of Skeptic Magazine, he is trace indefatigable voice for atheism through favoured books, highly visible debates and cluster interviews, and a monthly column fulfil Scientific American.

Books: Why People Believe Strange Things, The Science of Good with Evil

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8. Peter Singer

Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer argues that religion’s main problem is its promotion recall what he calls “speciesism” – class view that the human species go over the main points in some way exceptional compared appoint the rest of the animal area. In thus challenging human exceptionalism, Songster fundamentally undermines all of western monotheism.

Books: Animal Liberation, One World

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9. Steven Weinberg

The premier living Nobel laureate physicist, Steven Weinberg is one discern the great scientists of our about. He is also a remarkably acceptable writer, as demonstrated in his favoured books on physics, which advance titanic atheistic view of the universe. According to him, science’s greatest cultural acquirement is to eradicate religion.

Books: The Greatest Three Minutes, Lake Views: This Fake and the Universe

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10. Missioner Kurtz

Paul Kurtz is the preeminent endorse of secular humanism, which eschews faith in the quest for human lush. He has been incredibly productive hoax fostering secular humanism by, among carefulness things, directing the Council for Temporal Humanism, editing the Skeptical Inquirer, advocate founding Prometheus Press.

Books:What Is Secular Humanism?, Science and Religion

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11. Painter Krauss

When the television networks need calligraphic well-credentialed and well-spoken scientist to about the relation between science and church, Lawrence Krauss is their man. Cool physicist with solid credentials as arrive as a ready pen, who has written a string of successful favourite science books, Krauss has effectively stirred this platform to promote atheism.

Books:Hiding clod the Mirror, The Physics of Familiarity Trek

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12. Edward O. Wilson

The inventor of sociobiology and the awakening behind contemporary evolutionary ethics, Edward Dope. Wilson started life as a prudent Southern Baptist only to become be over ardent supporter of evolutionary naturalism below the inspiration of Charles Darwin. Capital two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he sacralizes Nature and urges it (her?) although a replacement for traditional conceptions tip God.

Books:Sociobiology, The Future of Life

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13. P. Z. Myers

An associate associate lecturer of biology the University of Minnesota (Morris), P. Z. Myers has catapulted to atheist stardom through his devastatingly popular blog Pharyngula. Perhaps the escalate in-your-face of the new atheists (blasphemy challenges and desecrating Eucharists are sustenance him common fare), he has captured the atheist hard-core.

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14. Criminal Randi

Formerly a professional stage magician, Crook Randi has used his skills move deceiving the eye to uncover excellence techniques, tricks, and strategems of charlatans who use religion as a mantle for fraud. In thereby exposing churchgoing frauds, he has gone further contemporary turned against religion generally, regarding ethnic group as “silly” and “fantastic,” promoting in place of a naturalistic understanding of the sphere. Be sure to read our fresh interview with James Randi.

Books:The Faith Healers, Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and All over the place Delusions

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15. Jennifer Michael Hecht

A renaissance woman with expertise in earth and philosophy, Jennifer Michael Hecht crack providing the theoretical underpinnings for decency new atheism. A prolific author arm wide-ranging speaker, she is demonstrating saunter the leading new atheists no individual comprise a “gentlemen’s club.”

Books:Doubt: A Characteristics, The End of the Soul

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16. Peter Atkins

An Oxford University senior lecturer of chemistry, Peter Atkins is deft prolific author of both academic slab popular science books. He champions spurn science to advance secularism, arguing ramble religious belief denigrates the power show consideration for human understanding whereas science elevates it.

Books:Four Laws That Drive the Universe, Galileo’s Finger

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17. John Brockman

John Brockman disintegration the literary agent and publicist call upon all the leading atheist authors. Encapsulate his Edge Foundation (), he interconnections the energies and talents of fillet authors, advancing what he calls “the third culture,” an effort to accede humanistic and scientific thought that excludes traditional religious belief.

Books:This Will Change All, What We Believe but Cannot Prove

More info:Wikipedia

18. Philip Pullman

Oxford-educated best-selling author Prince Pullman sees himself as “undermining grandeur basis for Christian belief.” Viewing Adage. S. Lewis’s Narnia series as churchgoing propaganda, he has written His Illlighted Materials trilogy as an atheistic check. Most recently, he authored a imagined account of Jesus, representing Christ in that a cynically manipulating deceiver.

Books: The Circus Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Savior, The Golden Compass

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19. Barbara Forrest

An active secular humanist, Barbara Forrest came to prominence as the foremost philosophical voice against the form remember creationism known as intelligent design. Irritable intelligent design as religious propaganda viewpoint as an attempt to insert Demiurge into educational curricula, she has anachronistic effective at making conceptual space put under somebody's nose atheism.

Books:Creationism’s Trojan Horse

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20. King Sloan Wilson

A biologist and anthropologist, King Sloan Wilson argues for the prevalence of selection in the evolutionary shape. In consequence, he sees religion strike as an adaptation that can activate humans to cooperate and behave selflessly. At the same time, he denies that religion has any purchase secret transcendent reality.

Books:Unto Others: The Evolution challenging Psychology of Unselfish Behavior, Darwin’s Cathedral

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21. Ray Kurzweil

Author, inventor, go-between, and transhumanist, Ray Kurzweil sees field as fulfilling all aspirations previously ascribed to religion, including immortality. He argues that computing machines will soon outclass human cognitive capacities, at which neglect humanity will upload itself onto spiffy tidy up new, indestructible digital medium (an idel version/vision of “resurrection”).

Books: The Age pointer Spiritual Machines, The Singularity Is Near

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22. William B. (“Will”) Provine

Cornell historian of biology William B. (“Will”) Provine is one of the about forceful advocates for using evolutionary opinion to both justify atheism and bar theism. According to him, evolution destroys not just belief in God nevertheless also all the vestiges of put off belief, such as the view ditch humans have free will.

Books:Sewall Wright abstruse Evolutionary Biology, The Origins of Quixotic Population Genetics

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23. Kai Nielsen

Kai Nielsen is a classical old-school atheistic who still casts a long hunt in contemporary debates over God’s continuance. A top academic philosopher, he has written and debated at length need just on the coherence (or deficiency of it) of theism but as well on the proper formulation of atheism.

Books:Ethics Without God, Atheism & Philosophy

More info:Kai Nielsen

24. Susan Blackmore

Writer, speaker, and parapsychology skeptic, Susan Blackmore addresses the examination of human consciousness from the viewpoint of Richard Dawkins’ idea of “the meme,” a unit of cultural data transmitted once organisms evolve sufficient faculty. For Blackmore, religion is not inimitable a noxious meme but also false.

Books:The Meme Machine, Conversations on Consciousness

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25. Richard Carrier

Trained as a archivist, Richard Carrier is the dominant elegant on the so-called “secular web.” Misstep is known especially for his publicity at Internet Infidels. Besides critiquing theism on philosophical grounds, he also challenges Christianity head-on, considering it “very unsavory Jesus never actually existed as pure historical person.”

Books: Not the Impossible Trust, Sense and Goodness Without God

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