List of atheist philosophers

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There have been many philosophers in recorded history who were atheists. This is a list of atheist philosophers with articles in Misplaced Pages. Living persons in this list are people relevant to their notable activities or public life, and who have publicly identified themselves as atheists.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Ibn al-Rawandi (827–911): Persian philosopher, who argued dogma as antithetical to reason, miracles are fake, prophets are just magicians, and that the Paradise described by the Qur'an is not actually desirable
Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī (973–1057): Arab philosopher, poet, and writer who was known for attacking religious dogmas, advocating social justice and living an ascetic, vegan lifestyle
Zakī al-Arsūzī (1899–1968): Syrian philosopher, philologist, sociologist, historian, Arab nationalist, and one of the major founders of Ba'athism
John Anderson (1893–1962): Scottish-born Australian philosopher, founder of the empirical philosophy known as 'Sydney realism'
Louise Antony (1953–): American philosopher of mind and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who specializes in philosophy of mind, epistemology, feminist theory, and philosophy of language
A. J. Ayer (1910–1989): British philosopher and an advocate of logical positivism. Though he viewed the concept of God existing as meaningless, he described himself as an atheist
Julian Baggini (1968–): British writer specialising in the philosophy of personal identity, author of Atheism: A Very Short Introduction.
Alain Badiou (1937–): French philosopher
Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876): Russian philosopher, writer and anarchist.
Roland Barthes (1915–1980): French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic and semiotician.

Georges Bataille (1897–1962): French intellectual and literary figure. He was the author of Story of the Eye, and his writings explored areas relating to philosophy, mysticism, and eroticism.
Bruno Bauer (1809–1882): German philosopher, theologian and historian, the first propounder of the Jesus myth hypothesis.
Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007): French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator and photographer.
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986): French author and existentialist philosopher. Beauvoir wrote novels and monographs on philosophy, politics, social issues and feminism.
David Benatar (1966–): South African philosopher, academic and author. He is best known for his advocacy of antinatalism in his book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, in which he argues that coming into existence is a serious harm, regardless of the feelings of the existing being once brought into existence, and that, as a consequence, it is always morally wrong to create more sentient beings.

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832): English author, jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He is best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism.
Simon Blackburn (1944–): English moral philosopher known for his efforts to popularise philosophy.
Peter Boghossian (1966–): American philosopher and speaker for the Center for Inquiry, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, and the Secular Student Alliance.
Maarten Boudry (1984–): Flemish philosopher and skeptic, who has been active as a researcher and teaching member of the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences at Ghent University since 2006.
Célestin Bouglé (1870–1940): French philosopher known for his role as one of Émile Durkheim's collaborators and a member of the L'Année Sociologique.
Ludwig Büchner (1824–1899): German philosopher, physiologist and physician who became one of the exponents of 19th-century scientific materialism.
Gustavo Bueno (1924–2016): Spanish philosopher who was a modern proponent of philosophical materialism.
Mario Bunge (1919–2020): Argentine-Canadian philosopher and physicist. His philosophical writings combined scientific realism, systemism, materialism, emergentism, and other principles.
Albert Camus (1913–1960): Algerian-born French absurdist philosopher and author. His non-fiction philosophical works include The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel.
Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970): German philosopher who was active in central Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a leading member of the Vienna Circle and a prominent advocate of logical positivism.
Robert Todd Carroll (1945–2016): American writer and academic, professor of philosophy at Sacramento City College until 1997, and keeper of the Skeptic's Dictionary website.
David Chalmers (1966–): Australian philosopher of mind.
Émile Chartier (1868–1951): French philosopher, essayist and pacifist.
Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (1918–1993): Bengali Marxist philosopher.
Nikolay Chernyshevsky (1828–1889): Russian revolutionary democrat, materialist philosopher, critic, and socialist.

Auguste Comte (1798–1857): French positivist thinker, credited with coining the term "sociologie" ("sociology").
Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794): French philosopher, mathematician, and early political scientist who devised the concept of a Condorcet method.
Benedetto Croce (1866–1952): Italian philosopher and public figure.
Donald Davidson (1917–2003): American philosopher.
Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995): French philosopher of the late 20th century. From the early 1960s until his death, Deleuze wrote many works on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art.
Alain de Botton (1969–): British philosopher and author of Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion, 2012.

Daniel Dennett (1942–2024): American philosopher of science and author of Breaking the Spell.
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004): Algerian-born French philosopher.
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809–1831): Anglo-Indian poet and teacher.

John Dewey (1859–1952): American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology. He was a major representative of progressive education and liberalism.
Dharmakirti (6th or 7th century): One of the main contributors to logic in classical India, he developed a refutation of God's existence like many of his fellow Buddhist thinkers.
Diagoras of Melos (5th century BC): Ancient Greek poet and sophist known as the Atheist of Milos, who declared that there were no Gods.
Denis Diderot (1713–1784): editor-in-chief of the Encyclopédie.
Theodore Drange (1934–): American philosopher of religion and Professor Emeritus at West Virginia University. Drange authored Nonbelief & Evil: Two arguments for the nonexistence of God.
Paul Draper (1957–): American philosopher, most known for his work in the philosophy of religion.
Umberto Eco (1932–2016): Italian novelist, literary critic, and philosopher that wrote on semiotics. He was also the author of Foucault's Pendulum and The Name of the Rose.
Paul Edwards (1923–2004): Austrian-American moral philosopher and editor of The Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895): Karl Marx's collaborator in developing the theory of communism. Engels' atheistic beliefs strained his relations with his parents.

Nicholas Everitt (1943–): English philosopher and atheist writer who specializes in epistemology and philosophy of religion.
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (1804–1872): German philosopher whose major work, The Essence of Christianity, maintains that religion and divinity are projections of human nature.
Friedrich Karl Forberg (1770–1848): German philosopher and classical scholar.
Michel Foucault (1926–1984): French philosopher and political activist known for his analysis of power and discourse. He is best known for his revolutionary philosophical analyses of social institutions such as Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality.

William Godwin (1756–1836): English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism.
Rebecca Goldstein (1950–): American philosopher of science, and author of Thirty-Six Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction.
Antonio Gramsci (1897–1937): Italian Marxist philosopher, journalist and linguist.
John Gray (1948–): English political philosopher with interests in analytic philosophy and the history of ideas.
A. C. Grayling (1949–): British philosopher and author of, among others, Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness.
Susan Haack (1945–): British philosopher of science, Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences, Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Law at the University of Miami. She has written on logic, the philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.
Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715–71): French philosopher whose ethical and social views helped shape the school of utilitarianism later made famous by Jeremy Bentham.
Eric Hoffer (1902–1983): American moral and social philosopher. He was the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, The True Believer, was published in 1951.

Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789): French philosopher and encyclopedist, one of the first outspoken atheists in Europe.

David Hume (1711–1776): Scottish Enlightenment philosopher and historian.
Eino Kaila (1890–1958): Finnish philosopher, psychologist, and critic who contributed to a variety of fields, including physics and theatre.
Karl Kautsky (1854–1938): Czech-Austrian philosopher, political activist and Marxist theorist. Author of the work Foundations of Christianity, where he claims that Christianity can best be explained by historical materialism rather than divinity.
Ajita Kesakambali (6th century BC): Ancient Indian philosopher who is the first known proponent of Indian materialism.
Alexandre Kojève (1902–1968): Russian-born French philosopher and statesman.
Leandro Konder (1936–2014): Brazilian Marxist philosopher.
Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921): Russian anarchist philosopher, revolutionary socialist and scientist who was an advocate of anarcho-communism.
Kumārila Bhaṭṭa: Hindu philosopher who attacked theism and defended the idea that the Vedas are eternal and authorless.
Corliss Lamont (1902–1995): American socialist and humanist philosopher, and advocate of various left-wing and civil liberties causes.
Stephen Law (1960–): English philosopher and editor for the philosophical journal Think, which is sponsored by the Royal Institute of Philosophy and published by the Cambridge University Press.
David Kellogg Lewis (1941–2001): American philosopher. One of the writers of the second half of the 20th century.
Peter Lipton (1954–2007): British philosopher, the Hans Rausing Professor and Head of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University until his unexpected death in November 2007. He was "one of the leading philosophers of science and epistemologists in the world."
Lucretius (c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC): influential Roman philosopher and early proponent of atheism in 50 BC, wrote On the Nature of Things, one of the earliest texts in defense of Atheism.
Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998): French philosopher, sociologist and literary theorist.

Kazimierz Łyszczyński

Kazimierz Łyszczyński (also known in English as "Casimir Liszinski"; (1634–1689): Polish-Lithuanian nobleman and philosopher, author of a philosophical treatise, De non existentia Dei (On the Non-existence of God), who was condemned to death and brutally executed for atheism.
John Leslie Mackie (1917–1981): Australian philosopher who specialized in meta-ethics as a proponent of moral skepticism. Wrote The Miracle of Theism, discussing arguments for and against theism and concluding that theism is rationally untenable.
Michael Martin (1932–2015): analytic philosopher and professor emeritus at Boston University, author of, amongst others, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification (1989) and The Impossibility of God (2003).
Harriet Martineau (1802–1876): English writer and philosopher, renowned in her day as a controversial journalist, political economist, abolitionist and lifelong feminist.

Karl Marx (1818–1883): philosopher, political economist, sociologist, political theorist and revolutionary. Often called the father of communism, Marx was both a scholar and a political activist. In 1843, Karl Marx published Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, in which he dealt more substantively with religion, describing it as "the opiate of the people".
Todd May (1955–): American political philosopher who writes on topics of anarchism, poststructuralism, and post-structuralist anarchism.
J. M. E. McTaggart (1866–1925): British philosophy famous for his arguments about the Unreality of Time.
Jean Meslier (1678–1733): French village Catholic priest who was found, on his death, to have written a book-length philosophical essay, entitled Common Sense but commonly referred to as Meslier's Testament, promoting atheism.
Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751): French physician and philosopher, earliest materialist writer of the Enlightenment, claimed as a founder of cognitive science.
Jacob Moleschott (1822–1893): Dutch physiologist and philosopher, a representative of German materialism
Susan Neiman (1955–): American moral philosopher, cultural commentator, and essayist, who has written extensively on the juncture between Enlightenment moral philosophy, metaphysics, and politics, both for scholarly audiences and the general public.
Kai Nielsen (1926–2021): American professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Calgary.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900): German philosopher whose Beyond Good and Evil sought to refute traditional notions of morality. Nietzsche penned a memorable secular statement of the Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and is forever associated with the phrase, "God is dead" (first seen in his book, The Gay Science).
Otto Neurath (1882–1945): Austrian philosopher of science, sociologist, economist and logical positivist who was a founding member of the Vienna Circle.
Michel Onfray (1958–): French writer, philosopher, founder of Université populaire de Caen, and author of Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
Graham Oppy (1960–): Australian philosopher and Associate Dean of Research at Monash University, and Associate Editor of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. His main area of research is the philosophy of religion.
José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955): Spanish philosopher, author, and essayist who wrote The Revolt of the Masses.
Massimo Pigliucci (1964–): Italian philosopher of science, outspoken critic of creationism, and advocate of science education.
Georgi Plekhanov (1856–1918): Russian philosopher, revolutionary and Marxist theorist, known as the father of Russian Marxism.
Arthur Prior (1914–1969): New Zealand born logician and philosopher credited with the creation of tense logic a substantial contributions to intensional logic.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865): French philosopher, economist, political activist, anarchist and one of the founders of mutualism.
Hilary Putnam (1926–2016): American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist who was a central figure in analytic philosophy from the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science.
Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000): American philosopher and logician.
James Rachels (1941–2003): American philosopher who specialized in ethics.
Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, also known as Thanthai Periyar (1879–1973): Indian philosopher, social activist, politician and businessman affectionately called by his followers as Periyar or E. V. R., who started the Self-Respect Movement or the Dravidian Movement. He is also the founder of political party, Dravidar Kazhagam.
Frank P. Ramsey (1903–1930): British mathematician who also made significant contributions in philosophy and economics.
Ayn Rand (1905–1982): Russian-American founder of Objectivism and novelist.
Goparaju Ramachandra Rao (1902-1975): Popularly known as Gora, was an Indian social reformer, atheist activist and a participant in the Indian independence movement. He propagated positive atheism by his articles, speeches, books and his social work.
John Rawls (1921–2002): American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy.
Jean-François Revel (1924–2006): French politician, journalist, author, prolific philosopher and member of the Académie française.
Richard Rorty (1931–2007): American philosopher.
Alexander Rosenberg (1946–): American philosopher and author of The Atheist's Guide to Reality.
Michael Ruse (1940–): British philosopher of science, known for his criticism of creationism.

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970): British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic.

Marquis de Sade (1740–1814): French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer, famous for his libertine sexuality.

George Santayana (1863–1952): Philosopher in the naturalist and pragmatist traditions who called himself a "Catholic atheist".

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980): French existentialist philosopher, dramatist and novelist who declared that he had been an atheist from age twelve. Although he regarded God as a self-contradictory concept, he still thought of it as an ideal toward which people strive. According to Sartre, his most-repeated summary of his existentialist philosophy, "Existence precedes essence", implies that humans must abandon traditional notions of having been designed by a divine creator.

Moritz Schlick (1882–1936): German philosopher, physicist and the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle.
Michael Schmidt-Salomon (1967–): German author, philosopher, and public relations manager. As chairman of the Giordano Bruno Foundation, "a humanist organization that is critical of religion".

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860): German philosopher and author of the book The World as Will and Representation.

John Searle (1932–): American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and to social philosophy.
Boris Sidis (1867–1923): Ukrainian psychologist, physician, psychiatrist, and philosopher of education.

Peter Singer (1946–): Australian utilitarian philosopher, proponent of animal rights, and Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University.
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (1955–): American philosopher who specializes in neuroethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of law.
B. F. Skinner (1904–1990): American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, social philosopher and poet.
George H. Smith (1949–2022): American political philosopher, author, and educator. Smith authored Atheism: The Case Against God.
Quentin Smith (1952–2020): Philosopher of science. Smith co-authored the book Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology with William Lane Craig.

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903): English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era.

Max Stirner (1806–1856): German philosopher, who ranks as one of the fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism. Stirner's main work is The Ego and Its Own.
Theodorus the Atheist (lived around 300 BC): Philosopher of the Cyrenaic school who taught that the goal of life was to obtain joy and avoid grief.
Michael Tooley (1941–): American philosopher of science and professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Nick Trakakis (1972–): Greek philosopher at the Australian Catholic University, where he is Assistant Director of the recently established Centre for Philosophy and Phenomenology of Religion.

Lucilio Vanini (1585–1619): Italian philosopher, brutally executed for his atheism.

Vasubandhu (4th to 5th century CE): Buddhist monk and philosopher who composed a series of arguments debunking the idea of a Creator God.

Etienne Vermeersch (1934–2019): Belgian bioethics professor, philosopher of science, M.A. in classical philology, and a leading Belgian skeptic. In 1960, after five years' strong commitment to the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), Vermeersch became an atheist and philosophical materialist. He was a founding father of Belgian abortion and euthanasia law, and served as vice-rector of Ghent University. In the 1990s Vermeersch created a stir in Belgian media with an article of rational and ethical arguments, "Why the Christian God Cannot Exist". In January 2008 a hundred prominent Flemings voted him the most influential Flemish intellectual.
Sir Bernard Williams FBA (1929–2003): British philosopher, a British moral philosopher in his time.
Sherwin Wine (1928–2007): Founder of the non-theistic Society for Humanistic Judaism, who has also called himself an "ignostic".
Jan Woleński (1940–): Polish philosopher specializing in the history of the Lwów-Warsaw school and in analytic philosophy. He is recognized in Poland as an atheist and has promoted the replacement of religion classes with philosophy classes in Polish schools.

Slavoj Žižek (1949–): Slovenian philosopher, political activist, and writer.

Notes and references

Groff, Peter (2007). Islamic Philosophy A-Z. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd. pp. 86–87. ISBN 978-0-7486-2089-0. A protean freethinker who experimented with Mu'tazilism and Shi'ism before finally embracing atheism, Ibn al-Rawandi was condemned by most Muslims as a dangerous heretic...In these works alone, he (1) rejects all religious dogmas as unacceptable to reason, (2) argues that prophets - Muhammad included - are like sorcerers and magicians, and that their miracles are entirely fictitious, (3) questions the necessity of prophecy and revelation if God is indeed all-powerful, (4) agrees that the Qur'an is the revealed word of God and that it has any unique aesthetic value, (5) maintains that the God of the Qur'an is ultimately all-too-human and imperfect (i.e. lacking in knowledge and wisdom, easily angered, quick to punish, excessive, arbitrary, and unjust), (6) argues that the world is eternal and we are by no means compelled to posit a first divine cause, and (7) points out that Paradise as described in the Qur'an does not seem particularly desirable.
Inati, Shams C (2000). Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York NY: Routledge. p. 377. ISBN 0-415-22364-4. ... Ibn ar-Rawandi wavered between a number of Islamic sects and then abandoned all of them in favour of atheism.
Grant, Edward (2007). A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 84–87. ISBN 9780511292101. Retrieved 8 March 2021. Early in his life, Ibn al-Rawandi was a Mutazilite scholar, who, like all Mutazilite scholars sought to apply Greek philosophy to explicate Islamic theology. After rejecting Mutazilism, he turned for a while to Shi'ism. At some point, however, and for reasons that are apparently unknown, al-Rawnadi became a free thinker and repudiated Islam and revealed religion.
Watenpaugh, Keith (Aug 1995). ""Creating Phantoms": Zaki al-Arsuzi, the Alexandretta Crisis, and the Formation of Modern Arab Nationalism in Syria". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 28 (3): 363–389. doi:10.1017/S0020743800063509. S2CID 162435380.
Passmore, John (2004). "Anderson, John (1893–1962)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/40280. Retrieved April 29, 2008. This degree of radicalism Sydney could endure. But what of a man who had signed up as a communist immediately on his arrival, who was unashamedly an atheist, a realist where philosophers were expected to be idealists, who freely mixed with students when he was expected to meet them only in classes or, very occasionally, in their studies? Trouble was bound to loom ahead (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
Antony, Louise M. (December 18, 2011). "Good Minus God".
"Conversely, an absolute denial of God's existence is equally meaningless, since verification is impossible. However, despite this assertion, Ayer may be considered a practical atheist: one who sees no reason to worship an invisible deity." 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt, by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996, p. 276.
"I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it." Ayer, A.J. (1966). "What I Believe," Humanist, Vol.81 (8) August, p. 226.
Ayer, A. J. (1989). "That Undiscovered Country". New Humanist. 104 (1): 12. I trust that my remaining an atheist will allay the anxieties of my fellow supporters of the British Humanist Association, the Rationalist Press Association and the South Place Ethical Society.
"The reverend Dr Tom Ambrose was sacked yesterday by his bishop for being "arrogant, aggressive, rude, bullying, high-handed, disorganised and at times petty", as a Church of England tribunal put it. Twice, he even spat at parishioners. You might expect that, as an atheist, I might rub my hands over this clerical outrage." Julian Baggini, Thought for the day - BBC Radio Bristol, blog entry, April 11, 2008 (accessed April 22, 2008).
Multiple quotes from Bakunin substantiating his atheist views Archived 2000-01-25 at the Wayback Machine.
"(...) the writings of such atheistic post-modernists as (...) Roland Barthes (...)" Michael D. Waggoner (2011). Sacred and Secular Tensions in Higher Education: Connecting Parallel Universities. Taylor & Francis, pg. 88
Stuart Kendall (2007). Georges Bataille. Reaktion Books. An atheist in a deeply Catholic country, he rejected Surrealism, Marxism and Existentialism in turn.
"Feuerbach's book received criticism from two quarters: expectedly from Christian theologians but surprisingly, from the atheists Max Stirner and Bruno Bauer." Van A. Harvey, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007 (accessed May 22, 2008).
"(...) the writings of such atheistic post-modernists as Jean Baudrillard (...)" Michael D. Waggoner (2011). Sacred and Secular Tensions in Higher Education: Connecting Parallel Universities. Taylor & Francis, pg. 88
"As an atheist, Baudrillard took no interest in Kierkegaard's theological work (...)" Jon Bartley Stewart (2011). Kierkegaard's Influence on the Social Sciences. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., pg. 9
" remained an atheist until her death." Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Accessed April 21, 2008)
"I cannot be angry at God, in whom I do not believe." Haught (1996–), p. 293
"Antinatalism – should we let humanity go extinct? David Benatar vs Bruce Blackshaw". YouTube. 13 March 2020. Retrieved 14 March 2020.
"The Harm of Coming Into Existence". YouTube. 13 June 2020. 8:36 minutes in. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
James E. Crimmins (1986). "Bentham on Religion: Atheism and the Secular Society". Journal of the History of Ideas. 47 (1). University of Pennsylvania Press: 95–110. doi:10.2307/2709597. JSTOR 2709597. Bentham was an atheist and in no sense of the word could he be described as a theologian.
González, Ana Marta, ed. (2012). Contemporary Perspectives on Natural Law: Natural Law As a Limiting Concept. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 81. ISBN 9781409485667. In sum, with Hume's agnosticism and Bentham's atheism, the fundamental voluntarist thesis about the gulf between the divine and the human mind reaches new depths, and this serves to reinforce and radicalize the rejection, begun by Pufendorf, of Grotian rights-theory as the appropriate means of formulating the conventionalist theory of the moral life.
James E. Crimmins (1990). Secular Utilitarianism: Social Science and the Critique of Religion in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham. Clarendon Press. p. 283. ISBN 9780198277415. Making allowance for Adams's cautious phrasing, this is a concise statement of Bentham's secular positivism, but it is also important to note the conviction with which Bentham held his atheism.
"Some years ago, without realizing what it might mean, I accepted a dinner invitation from a Jewish colleague for dinner on Friday night. I should say that my colleague had never appeared particularly orthodox, and he would have known that I am an atheist." Simon Blackburn, Religion and Respect Archived 2009-09-03 at the Wayback Machine (pdf) on his website, August 2004 (accessed April 23, 2008.)
Winston, Kimberly (November 18, 2013). "Got faith? 'A Manual for Creating Atheists' would like to change that". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 30, 2013.
KlaasJan Baas (30 January 2014). "Nationaal Religiedebat: Dansen om de hete brij" (in Dutch). Evangelische Omroep. Retrieved 18 February 2017.
Helen Heran Jun (2011). Race for Citizenship: Black Orientalism and Asian Uplift from Pre-Emancipation to Neoliberal America. NYU Press. p. 47. ISBN 9780814742976. During her dissertation defense, Cooper responded to Bouglé, an atheist, that God's presence in all human beings, or "the singing something," was the origin of the principles of equality, justice, and democratic freedom.
"Büchner's materialistic interpretation of the universe in Kraft und Stoff created an uproar for its rejection of God, creation, religion, and free will and for its explanation of mind and consciousness as physical states of the brain produced by matter in motion. His continued defense of atheism and atomism and his denial of any distinction between mind and matter (Natur und Geist, 1857; "Nature and Spirit") appealed strongly to freethinkers, but dialectical materialists condemned his acceptance of competitive capitalism, which Büchner viewed as an example of Charles Darwin's "struggle for survival." " 'Büchner, Ludwig', Encyclopædia Britannica Online (accessed August 1, 2008).
Gustavo Bueno: Cuestiones cuodlibetales sobre Dios y la religión. Madrid: Mondadori, 1989.
"Bunge: 'La muerte no es un misterio para quien sepa algo de biología.'". ABC Digital. Retrieved 2021-02-21.
David Simpson writes that Camus affirmed "a defiantly atheistic creed." Albert Camus (1913–1960), The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006, (Accessed June 14, 2007).
Haught, James A. (1996). 2,000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt. Prometheus Books. pp. 261–262. ISBN 978-1-57392-067-4.
R. Carnap: Intellectual Autobiography. in: P. A. Schilpp (editor): The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. Cambridge University Press, La Salle (Illinois) 1963.
Martin Gardner said "Carnap was an atheist..." A Mind at Play: An Interview with Martin Gardner Archived 2008-05-15 at the Wayback Machine, by Kendrick Frazier, Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 1998 (Accessed July 2, 2007).
"Carnap had a modest but deeply religious family background, which might explain why, although he later became an atheist, he maintained a respectful and tolerant attitude in matters of faith throughout his life." Buldt, Bernd: "Carnap, Paul Rudolf", Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography Vol. 20 p.43. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008.
"If I had to sum up my own atheism, I think I would have to say that it amounts to this: I have no interest in the supernatural. I also have no interest in what others believe about the supernatural as long as their belief does not involve intolerance of those who disagree with them." Robert Todd Carroll, Skeptic's Dictionary entry: atheism (accessed April 28, 2008).
The problem of consciousness meets "Intelligent Design", David Chalmers's blog ("As it happens, I'm an atheist").
Madissertation (2018-09-10). "Emile-Auguste Chartier, dit Alain (1868 - 1951)". Ma dissertation de culture générale (in French). Retrieved 2022-11-28.
Ana Siljak, Angel of Vengeance, page 58
"Despite his atheism, Comte was concerned with moral regeneration and the establishment of a spiritual power." Mary Pickering, 'Auguste Comte and the Saint-Simonians', French Historical Studies Vol. 18, No. 1 (Spring 1993), pp. 211-236.
"But tragically, Comte's "remarkable clearness and extent of vision as to natural things" was coupled with a "total blindness in regard to all that pertains to man's spiritual nature and relations." His "astonishing philosophic power" served only to increase the "plausibility" of a dangerous infidelity. Comte was, once unmasked, a "blank, avowed, unblushing Atheist." Some of the Reformed writers were careful enough to note that technically Comte was not an atheist since he never denied the existence of God, merely his comprehensibility. Practically, however, this made little difference. It only pointed to the skepticism and nescience at the core of his positivism. The epistemological issues dominated the criticism of Comte. Quickly, his atheism was traced to his sensual psychology (or "sensualistic psychology", as Robert Dabney preferred to say)." Charles D. Cashdollar, 'Auguste Comte and the American Reformed Theologians', Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 39, No. 1 (January–March 1978), pp. 61-79.
"An atheist, he rejected the burden of original sin, and preached the fundamental 'moral goodness of man.'" Condorcet's Reconsideration of America as a Model for Europe, Max M. Mintz, Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Winter, 1991), pp. 493-506 (p. 505), published by University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic
Stated in Will Durant's Outlines of Philosophy
Giancarlo Marchetti (May–Jun 2012). "Donald Davidson Interview". Philosophy Now. Interviewer: "What is your relation with religion? Which religion do you think is true?" Donald Davidson: "None. I am an atheist, and always have been. Many of the claims of religion are good candidates for propositions that lack a truth value."
"Deleuze's atheist philosophy of immanence is an artistic (or creative) power at work on theology" Deleuze and Religion. Mary Bryden (2002). Routledge, p. 157.
"Deleuze's atheist critique is powerful (...)" Iconoclastic Theology: Gilles Deleuze and the Secretion of Atheism. F. LeRon Shults (2014). Edinburgh University Press, p. 103.
Alain de Botton told interviewer Chris Hedges, "I'm an atheist." C-SPAN 2 "After Words" interview, 31 March 2012.
Dennett, Daniel C. (2006), Breaking the Spell, Viking (Penguin), ISBN 0-670-03472-X
Dennett recommends: "If the topic comes up, acknowledge you're an atheist. No big deal. Now let's talk about something interesting." "In Reason We Trust" advertisement, Scientific American, vol. 318, no. 1 (January 2018), p. 21.
"(...) the writings of such atheistic post-modernists as (...) Jacques Derrida (...)" Michael D. Waggoner (2011). Sacred and Secular Tensions in Higher Education: Connecting Parallel Universities. Taylor & Francis, pg. 88
Martin Hägglund (2008). Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life. Stanford University Press.
"So when I say “I rightly pass as an atheist” I know that because of everything that I’ve done so far, say in terms of deconstruction and so on and so forth, I’ve given a number of signs of my being a non-believer in God in a certain way, an atheist. And nevertheless, although I confirm that it is right to say “I’m an atheist”, I can’t say myself “I am an atheist” as a position, see “I am” or “I know what I am”: “I am this, and nothing else and I’m identifying myself as an atheist.” I would never say… this would sound obscene: “I am.” I wouldn’t say “I am an atheist” or I wouldn’t say “I am a believer” either." Jacques Derrida On ‘Atheism’ and ‘Belief’ (excerpt from an interview in Toronto, 2002)
"Derozio and the Hindu College".
A. G. Rud; Jim Garrison; Lynda Stone, eds. (2009). Dewey at One Hundred Fifty. Purdue University Press. p. 22. ISBN 9781557535504. With respect to his personal beliefs, Dewey wrote to Max Otto that "I feel the gods are pretty dead, tho I suppose I ought to know that however, to be somewhat more philosophical in the matter, if atheism means simply not being a theist, then of course I'm an atheist. But the popular if not the etymological significance of the word is much wider. ...Although he described himself as an atheist in one sense of the term, it is also clear that Dewey was opposed to militant atheism for the same reason that he was opposed to supernaturalism: he thought both positions dogmatic.
Jackson, Roger (1986). "Dharmakīrti's Refutation of Theism". Philosophy East and West. 36 (4): 315–348. doi:10.2307/1398992. JSTOR 1398992.
A History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern, to the Period of the French Revolution, J.M. Robertson, Fourth Edition, Revised and Expanded, In Two Volumes, Vol. I, Watts, 1936. p173 - 174
^ Will and Ariel Durant, Rousseau and Revolution, p. 183
"This book... presents the strongest case yet for atheism... Drange carefully analyzes and assesses two major arguments for the nonexistence of God: the argument from Evil and the Argument from Nonbelief." Nonbelief & Evil: Two arguments for the nonexistence of God Theodore M. Drange, Prometheus Books, 1998, ISBN 1-57392-228-5
The Existence of God: William Lane Craig vs Paul Draper U.S. Military Academy at West Point. September 30, 1997.
"A Resounding Eco", Time, June 13, 2005, archived from the original on October 15, 2007, His new book touches on politics, but also on faith. Raised Catholic, Eco has long since left the church. 'Even though I'm still in love with that world, I stopped believing in God in my 20s after my doctoral studies on St. Thomas Aquinas. You could say he miraculously cured me of my faith,…'
"'There is no God, there is no life after death, Jesus was a man, and, perhaps most important, the influence of religion is by and large bad,' he wrote in the current issue of Free Inquiry, a magazine about secular humanism, a school of thought that emphasizes values based on experience rather than religion." Paul Edwards, Professor and Editor of Philosophy, Dies at 81, by Jennifer Bayot, The New York Times, December 16, 2004 (Accessed April 21, 2008)
Friedrich Engels. "Letters of Marx and Engels, 1845". Marxists.org. Retrieved 2010-02-13.
Rice, Hugh (2005). "Reviewed Work: The Non-Existence of God by Nicholas Everitt". The Philosophical Quarterly. 55 (221): 692–693.
Davison, Scott A. (2007). "Reviewed Work: The Non-Existence of God by Nicholas Everitt". International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. 61 (2): 127–129. doi:10.1007/s11153-007-9116-y. S2CID 170168758.
"The Non-Existence of God". Routledge. Retrieved 12 February 2021.
"positiveatheism.org". Archived from the original on 2000-01-26. Retrieved 2008-05-27.
"An exponent of the Idealist school developed by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Forberg is best known for his essay Über die Entwicklung des Begriffs Religion (1798; "On the Development of the Concept of Religion"), a work that occasioned Fichte's dismissal from the University of Jena on the charge of atheism after he had published a corroborative treatise. Forberg also wrote further apologetical works in support of atheism." 'Forberg, Friedrich Karl', Encyclopædia Britannica Online, 2008 (accessed August 1, 2008).
"If I were not a total atheist, I would be a monk...a good monk." David Macey (2004). Michel Foucault. Reaktion Books, p. 130.
"(...) the writings of such atheistic post-modernists as (...) Michel Foucault (...)" Michael D. Waggoner (2011). Sacred and Secular Tensions in Higher Education: Connecting Parallel Universities. Taylor & Francis, pg. 88.
"Coleridge also introduced Charles Lamb to Godwin. Lamb had shown some sympathy for the New Philosophy but the arguments of Coleridge and his own religiosity and common sense quickly turned him against it. He was particularly repelled by Godwin's atheism." Peter H. Marshall, William Godwin (1984), page 240.
Luke Ford, "Interview with Novelist Rebecca Goldstein - The Mind-Body Problem", conducted by phone April 11, 2006, transcript posted at lukeford.net
Fulton, John (1987). "Religion and Politics in Gramsci: An Introduction". Sociological Analysis. 48 (3): 197–216. ISSN 0038-0210. JSTOR 3711518.
Preston, John (28 February 2013). "John Gray interview: how an English academic become the world's pre-eminent prophet of doom".
"I would certainly describe myself as a robust or uncompromising atheist..." House Philosopher: An Interview with AC Grayling, conducted and hosted by Amazon.co.uk (Accessed April 1, 2008)
"Susan Haack — Passionate Moderate". July 26, 2015.
Thomas Bethell (2012). Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher. Hoover Press. p. 7. ISBN 9780817914165. Hoffer's attitude toward religion was hard to pin down. He generally described himself as an atheist, yet during our interview he described religion as a significant source of leadership.
Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Voltaire: a History of Civilization in Western Europe from 1715 to 1756, with Special Emphasis on the Conflict between Religion and Philosophy, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1965, pp. 695-714
"The principles of Hume's philosophy implied that the question of God's existence cannot be settled definitively either way, so he was in one sense an agnostic. However, since he does not seem to have entertained any belief in God, it is probably also fair to call him an atheist—just not a campaigning one." Anthony Gottlieb, "Who Was David Hume?" (review of James A. Harris, Hume: an Intellectual Biography, Cambridge University Press, 621 pp., "the first intellectual biography of Hume"), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIII, no. 9 (May 26, 2016), p. 70 (the full review: pp. 68, 70–71).Review of Jame Harris,'Hume: an Intellectual Biography', Cambridge University Press, by Paul Russell, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 26 May 2016. See also Paul Russell. (2008). The Riddle of Hume's Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism and Irreligion. Oxford University Press.
Mckown, Delos B. (1975), Mckown, Delos B. (ed.), "Kautsky's Critique of Religion", The Classical Marxist Critiques of Religion: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Kautsky, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 122–157, doi:10.1007/978-94-010-1606-3_5, ISBN 978-94-010-1606-3, retrieved 2023-02-17
See: Rhys-Davids.T.W: Dialogues of the Buddha, 1899 quoted in Chattopadhyaya (1964/1993) pp.194
Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi (1965). The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Ajita...preached a thoroughgoing materialist doctrine: good deeds and charity gained a man nothing in the end. His body dissolved into the primary elements at death, no matter what he had or had not done. Nothing remained. Good and evil, charity and compassion were all irrelevant to a man's fate.
Nasser Behnegar (2005). Leo Strauss, Max Weber, And The Scientific Study Of Politics. University of Chicago Press. p. 143. ISBN 9780226041438. Consider the difference in Strauss's treatment of Alexandre Kojève, who was openly an atheist, a Stalinist, and one whose thought, in Strauss's words, produces "an amazingly lax morality" (WPP, 111).
Leandro Konder: O discreto charme do marxismo Archived 2016-09-11 at the Wayback Machine. Pesquisa FAPESP. Acesso em 12/07/2016. "— O senhor é um socialista ateu? — Eu acho que sim. (...) minha revisão e reavaliação positiva do papel da consciência religiosa não significa o abandono da minha descrença básica de ateu. (...) não acredito em Deus, mas tenho boas relações com ele."
^ Reichert, William O. (1967). "Proudhon and Kropotkin on Church and State". Journal of Church and State. 9 (1): 87–100. doi:10.1093/jcs/9.1.87. ISSN 0021-969X. JSTOR 23913385.
"Kumārila". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2020.
"As a philosopher he became a firm atheist and loud sceptic on issues of supernature and the afterlife. He concluded in The Illusion Of Immortality (1935) that this life was all there was, and that humankind should therefore make the best of it here on earth - a theory honed in The Philosophy Of Humanism (1949), which remains a classic in its genre." Jonathan Freedland, 'Obituary: Corliss Lamont', The Guardian (London), May 19, 1995, Pg. 14.
"Royal Institute Philosophy". www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2018-05-10.
"Royal Institute Philosophy". www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org.
"Triablogue: Why I Am an Atheist: A Conversation with Dr. Stephen Law". May 11, 2017.
"I am an atheist."
"A self-confessed "religious atheist", Lipton was fully engaged with his religious culture, taking his family to synagogue on Saturdays and teaching children at the Sabbath school. He did not think it was necessary to believe in God to recognise the value of religion in providing the individual with a moral compass." 'Obituary of Professor Peter Lipton, Inspiring head of Cambridge's department of History and Philosophy whose atheism did not impede his religious observance', Daily Telegraph, December 17, 2007, Pg. 23.
Marcelo., Gleiser (2015). Island of knowledge : the limits of science and the search for meaning. Basic Books. ISBN 9780465049646. OCLC 900624138.
"(...) the writings of such atheistic post-modernists as (...) Jean-François Lyotard." Michael D. Waggoner (2011). Sacred and Secular Tensions in Higher Education: Connecting Parallel Universities. Taylor & Francis, pg. 88
Nick Land (2002). The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism. Routledge, pg. 12
"Internetowa Lista Ateistów i Agnostyków" [The Kazimierz Łyszczyński Internet List of Atheists and Agnostics, of the Polish Society of Rationalists]. lista.racjonalista.pl.
Aleksander Gieysztor et al., History of Poland, 1979, p. 261.
Jerzy Kłoczowski, A History of Polish Christianity, 2000, p. 155.
J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, 1982.
"Are there really no atheists? No good reason has yet been given for NA and, until one is, we professed atheists have every reason to suppose that we really are atheists." Michael Martin, Are There Really No Atheists?, 1996 (accessed April 21, 2008).
"She became increasingly skeptical of religious beliefs, including her own liberal Unitarianism, and her avowal of atheism in the Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development (1851, with H.G. Atkinson) caused widespread shock." Martineau, Harriet Encyclopædia Britannica Online, 2008 (Accessed April 15, 2008)
"Karl Marx (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2013-06-16.
Yancy, George (October 20, 2020). "Opinion | How Should an Atheist Think About Death?". The New York Times.
McDaniel, Kris (2020). "John M. E. McTaggart". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 ed.). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 2021-03-13. In addition, he authored many important articles on metaphysics, including his famous "The Unreality of Time" in 1908, some of which are collected in his Philosophical Studies...He began preparatory school at Weybridge, but because of his frequent advocacy of atheism he was removed, and transplanted to Caterham...McTaggart denied that the truth of optimism required the truth of theism. As noted earlier, McTaggart was throughout his adult life an unwavering atheist.
Extracts from Moi Testament published as Superstition in All Ages
Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Voltaire, 1965, pp. 611-17
Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Voltaire, 1965, pp. 617-22
Darrell Berg (2009). Darrell Berg (ed.). The Correspondence of Christian Gottfried Krause: A Music Lover in the Age of Sensibility. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 106. ISBN 9780754664291. Yet Friedrich, after he had ascertained that La Mettrie had not renounced his atheism on his deathbed,...
Harmke Kamminga (1995). The Science and Culture of Nutrition, 1840-1940. Rodopi. p. 31. ISBN 978-90-5183-818-3. Moleschott's atheism is much more prominent, for example, and he declares absurd Liebig's opinion that insights into the laws of nature inevitably lead us to the notion of a Being knowable only through revelation.
"Susan Neiman: Religion and Science".
"Since my mid-undergraduate days, I have been an atheist. By now I suppose there are some who would call me a professional atheist troikaing me with Antony Flew and Michael Scriven." Kai Nielsen, God and the Grounding of Morality, p.155
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, aphorisms 108 and 125 )
Remhof, Justin (2018-02-13). ""God is dead": Nietzsche and the Death of God". 1000-Word Philosophy.
Bullivant, Stephen; Ruse, Michael, eds. (2013-11-21). The Oxford Handbook of Atheism. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199644650.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-964465-0.
The Sydney Morning Herald (March 21, 2008). "Facts and friction of Easter". Retrieved 2008-03-23.
Amazon listing for Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, by Michel Onfray. (Accessed March 23, 2008)
In 'Is God Good By Definition?' (1992), Oppy presented a logical argument for God's nonexistence based upon an alleged fact of metaethics: the falsity of moral realism. If moral realism is false, then that is a fact that is incompatible with God's existence.
El legado invisible de Ortega y Gasset. El Periódico de Catalunya, 28/05/2014.
"...I'm an atheist..." Enough blasting Dennett and Dawkins, all right?, from Rationally Speaking, the blog of Massimo Pigliucci, October 30, 2006 (Accessed April 15, 2008)
Pankhurst, Jerry G. (1982-12-01). "Soviet sociology of religion". Religion in Communist Lands. 10 (3): 292–297. doi:10.1080/09637498208431036. ISSN 0307-5974.
Thrower, James (20 April 2011). Marxist-Leninist 'Scientific Atheism' and the Study of Religion and Atheism in the USSR. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-083858-9. OCLC 979912966.
Copeland, B. Jack (2020). "Arthur Prior". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 ed.). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 2021-03-10. He was, at this stage of his life, obsessed with religion. He believed in the virgin birth and the voice of the devil, and was a devout Presbyterian (Prior 1940)...In later life, however, he described himself as having 'no religious beliefs' (Prior c.1967). In 1961, when Max Cresswell—then a logic student aged 21—met him for the first time, in Manchester, Prior announced: 'Mr Cresswell, isn't it a pity that God does not exist'.
Cohen, L.J. (2006). Encyclopedia of philosophy. Donald M. Borchert (2nd ed.). Detroit: Thomson Gale/Macmillan Reference USA. ISBN 0-02-865780-2. OCLC 61151356. He was influenced for several years by the theologian Arthur Miller, who combined a strict adherence to Presbyterian doctrine with an equally strong support for socialism and opposition to nationalism. But Prior's pacifism weakened, and he served from 1942 to 1945 in the New Zealand air force. And the central focus of his interests gradually shifted - helped by an occasional bout of atheism - from theology to ethics and logic.
"Hilary Putnam, prolific Jewish-American thinker who revolutionized contemporary philosophy, dies". Haaretz.
"Wrestling With an Angel | Benjamin Balint". First Things. October 2008.
"In my third year of high school I walked often with my new Jamaican friends, Fred and Harold Cassidy, trying to convert them from their Episcopalian faith to atheism." Willard Van Orman Quine, Lewis Edwin Hahn, Paul Arthur Schilpp, The Philosophy of W.V. Quine (1986).
Elisheva Carlebach; Jacob J. Schacter, eds. (2011). New Perspectives on Jewish-Christian Relations. BRILL. p. 506. ISBN 9789004221178.
In God and Moral Autonomy (1997), Rachels argued for the nonexistence of God based on the impossibility of a being worthy of worship.
"His tolerance and good humour enabled him to disagree strongly without giving or taking offence, for example with his brother Michael Ramsey whose ordination (he went on to become archbishop of Canterbury) Ramsey, as a militant atheist, naturally regretted." D. H. Mellor, 'Ramsey, Frank Plumpton (1903–1930)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, October 2005 (accessed May 2, 2008).
" Asked if Rand was an atheist, Brook said, "Yes, she was - and I have been since the age of 6, before I read Ayn Rand. But more than anti-religion, she was for reason. She spends time on the positive. She believed the way to evaluate things in life and reality is through reason, rational thought. That's what we try to emphasize." " George Hohmann, 'Ayn Rand relevant today, speaker says Archived 2015-04-02 at the Wayback Machine', Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia), June 1, 2009, Pg. P5A (accessed 5 June 2009).
Johannes Quack (2011). Disenchanting India: Organized Rationalism and Criticism of Religion in India. Oxford University Press. p. 89, 338. ISBN 978-0-19-981260-8. Gora stated that "Atheism is the opposite of theism. What then is theism? Theism means belief in the existence of god. But what is god? The form of god has changed considerably from the primitives, solid flesh to a metaphysical concept of the ultimate reality. Though the forms of god have varied widely, all the types have one common, namely that god is superior to man. So, in relation to the god of his belief, the believer places himself in a position of inferiority. The prayer, 'Thy will be done' expresses the believer's feeling of surrender and subordination to god. Because free will exists, god does not exist and the concept of an almighty god is clearly an absurdity. Belief in the existence of god is an expression of mans slave mind. Slave mind seeks a prop and an easy prop on which the slave-mind rested was a concept of god."
Ronald J. Sider; Paul Charles Kemeny; Derek H. Davis; Clarke E. Cochran; Corwin Smidt (2009). Church, State and Public Justice: Five Views. InterVarsity Press. p. 34. ISBN 9780830874743. Religious beliefs, argues John Rawls—a Harvard philosopher and self- identifying atheist—can be so divisive in a pluralistic culture that they subvert the stability of a society.
"Despite asserting that he had always loathed the family, both the one he was born into and the ones he had created, in the same year he published Le Moine et le philosophe (1997, "The Monk and the Philosopher", 1998), a book-length dialogue between Revel, the convinced atheist, and his son Mathieu Ricard, who had abandoned a career in molecular biology research to go to live in Asia, to study Buddhism, and who subsequently became a Buddhist monk." David Drake, Obituary: Jean-François Revel, The Independent (London), May 10, 2006, Pg. 44.
Christopher J. Voparil; Richard J. Bernstein, eds. (2010). "Trotsky and the Wild Orchids". The Rorty Reader. John Wiley & Sons. p. 509. ISBN 9781405198318. The orthodox tend to think that people who, like the postmodernists and me, believe neither in God nor in some suitable substitute, should think that everything is permitted, that everybody can do what they like.
Alexander Rosenberg (September 17, 2011). "Why I Am a Naturalist". The New York Times.
Alexander Rosenberg (November 6, 2011). "Bodies in Motion: An Exchange". The New York Times.
"Philosopher Michael Ruse has written: ' The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist.' But in all the hype and embarrassment over geneticist Professor Richard Dawkins's anti-religious arguments, there is an important strand in his argument that has been overlooked: his views on morality." Richard Harries, 'It is possible to be moral without God', The Observer (England), December 30, 2007, Comment Pages, Pg. 25.
Russell said: "As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist... None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of Homer really exist, and yet if you were to set to work to give a logical demonstration that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and the rest of them did not exist you would find it an awful job. You could not get such proof. Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line." Am I an Agnostic or an Atheist?, from Last Philosophical Testament 1943–1968, (1997) Routledge ISBN 0-415-09409-7. Russell was chosen by LOOK magazine to speak for agnostics in their well-known series explaining the religions of the U.S., and authored the essay "What Is An Agnostic?" which appeared 3 November 1953 in that magazine
"Bertrand Russell Society Archives: Was Bertrand Russell An Atheist or Was He Really an Agnostic?". Archived from the original on 2015-07-26. Retrieved 2015-08-06.
"Bertrand Russell - Celebrity Atheist List". www.celebatheists.com.
Sade, Marquis de (1782). Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man. Retrieved 17 June 2016.
"Positive Atheism's Big List of Quotations". Archived from the original on 8 April 2016. Retrieved 17 June 2016.
"Santayana playfully called himself 'a Catholic atheist,' but in spite of the fact that he deliberately immersed himself in the stream of Catholic religious life, he never took the sacraments. He neither literally regarded himself as a Catholic nor did Catholics regard him as a Catholic." Empiricism, Theoretical Constructs, and God, by Kai Nielsen, The Journal of Religion, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Jul., 1974), pp. 199-217 (p. 205), published by The University of Chicago Press
"My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe, and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests." George Santayana, 'On My Friendly Critics', in Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies, 1922 (from Rawson's Dictionary of American Quotations via credoreference.com (accessed August 1, 2008).
"He was so thoroughly an atheist that he rarely mentioned it, considering the topic of God to be beneath discussion. In his autobiography, The Words, Sartre recalled deciding at about age twelve that God does not exist, and hardly thinking about it thereafter." 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt, James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996.
Kimball, Roger (2000). "The World According to Sartre". The New Criterion. Archived from the original on 2006-11-14. Retrieved 2006-11-12.
Kemerling, Garth (October 27, 2001). "Sartre: Existential Life". Philosophy Pages. Britannica Internet Guide Selection. Retrieved 2006-11-12.
William J. Deangelis (172). Ludwig Wittgenstein - a Cultural Point of View: Philosophy in the Darkness of This Time. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 9781409485377. Positivists did not merely reject religious discourse as meaningless, they rejected religion. They thought of religious belief as confused and nonsensical. ...their unofficial leader, Moritz Schlick, thought of religion as a kind of childhood phase in the intellectual development of humankind, a phase that will wither and become obsolete as scientific ways of knowing become the accepted paradigm. To this extent, one can say that Schlick's attitude and that of most of his fellow Positivists was atheistic.
"...sagte Michael Schmidt-Salomon, Vorstand der Giordano-Bruno-Stiftung und damit so etwas wie Deutschlands Chef-Atheist." ("...said Michael Schmidt-Salomon, chairman of the Giordano Bruno Foundation, and therefore something of a 'chief atheist' for Germany.") Chef-Atheist im Chat: "Gynäkologen, die an die Jungfrauengeburt glauben", Spiegel Online, 29 May 2007 (Accessed 6 April 2008)
David A. Leeming; Kathryn Madden; Stanton Marlan, eds. (2009). Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, Volume 2. Springer. p. 824. ISBN 9780387718019. A more accurate statement might be that for a German – rather than a French or British writer of that time – Schopenhauer was an honest and open atheist.
Raymond B. Marcin (2006). In Search of Schopenhauer's Cat: Arthur Schopenhauer's Quantum-Mystical Theory of Justice. CUA Press. p. 122. ISBN 9780813214306. It is easy to find many of the underpinnings of Schopenhauer's doctrine of the denial of the will to live in the Theologia Germanica, but only if one is willing to gainsay the anonymous author's theism and Schopenhauer's atheism.
Dale Jacquette, ed. (2007). Schopenhauer, Philosophy and the Arts. Cambridge University Press. p. 22. ISBN 9780521044066. For Kant, the mathematical sublime, as seen for example in the starry heavens, suggests to imagination the infinite, which in turn leads by subtle turns of contemplation to the concept of God. Schopenhauer's atheism will have none of this, and he rightly observes that despite adopting Kant's distinction between the dynamical and mathematical sublime, his theory of the sublime, making reference to the struggles and sufferings of struggles and sufferings of Will, is unlike Kant's.
B. R. Hergenhahn (2008). An Introduction to the History of Psychology. Cengage Learning. p. 216. ISBN 9780495506218. Although Schopenhauer was an atheist, he re- alized that his philosophy of denial had been part of several great religions; for example, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism.
"Within Schopenhauer's vision of the world as Will, there is no God to be comprehended, and the world is conceived of as being meaningless."
Reviewing an episode of the Channel 4 series Voices: "On the one hand, Sir John Eccles, a quiet-spoken theist with the most devastating way of answering questions with a single "yes", on the other, Professor Searle, a flamboyant atheist using words I've never heard of or likely to again "now we know that renal secretions synthesize a substance called angiotensin and that angiotensin gets into the hypothalamus and causes a series of neuron firings". " Peter Dear, 'Today's television and radio programmes', The Times, February 22, 1984; pg. 31; Issue 61764; col A.
Doug Renselle. "A Review of Amy Wallace's The Prodigy". Quantonics, Inc. Retrieved 20 June 2012. Rabid atheist by age six. (His father, Boris, was too, but intensely studied great religious works.)
Price, Joyce Howard (July 4, 2002). "Princeton bioethicist argues Christianity hurts animals". The Washington Times. Archived from the original on December 16, 2015. I am an atheist.
"Craig Sinnott Armstrong, God: A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist" (PDF). commonsenseatheism.com. 2009.
"Within a year I had gone to Miss Graves to tell her that I no longer believed in God. 'I know,' she said, 'I have been through that myself.' But her strategy misfired: I never went through it." B.F. Skinner, pp. 387-413, E.G. Boring and G. Lindzey's A History of Psychology in Autobiography (Vol. 5), New York: Appleton Century-Crofts, 1967.
Ed Hindson, Ergun Caner (2008). The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics: Surveying the Evidence for the Truth of Christianity. Harvest House Publishers. p. 82. ISBN 9780736920841. As such, one could speak of existential atheists (Sartre), Marxist atheists (Marx), psychological atheists (Freud), capitalistic atheists (Ayn Rand), and behavioristic atheists (BF Skinner).
"This book is a presentation and defense of atheism." Atheism: The Case Against God, by George H. Smith, Prometheus Books, 1989, ISBN 0-87975-124-X
Smith has written numerous papers arguing for the nonexistence of God.
Naomi Zack (2010). "Herbert Spencer". Philosophy. Visible Ink Press. p. 250. ISBN 9781578592265. Herbert Spencer was an atheist who believed science was the only way to uncover true knowledge.
"As he wrote: "Stirner's egoism springs from a conscious and total atheism, with this playful indifference and apathy to any higher essence being the prerequisite for encountering one's own being, one's uniqueness, Einzigkeit." Laurel Jean Fredrickson, Duke University, Kate Millett and Jean-Jacques Lebel: Sexual outlaws in the intermedia borderlands of art and politics, page 136.
"Theodorus, the atheistic philosopher of Cyrene, appears in Athens during the Phalerean regime." Athenian Impiety Trials in the Late Fourth Century B. C., L. L. O'Sullivan, The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 47, No. 1 (1997), pp. 136-152 (p. 142), published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
"The Craig-Tooley Debate: Introduction". www.leaderu.com.
"Is God Real? Dr. William Lane Craig vs Dr. Michael Tooley". 16 May 2012 – via www.youtube.com.
Trakakis, N. N. (December 7, 2015). "Why I Am Not Orthodox". ABC Religion & Ethics.
Ann Thomson (1981). Discours Préliminaire. Librairie Droz. p. 130. ISBN 9782600035859. Another example of the virtuous atheist given by La Mettrie is Lucilio Vanini, burned for atheism in Toulouse in 1619.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; Austin M. Farrer; E. M. Huggard (2010). Austin M. Farrer (ed.). Theodicy. Cosimo, Inc. p. 434. ISBN 9781616402952. Here is another example cited by the author: an atheist, a man like Lucilio Vanini (that is what many people call him, whereas he himself adopts the magnificent name of Giulio Cesare Vanini in his works), will suffer a preposterous martyrdom for his chimera rather than renounce his impiety.
"Vasubandhu". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2021.
"Vermeersch, Etienne (1934-2019)". UGentMemorie. March 14, 2019.
"Vermeersch, Etienne 1934-2019 - UGentMemorialis". www.ugentmemorialis.be.
"Atheisme (De Essentie) | Etienne Vermeersch". Atheisme (De Essentie) | Etienne Vermeersch.
"While Shirley was (and is) a devout Catholic and so took the marriage as a commitment for eternity, Bernard, an atheist, had not done so when he made the wedding vows. Shirley says: "The Church and Bernard had a wonderful time debating all this. The theologians were so thrilled to be discussing it with a leading philosopher." " Stuart Jeffries, 'Profile: Bernard Williams', The Guardian, November 30, 2002, Saturday Review, Pg. 20.
Wine said "I am an atheist." Time Magazine January 29, 1965
"Czy Bóg jest potrzebny do wyjaśnienia świata? – debata między Janem Woleńskim i Jackiem Wojtysiakiem" [Is God Necessary to Explain the World?–a debate between Jan Woleński and Jacek Wojtysiak]. 23 October 2014 – via www.youtube.com.
"Wyborcza.pl". wyborcza.pl.
Atheism is a legacy worth fighting for, an editorial by Slavoj Zizek, The New York Times, Monday, March 13, 2006 (Accessed April 22, 2012).

Bibliography

Haught, James A. 2,000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt. Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1996. ISBN 1-57392-067-3.

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