This is a list of atheist authors. Mentioned in this list are people whose atheism is relevant to their notable activities or public life, and who have publicly identified themselves as atheists.
Forrest J Ackerman (1916–2008): American writer, historian, editor, collector of science fiction books and movie memorabilia and a science fiction fan. He was, for over seven decades, one of science fiction's staunchest spokesmen and promoters.[2]
Philip Appleman (1926–2020): poet, novelist and professor emeritus of English literature.[12]
Antonin Artaud (1896–1948): French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director. Known for The Theatre and its Double.[13]
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992): Russian-born American author of science fiction and popular science books.[14]
Diana Athill (1917–2019): British literary editor, novelist and memoirist who worked with some of the writers of the 20th century.[15]
James Baldwin (1924–1987): American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.[16]
J. G. Ballard (1930–2009): English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction. His best-known books are Crash and the semi-autobiographical Empire of the Sun.[17]
Iain Banks (1954–2013): Scottish author, writing mainstream fiction as Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks.[18] Known especially for a collection of ten science-fiction novels and anthologies called The Culture series.
Henri Barbusse (1873–1934): French novelist, journalist and communist politician.[19]
Dave Barry (born 1954): American author and columnist, who wrote a nationally syndicated humor column for the Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005. Barry is the son of a Presbyterian minister, and decided "early on" that he was an atheist.[21]
Annie Besant (1847–1933): British author, orator, and activist who, about her conversion to atheism, She wrote, "The path from Christianity to Atheism is a long one, and its first steps are very rough and very painful."[27]
Charles Bradlaugh (1833–1891): British author, orator, and politician who "abandoned Christianity for atheism" to "become the most powerful British propagandist for atheism."[30]
Lawrence Bush (born 1951): Author of several books of Jewish fiction and non-fiction, including Waiting for God: The Spiritual Explorations of a Reluctant Atheist.[42]
Angela Carter (1940–1992): English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism and science fiction works.[51]
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904): Russian physician, dramatist, and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history.[52][53][54][55]
Staceyann Chin, performance artist and poet, who early in her life decided to always tell the truth, and blurted out the essentials of her life story to a housemate, including the declaration: "I'm not a Christian anymore, I don't believe in God."[56]
Cyril Connolly (1903–1974): English intellectual, literary critic and writer.[65]
Joseph Conrad (1857–1924): Polish novelist who wrote in English.[66]
Edmund Cooper (1926–1982): English poet and prolific writer of speculative fiction and other genres, published under his own name and several pen names.[67]
Paul-Louis Couchoud (1879–1959), French philosopher and psychiatrist, a proponent of the Christ myth thesis, author of The Creation of Christ (1937/1939).
Jim Crace (born 1946): English writer, winner of numerous awards.[69]
Theodore Dalrymple (born 1949): pen name of British writer and retired physician Anthony Daniels.[70]
Rhys Davies (1901–1978): Welsh novelist and short story writer.[72]
Frank Dalby Davison (1893–1970): Australian novelist and short story writer, best known for his animal stories and sensitive interpretations of Australian bush life.[73]
Dave Eggers (born 1970): American writer, editor, and publisher.[89]
Barbara Ehrenreich (born 1941): American feminist, socialist and political activist. She is a widely read columnist and essayist, and the author of nearly 20 books.[90][91]
George Eliot (1819–1890): Mary Ann Evans, the famous novelist, was also a humanist and propounded her views on theism in an essay, "Evangelical Teaching".[93]
F. M. Esfandiary/FM-2030 (1930–2000): Transhumanist writer and author of books such as Identity Card, The Beggar, UpWingers, and Are You a Transhuman. In several of his books, he encouraged readers to "outgrow" religion, and that "God was a crude concept-vengeful wrathful destructive."[95]
Dylan Evans (born 1966): British academic and author who has written books on emotion and the placebo effect as well as the theories of Jacques Lacan.[96]
Constance Garnett (1861–1946): English translator, whose translations of nineteenth-century Russian classics first introduced them widely to the English and American public.[109]
Harry Harrison (1925–2012): American science fiction author, anthologist and artist whose short story The Streets of Ashkelon took as its hero an atheist who tries to prevent a Christian missionary from indoctrinating a tribe of irreligious but ingenuous alien beings.[131]
Tony Harrison (born 1937): English poet, winner of a number of literary prizes.[132]
Zoë Heller (born 1965): British journalist and novelist.[133]
Pierre-Jules Hetzel (1814–1886): French editor and publisher. He is best known for his extraordinarily lavishly illustrated editions of Jules Verne's novels highly prized by collectors today.[135]
Dorothy Hewett (1923–2002): Australian feminist poet, novelist, librettist, and playwright.[136]
Archie Hind (1928–2008): Scottish writer, author of The Dear Green Place, regarded as one of the greatest Scottish novels of all time.[137]
R. J. Hollingdale (1930–2001): English biographer and translator of German philosophy and literature, President of The Friedrich Nietzsche Society, and responsible for rehabilitating Nietzsche's reputation in the English-speaking world.[139]
Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906): Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre.[143]
Howard Jacobson (born 1942): British author, best known for comic novels but also a non-fiction writer and journalist. Prefers not to be called an atheist.[144][145]
Susan Jacoby (born 1945): American author, whose works include The New York Times best seller The Age of American Unreason, about anti-intellectualism.[146]
Clive James (1939–2019): Australian author, television presenter and cultural commentator.[147][148]
Robin Jenkins (1912–2005): Scottish writer of about 30 novels, though mainly known for The Cone Gatherers.[149]
Marian Keyes (born 1963): Irish writer, considered to be one of the original progenitors of "chick lit", selling 22 million copies of her books in 30 languages.[166]
Stanisław Lem (1921–2006): Polish science fiction novelist and essayist.[178]
Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837): Italian poet, linguist, essayist and philosopher. Leopardi is legendary as an out-and-out nihilist.[179]
Primo Levi (1919–1987): Italian novelist and chemist, survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp. Levi is quoted as saying "There is Auschwitz, and so there cannot be God."[180]
Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951): American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters."[183]
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799): German scientist, satirist, philosopher and anglophile. Known as one of Europe's best authors of aphorisms. Satirized religion using aphorisms like "I thank the Lord a thousand times for having made me become an atheist."[184]
John W. Loftus (born 1954): Former Evangelical minister. Author of Why I Became an Atheist, The Christian Delusion, The End of Christianity, and The Outsider Test for Faith. Host of the website, Debunking Christianity.
Jack London (1876–1916): American author, journalist, and social activist.[186][187]
Pierre Loti (1850–1923): French novelist and travel writer.[188]
Franco Lucentini (1920–2002): Italian writer, journalist, translator and editor of anthologies.[190]
Lucian (125–180): Roman Syrian rhetorician and satirist who wrote in Greek; a religious skeptic and debunker[191] often regarded as an atheist in the modern sense,[192] whose position in the Roman Imperial administration makes it unlikely he professed atheism[193]
Norman MacCaig (1910–1996): Scottish poet, whose work is known for its humour, simplicity of language and great popularity.[194]
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) "was [...] a connoisseur of depravity; an atheist who passionately hated the clergy, who thought the institution of the Catholic Church should be dismantled [...]"[195]
Clare Mulley (born 1969): Author of The Woman Who Saved the Children (2009), The Spy Who Loved, and The Women Who Flew for Hitler.[217]
Dame Iris Murdoch (1919–1999): Dublin-born writer and philosopher, best known for her novels, which combine rich characterization and compelling plotlines, usually involving ethical or sexual themes.[218]
Arnulf Øverland (1889–1968): Norwegian author who in 1933 was tried for blasphemy after giving a speech named "Kristendommen – den tiende landeplage" (Christianity – the tenth plague), but was acquitted.[227]
Harold Pinter (1930–2008): Nobel Prize-winning English playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years.[238]
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980): French existentialist philosopher and playwright, 1964 Nobel Prize in literature that he refused. His mother was a first cousin of Albert Schweitzer. His lifelong companion was feminist Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986).
Dan Savage (born 1964): Author and sex advice columnist.[264] Despite his atheism, Savage considers himself Catholic "in a cultural sense."[265]
Bernard Schweizer (born 1962): English professor and critic specializing in literary manifestations of religious rebellion. Schweizer reintroduced the forgotten term misotheism (hatred of God) in his most recent book Hating God: The Untold Story of Misotheism, Oxford University Press, 2010. Schweizer, who has published several books on literature, is not a misotheist but a secular humanist.[266]
Maurice Sendak (1928–2012): American writer and illustrator of children's literature.[267]
Paul-Henri Thiry (1723–1789): Baron d'Holbach was a French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist and a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment.[288]
Miguel Torga (1907–1995): Portuguese author of poetry, short stories, theatre and a 16 volume diary, one of the greatest Portuguese writers of the 20th century.[290]
Gore Vidal (1925–2012): American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality. He also ran for political office twice and was a longtime political critic.[295]
Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007): American author, writer of Cat's Cradle, among other books. Vonnegut said "I am an atheist (or at best a Unitarian who winds up in churches quite a lot)."[49]
Tom Wolfe (1930–2018): Noted author and member of 'New Journalism' school[304]
Leonard Woolf (1880–1969): Noted British political theorist, author, publisher, and civil servant, husband of author Virginia Woolf.[305]
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941): English author, essayist, publisher, and writer. She is regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.[306]
Amy Alkon (born 1964): American advice columnist known as the Advice Goddess, author of Ask the Advice Goddess, published in more than 100 newspapers within North America.[311]
Matija Babić (born 1978) Croatian journalist and entrepreneur best known for being the former editor-in-chief of the Croatian news website Index.hr.
Lynn Barber (born 1944): British journalist, best known as an interviewer.[312]
Nick Cohen (born 1961): British journalist, author, and political commentator.[319]
Boris Dežulović (1964–): Croatian journalist, writer and columnist, best known as one of the founders of the now defunct satirical magazine Feral Tribune.
John Diamond (1953–2001): British broadcaster and journalist, remembered for his column chronicling his fight with cancer.[320][321]
Anthony Holden (born 1947): British journalist, broadcaster and writer, especially of biographies.[329]
Mick Hume (born 1959): British journalist – columnist for The (London) Times and editor of Spiked. Described himself as "a longstanding atheist", but criticised the 'New Atheism' of Richard Dawkins and co.[330]
Jonathan Meades (born 1947): English writer and broadcaster on food, architecture and culture.[342]
H. L. Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956): American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. As a nationally syndicated columnist and book author, he famously spoke out against Christian Science, social stigma, fakery, Christian radicalism, religious belief (and as a fervent nonbeliever the very notion of a Deity), osteopathy, antievolutionism, chiropractic, and the "Booboisie", his word for the ignorant middle classes.
Stephanie Merritt (born 1974): British critic and feature writer for a range of newspapers, Deputy Literary Editor at The Observer since 1998.[343]
Martin O'Hagan (1950–2001): Northern Irish journalist, the most prominent journalist to be assassinated during the Troubles.[344]
Deborah Orr (1962–2019): British journalist and broadcaster.[345]
Ruth Picardie (1964–1997): British journalist and editor, noted for her memoir of living with breast cancer, Before I Say Goodbye.[346]
Jill Singer (1957–2017): Australian journalist, columnist and television presenter.[353]
Matt Taibbi (born 1970): American journalist and political writer, currently working at Rolling Stone (note: he calls himself an agnostic/atheist).[354]
Nicholas Tomalin (1931–1973): British journalist and writer, one of the top 40 journalists of the modern era.[356]
Bill Thompson (born 1960): English technology writer, best known for his weekly column in the Technology section of BBC News Online and his appearances on Digital Planet, a radio show on the BBC World Service.[357]
Jerzy Urban (born 1933): Polish journalist, commentator, writer and politician, editor-in-chief of the weekly Nie and owner of the company which owns it, Urma.[358]
^Ackerman, Forrest J.; Linaweaver, Brad (2004). Worlds of Tomorrow: The Amazing Universe of Science-fiction Art. Collectors Press, Inc. p. 12. ISBN9781888054934. He was Uncle Forry. He made a career out of understanding that the eye is the window to the soul. He was the atheist with a sense of wonder and a love of childhood. He felt the same emotions as deeply religious and sentimental people, which was an unusual quality for the true materialist.
^"I am a radical Atheist..." Adams in an interview by American Atheists [1].
^Spirituality, Halo or HoaxArchived 2012-01-01 at the Wayback Machine – Javedakhtar.com, Spirituality, Halo or Hoax, 26 February 2005. "There are certain things that I would like to make very clear at the very outset. Don't get carried away by my name – Javed Akhtar. I am not revealing a secret, I am saying something that I have said many times, in writing or on TV, in public ... I am an atheist, I have no religious beliefs. And obviously I don't believe in spirituality of some kind. Some kind. "NDIA Today Conclave – February 26, 2005", retrieved April 4, 2012
^"Ben Allah'a inanmam, ben öldüğümde cesedimi yakın, küllerimi savurun. (Eng. I don't believe in God, when I die, burn my remains and scatter my ashes.)
^"It is well known that I am not a religious person, I grew up and remain an atheist". Tariq Ali, Interview: Tariq AliArchived 2007-07-03 at the Wayback Machine, Socialist Review November 2006 (accessed April 22, 2008).
^"Once, filming in Italy with the American director John Huston and a US army crew, Ambler and his colleagues were shelled so fiercely that his unconscious 'played a nasty trick on him' (Ambler, Here Lies, 208). A confirmed atheist, he heard himself saying, 'Into thy hands I commend my spirit.' " Michael Barber: 'Ambler, Eric Clifford (1909–1998)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edition, January 2007 [2] (accessed April 29, 2008).
^"His son Martin, who led the ceremony, said: 'His relationship with the Christian God was not entirely frictionless.' In 1962 (the Russian poet) Yevtushenko asked him 'Are you an atheist?' He replied: 'Well, yes – but it's more that I hate Him.' ", John Ezard, "Secular send-off for an 'old devil' who did not wans too much fuss over his funeral", The Guardian (London), October 23, 1996, p. 8.
^Prothero, Donald (9 February 2016). "ALL SACRED COWS". eSkeptic. The Skeptics Society. Retrieved 20 January 2017.
^On Moyers and Company, 6 July 2012, Appleman described himself as "not just an atheist but a humanist."
^"Artaud's theories are phrased in a strongly poetical language that betrays an acute awareness of modernity's disenchanted life-world, but, at the same time, is obsessed with reviving the supernatural. His profoundly atheist religiosity (if we may call it so) obviously presents great problems to scholarship." Thomas Crombez: Dismemberment in Drama/Dismemberment of Drama – Chapter Two – The Dismembered Body in Antonin Artaud's Surrealist Plays. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. "Archived copy"(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 2014-01-01. Retrieved 2012-02-10.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)[3]Archived 2013-09-03 at the Wayback Machine
^"I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it... I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time." Isaac Asimov in "Free Inquiry", Spring 1982, vol.2 no.2, p. 9 (See Wikiquote.)
^"Last week, looking through a book about 15th-century painting in Italy, I began to wonder why I loved these paintings so much. Almost all of them are illustrations of religious subjects, and I have been an atheist almost since the day I was confirmed in the Christian faith by the Bishop of Norwich in 1931. To describe the atheism first: it originated in a certainty that I was going to start breaking the rules as laid down by the god I'd been taught about, followed by a suspicion that if his rules were so easy to break he couldn't be all that he was cracked up to be. Then came its firmer base: the observation that many of the most hideous things done to each other by human beings have been done in his name. It can be argued that this is our fault, not God's. But the god we Europeans are supposed to believe in a) created us as well as everything else that is; b) is omnipotent; c) is Love. In which case, one must assume from the evidence rammed down our throats for century after century that he is liable to fits of serious derangement during which he is Not Himself." Diana Athill, 'I'm a believer – but only in a good story', The Guardian, January 21, 2004, Features Pages, p. 5.
^"Rather than tackle Baldwin's atheist stance, Malcolm found a point of departure on the question of identity, stating that he was "proud to be a black man."" Herb Boyd, Baldwin's Harlem: a biography of James Baldwin (2008), page 75.
^Welch, Frances. "All Praise and Glory to the Mind of Man". Ballard confesses to being an atheist, but adds: "that said, I'm extremely interested in religion... I see religion as a key to all sorts of mysteries that surround the human consciousness."
^"I'm an evangelical atheist so I'm not into supernatural effects – I hated The Exorcist – but John Carpenter's remake of The Thing is different." "I was a brain-eating zombie... As the scary season descends ... famous horror experts choose their most terrifying screen experiences", The Daily Telegraph, October 30, 2004, Arts p. 4.
^"Maclean's interview: Julian Barnes". Maclean. October 29, 2008. Archived from the original on 6 November 2012. Retrieved 30 June 2013. Writer Julian Barnes talks to Kenneth Whyte about his atheism and saints, his parents and what makes for a best death.
^"Evil and Me", Benford; in 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists, ed. Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, pp. 157-60.
^"Berton's book, The Comfortable Pew, in which as a lifelong atheist he attacked status quo religiosity, outraged churchgoers. But the wider public came to expect to be challenged by Berton's views." Cathryn Atkinson, 'Obituary: Pierre Berton', The Guardian, December 7, 2004, p. 27.
^"Wilfred Scawen Blunt was notorious as an atheist, a libertine, an adventurer and a poet. Somehow he also found time to be a diplomat – one of the earliest in this country to make a real attempt to understand Islam – and an anti-imperialist, becoming the first British-born person to go to jail for Irish independence." Phil Daoust, The Guardian, March 11, 2008, G2: Radio: Pick of the day, p. 32.
^" "What song would you like played at your funeral?" "We'll Meet Again. I'd like the congregation to join in. As a devout atheist, I should make it clear there are no religious connotations." " Rosanna Greenstreet, 'Q&A: William Boyd', The Guardian, February 3, 2007, Weekend Pages, p. 8.
^"Passionate and enthusiastic, Lily was converted to atheism, pacifism, and feminism by Georg von Gizycki, whom she married in 1893." 'Braun, Lily', Encyclopædia Britannica Online (accessed August 1, 2008).
^Lyon, James K.; Breuer, Hans-Peter, eds. (1995). Brecht Unbound. University of Delaware Press. p. 120. ISBN9780874135374. With Stravinsky and Brecht we are juxtaposing an avowedly apolitical artist, rather reactionary in most phases of his life, and a practicing Russian Orthodox with a Marxist and atheist.
^Reviewing a production of The Romans in Britain, Charles Spencer wrote: "It strikes me as an exceptionally powerful study of the human need for belief in a higher power, notwithstanding the fact that Brenton himself is an atheist. And the dramatist examines the nature of Paul's faith with both sympathy and insight." 'A powerful and thrilling act of heresy', The Daily Telegraph, November 10, 2005, Reviews, p. 30.
^Reviewing Mark Polizzotti's Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton Douglas F. Smith called him, "[a] cynical atheist, the poet, critic, and artist harbored an irrepressible streak of romanticism."
^"To speak of God, to think of God, is in every respect to show what one is made of.... I have always wagered against God and I regard the little that I have won in this world as simply the outcome of this bet. However paltry may have been the stake (my life) I am conscious of having won to the full. Everything that is doddering, squint-eyed, vile, polluted and grotesque is summoned up for me in that one word: God!" – André Breton, taking from a footnote from his book, Surrealism and Painting. Quotations by the poet: Andre Breton
^Gilson, Étienne (1988). Linguistics and philosophy: an essay on the philosophical constants of language. University of Notre Dame Press. p. 98. ISBN978-0-268-01284-7. Breton professed to be an atheist...
^Browder, Clifford (1967). André Breton: Arbiter of Surrealism. Droz. p. 133. Again, the atheist Breton's predilection for ideas of blasphemy and profanation, as well as for the " demonic " word noir, contained a hint of Satanism and alliance with infernal powers.
^"It [her non-fiction book Black Ship to Hell (1962)] endeavoured to formulate a morality based on reason rather than religion – Brophy described herself as 'a natural, logical and happy atheist' (King of a Rainy Country, afterword, 276)." Peter Parker: 'Brophy, Brigid Antonia [married name Brigid Antonia Levey, Lady Levey] (1929–1995)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edition, May 2006 [4] (accessed April 29, 2008).
^Reviewing Brownjohn's Collected Poems, Anthony Thwaite wrote: "Brownjohn is 75 at the moment of publication. He has been on the literary scene – publishing, reviewing, judging, chairing, tutoring, giving readings – since the 1950s. He has also been a London borough councillor, a Labour parliamentary candidate (Richmond, Surrey, 1964), very much what I think of as decent, persistent, dogged "Old Labour" – sensitive but solid, inclining towards the puritan (though a self-confessed atheist in matters of religion) – and a strenuous campaigner for serious radio and television, anti-muzak, anti-destruction of libraries, for the proper traditional cultural concerns of the British Council, et al." 'Poetry: The vodka in the verse', The Guardian, October 7, 2006, Review Pages, p. 18
^"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our education system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."--Charles Bukowski, Life (magazine), December 1988, quoted from James A. Haught, ed, 2000 Years of Disbelief.
^Barker, Dan (2011). The Good Atheist: Living a Purpose-Filled Life Without God. Ulysses Press. p. 170. ISBN9781569758465. An essayist who popularized the American romantic view of nature, Burroughs wrote, "When I look up at the starry heavens at night and reflect upon what is it that I really see there, I am constrained to say, 'There is no God.'" In his 1910 journal, he wrote: "Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all-that has been my religion."
^Bush describes himself as "an atheist who has nevertheless worked intimately in Jewish religious institutions as a writer and editor for much of my adult life." The rabbi and the atheistArchived 2012-02-07 at the Wayback Machine, New Jersey Jewish News, September 20, 2007 (accessed 21 April 2008).
^"By this time she had become an atheist and socialist." Nathalie Blondel: 'Butts, Mary Franeis (1890–1937)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [5] (accessed April 30, 2008).
^"Though an atheist, Cabral had a deep, atavistic fear of the devil. When his wife died in 1986, he placed an emblem of Our Lady of Carmen around her neck, saying, in his mocking way, that this would make sure that she went directly to heaven, without being stopped at customs." 'Joao Cabral: His poetry voiced the sufferings of Brazil's poor', The Guardian, October 18, 1999, Leader Pages; p. 18.
^He stated in a 1936 lecture to Harvard Divinity School students: "Most students ... wish to know whether I believe in the existence of God or in immortality, and if so why. They regard it impossible to leave these matters unsettled – or at least extremely detrimental to religion not to have the basis of such conviction. Now for my part I do not find it impossible to leave them open.... I can describe myself as no ardent theist or atheist." – Henry Cadbury, "My Personal Religion", republished on the Quaker Universalist Fellowship website.
^Cf. "Political Autobiography of a Young Man" and "Objective Biographical Notice" in Hermit in Paris, 133, 162
^David Simpson writes that Camus affirmed "a defiantly atheistic creed." Albert Camus (1913–1960), The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006, (Accessed June 14, 2007).
^ abHaught, James A. (1996). 2,000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt. Prometheus Books. pp. 261–262. ISBN1-57392-067-3.
^Biagini, Mario, Giosuè Carducci, Mursia, 1976, p. 208.
^"All the mythic versions of women, from the myth of the redeeming purity of the virgin to that of the healing, reconciling mother, are consolatory nonsenses; and consolatory nonsense seems to me a fair definition of myth, anyway. Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths of these cults gives women emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place." Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (1978) p. 5
^Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich; Karlinsky, Simon; Heim, Michael Henry (1997). Karlinsky, Simon (ed.). Anton Chekhov's Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary. Northwestern University Press. p. 13. ISBN9780810114609. While Anton did not turn into the kind of militant atheist that his older brother Alexander eventually became, there is no doubt that he was a nonbeliever in the last decades of his life.
^Tabachnikova, Olga (2010). Anton Chekhov Through the Eyes of Russian Thinkers: Vasilii Rozanov, Dmitrii Merezhkovskii and Lev Shestov. Anthem Press. p. 26. ISBN978-1-84331-841-5. For Rozanov, Chekhov represents a concluding stage of classical Russian literature at the turn of the centuries, caused by the 'fading' of a thousand' years old Christian tradition which was spiritually feeding this literature. On the one hand, Rozanov regards Chekhov's positivism and atheism as his shortcomings, naming them amongst the reasons of Chekhov's popularity in society.
^Pevear, Richard (2009). Selected Stories of Anton Chekov. Random House Digital, Inc. pp. xxii. ISBN9780307568281. 'In his revelation of those evangelical elements,' writes Leonid Grossman, 'the atheist Chekhov is unquestionably one of the most Christian poets of world literature.'
^Narayan, Kirin (2012). Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov. University of Chicago Press. ISBN9780226567921. Though Chekhov considered himself an atheist – partly in response to his tyrannically religious father – his childhood familiarity with the rituals and stories of the Russian Orthodox Church pervades many of his stories.
^"...Stanley [Kubrick] is a Jew and I'm an atheist". Clarke quoted in Jeromy Agel (Ed.) (1970). The Making of Kubrick's 2001: p. 306
^"We can only guess what Clodd would have thought of having an evangelical preacher owning his old house: he was a noted atheist, who rejected his parents' ambition for him to become a Baptist minister in favour of becoming chairman of the Rationalist Press Association. His contribution to literature was in popularising the work of Charles Darwin and other evolutionary scientists in the face of opposition from the church. "The story of creation", wrote Clodd, " is the story of gas into genius"." Rose Gibbs, 'A religious conversion', The Sunday Telegraph, August 14, 2005, Section: House & Home, p. 4.
^In his fictionalized autobiography Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997), Coatzee writes of himself: "Though he himself is an atheist and has always been one, he feels he understands Jesus better" than his religious teacher does. Adam Kirsch, "With Fear and Trembling: The essential Prostestantism of J. M. Coetzee's late fiction", The Nation, vol. 304, no. 18 (June 19/26, 2017), p. 38. The whole review article: pp. 37–38, 40.
^"For one whose life had been so full of ironies, it was fitting that five priests celebrated a requiem mass for him in Youghal, although he had been a committed atheist." Richard Ingrams: 'Cockburn, (Francis) Claud (1904–1981), rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, May 2006 [6] (accessed April 30, 2008).
^"An unlikely friendship developed between Reckitt and G. D. H. Cole. Although an unapproachable cold atheist, and at root an anarchist, Cole joined forces with Reckitt, the clubbable, romantic medievalist, archetypal bourgeois, and unswerving Anglican with a dogmatic faith, to found the National Guilds League in 1915." J. S. Peart-Binns, 'Reckitt, Maurice Benington (1888–1980)', rev., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 (accessed May 2, 2008).
^"Like Margaret Jourdain, and most of her characters who are not fools or knaves, Ivy Compton-Burnett was a firm atheist, dismissing religion because 'No good can come of it' (Spurling, Ivy when Young, 77)." Patrick Lyons: 'Burnett, Dame Ivy Compton- (1884–1969)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [7] (accessed April 30, 2008).
^" 'Don't stand any nonsense from the Astors,' Sitwell concluded: prophetic advice, for within a short time of his arrival, Lord Astor was writing to the new literary editor to say that reviewers must combine 'ability and character and high ideals': he was especially worried in case A.L. Rowse proved a 'militant atheist', for 'I am convinced that our great influence in the world is because this country has given a definite place to religion and to free religion, ie Protestantism at that.' Undaunted, Connolly made it plain in his reply that he would not put up with such nonsense: he himself was an atheist, and discerned no difference in behaviour between an English Protestant and an English atheist." Jeremy Lewis, 'Wine, Women, £800 a Year: Nice One, Cyril', The Observer, April 13, 1997, The Observer Review Pages, p. 1.
^"Like [Joseph] Conrad, [his wife] Jessie was nominally a Catholic but actually an atheist." Jeffrey Meyers, Joseph Conrad: a Biography, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1991, ISBN0-684-19230-6, p. 139.
^'Cooper' was the pen name of Harry Hoff. "As a militant atheist he was especially on his guard in churches, and at the wedding of a much younger friend had to be restrained from heckling the bride's clerical uncle, who was delivering an address." D. J. Taylor, 'Hoff, Harry Summerfield (1910–2002)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn, Oxford University Press, January 2006 (accessed May 1, 2008).
^"The impulse of this book came when I was writing Quarantine. At the end of writing that book, I was no less of an atheist than I was before, yet it did make me think about my atheism. Thinking about the bleakness of my own atheism, and the inadequacy of the old fashioned kind of atheism when the big events of life – especially death – came along, made me want to see whether I could come up with a narrative of comfort, a false narrative of comfort, but one that could match the narratives of comfort religions come up with to get you through death and bereavement." Jim Crace, Beatrice Interview: Jim Crace, c. 1999 (accessed April 28, 2008).
^Criticising the 'New Atheists' (Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins, Onfray, Grayling and co.), Dalrymple wrote: "Yet with the possible exception of Dennett's [book Breaking the Spell], they advance no argument that I, the village atheist, could not have made by the age of 14 (Saint Anselm's ontological argument for God's existence gave me the greatest difficulty, but I had taken Hume to heart on the weakness of the argument from design)." What the New Atheists Don't See, City Journal, Autumn 2007 (accessed April 24, 2008).
^Chattopadhyay, Debiprasad (1994). "FOUR CALCUTTANS IN DEFENCE OF SCIENTIFIC TEMPER"(PDF). Indian Journal of History of Science. p. 112. Archived from the original(PDF) on 21 November 2012. Retrieved 10 July 2012. As contrasted with Bacon, however, Datta's enthusiasm for natural science ultimately led him to become a stark atheist going to the extent of disproving the efficacy of prayer with an ingenious arguments,...
^"As a boy he attended a nonconformist chapel, and later an Anglican church, but in later life was to declare himself an atheist." Meic Stephens: 'Davies, Rhys (1901–1978)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [8] (accessed April 30, 2008).
^"Davison died on May 24, 1970 at Greensborough, Melbourne; a lifelong atheist, he was cremated after a secular funeral." Robert Darby, 'Davison, Frank Dalby (1893–1970)', Australian Dictionary of Biography Online Edition (accessed July 16, 2008).
^D'Souza, Dinesh, What's so great about Christianity, Regnery Publishing, 2007, p. 22.
^"De Sade overcame his boredom and anger in prison by writing sexually graphic novels and plays. In July 1782 he finished his Dialogue entre un prêtre et un moribond (Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man), in which he declared himself an atheist." 'Sade, Marquis de.' Encyclopædia Britannica, 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online (accessed August 1, 2008).
^"He rejected his father's ambition to make him a rabbi. Instead he became an atheist and, following in the footsteps of Marx, Trotsky, and his countrywoman Rosa Luxemburg, a lifelong 'non-Jewish Jew' (Non-Jewish Jew, ed. Deutscher)." John McIlroy: 'Deutscher, Isaac (1907–1967)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [9] (accessed April 30, 2008).
^"Friends said Disch had been despondent over ill health and Naylor's death in 2005. Yet he seemed in good humor for a brief Publishers Weekly interview last spring about his most recent book, The Word of God. An outspoken atheist, Disch adopted the deity's perspective to score points on the absurdity of hell and similar numinous postulates. 'One of the wonderful things about being God is you can say such nonsense and it's all true,' he said." Stephen Miller, "Thomas M. Disch, 68, Eclectic Writer of Science Fiction", The New York Sun, July 8, 2008, Obituaries, p. 6.
^Linati, Carlo, Dossi, Garzanti, Milano, 1944, p. 452.
^"He does appreciate the new and confident pluralism that has loosened the grip of the Roman Catholic hierarchy on education. His three children attend secular state schools, and he welcomes the widening 'rift between Church and state. It has happened, it is happening, and for me that's a great thing. As an atheist, I feel very comfortable in Ireland now.'" Boyd Tonkin interviewing Doyle, The Independent (London), September 17, 2004, Features, pp. 20–21.
^Cowie, Alexander, Alfred Kazin, and Charles Shapiro. "The Stature of Theodore Dreiser: A Critical Survey of the Man and His Work." American Literature 28.2 (1956): 244. Web. "he turned against his father's orthodox religion and became an atheist."
^"But the 21st century has done nothing to prevent two others from the Manchester area from reshaping and modernising the Christmas story -the poet Carol Ann Duffy and the composer Sasha Johnson Manning, who have written 16 new carols. Duffy, brought up a Catholic, pronounces herself an atheist; Johnson Manning is a committed Christian." Geoff Brown, 'O great big town of Manchester', The Times, December 7, 2007, Times2; p. 15.
^"It was also a sign that, though Eagleton is now an atheist, he has not entirely shaken off his religious upbringing. "I attacked Dawkins's book on God because I think he is theologically illiterate. I value my Catholic background very much. It taught me not to be afraid of rigorous thought, for one thing." But it is also because, he insists, Marxism offers the blueprint for a moral society." Paul Vallely, 'Class warrior; The Saturday Profile: Terry Eagleton', The Independent (London), October 13, 2007, p. 42.
^"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,...'
^"Tariq likes permanent revolution, whereas I am a libertarian conservative. True, we are both atheists, but Tariq is evangelical while I am benign about religion and think the Throne should be occupied by a member of the Church of England." Ruth Dudley-Edwards, 'Will half of Ireland really back Cameroon? How will a win affect public sentiment? Or a defeat?', The Daily Telegraph, June 1, 2002, p. 24.
^"I was raised as a Christian, and I still retain a lot of the values of Christianity. The trouble with basing values on religions, though, is that the premises of most of them are pure wishful thinking; you either have to refuse to scrutinise those premises – take them on faith, declare that they "transcend logic" – or reject them. As Paul Davies has said, most Christian theologians have retreated from all the things that their religion supposedly asserts; they take a much more "modern" view than the average believer. But by the time you've "modernised" something like Christianity – starting off with "Genesis was all just poetry" and ending up with "Well, of course there's no such thing as a personal God" – there's not much point pretending that there's anything religious left. You might as well come clean and admit that you're an atheist with certain values, which are historical, cultural, biological, and personal in origin, and have nothing to do with anything called God." Greg Egan, An Interview With Greg Egan, Eidolon 11, pp. 18–30, January 1993 (accessed April 28, 2008)
^"When I discussed my own atheism and Peter his own belief, he wrote that he needed God as a "friend of loneliness, who does not speak, does not laugh, does not cry"." Greg Egan, Letters from the forgotten, The Age (Australia), February 17, 2005 (accessed April 28, 2008)
^Q: "Are you a religious man?" Eggers: "Most of my siblings and I stopped believing when we were around 14. I'm somewhere between an atheist and an agnostic – I'd be an atheist if I could muster the energy." 'You Ask The Questions: Dave Eggers', The Independent (London), September 30, 2004, Features, p. 5.
^"Saturday, my last night at the [Motel] 6, and I refuse to spend it crushed in my room. But what is a person of limited means and no taste for "carousing" to do? Several times during the week, I have driven past the "Deliverance" church downtown, and the name alone exerts a scary attraction... The marquee in front of the church is advertising a Saturday night "tent revival", which sounds like the perfect entertainment for an atheist out on her own." Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich, Henry Holt and Company, 2001, (p. 66-67) ISBN0-8050-6389-7
^Interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air on 8 April 2014 in connection with Ehrenreich's just published book, Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything, Ehrenreich confirmed that she had been an avowed atheist since childhood.
^"Look, I'm an atheist. People say to me, do you believe in God? No, I don't believe in God." Harlan Ellison in clue book for the computer version of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream("Harlan Ellison – Celebrity Atheist List". Archived from the original on 2009-01-11. Retrieved 2008-05-27..)
^Esfandiary, F. M. Upwingers: A Futurist Manifesto. p. 185.
^"He died of prostate cancer in Trinity Hospice, in Clapham, south London, on October 23, 1995. He was a declared atheist and a member of the Humanist Society and he was cremated on October 30 at Putney Vale crematorium, south London." Paul Vaughan: 'Ewart, Gavin Buchanan (1916–1995)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, May 2006 [10] (accessed April 30, 2008).
^"Baptised at 11 ("Did I feel transfigured or just wet?"), Faber lost his faith early. "I left my parents a letter explaining that I didn't believe in God. The more I read, the more I felt that we were dealing with myths: human attempts to come to terms with the big challenges of life. My parents were very upset. My mother said: 'This means we won't meet you in heaven.' For years I was quite a militant atheist. I wanted to burn down all the churches or turn them into second-hand record emporiums." He softened in his thirties. "I don't have any faith myself, but I think that religion is here to stay. When you go to buy a paper you have to accept that the newsagent believes he'll go to a paradise after he dies where there are virgins running around, or he believes the world was created in seven days... there will be some belief that doesn't make any scientific sense. That doesn't mean you can't buy a newspaper from him or ask how his kids are." Faber recently attended an art exhibition at his local church and was moved when the rector told him: 'If you see anybody else out there who looks hungry, just bring them in.' "It is sinful to be too cynical about that", he says. "My feelings are a bit schizophrenic. I get increasingly respectful of people who have faith and increasingly creeped out by them." " Helen Brown interviewing Faber, 'Faith in forgiveness', The Daily Telegraph (London), 15 November 2008, Art, p. 10.
^"I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion." Prophet of Decline: An interview with Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2005 (accessed April 10, 2008).
^American Atheists article on Fisher "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2008-06-15. Retrieved 2008-05-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^"I've been doing media appearances as a secular humanist activist for fifteen years now. I perennially underwent this exchange: REPORTER/HOST: Are you an atheist? ME: I call myself a secular humanist. Secular humanists disbelieve in the supernatural and prefer to use reason, compassion, and the methods of science to build the good life in this life. REPORTER/HOST: But you're an atheist, aren't you? I couldn't sidestep the "A" word. When I tried, it was all I'd get to talk about. Today, I handle this question differently: REPORTER/HOST: Are you an atheist? ME: Yes, but that's only the beginning." Tom Flynn, Why The "A" Word Won't Go AwayArchived 2008-06-16 at the Wayback Machine, Council for Secular Humanism op-ed article (accessed April 30, 2008).
^"Follett, who is 58, was born in Cardiff, the son of a tax inspector. His family belonged to the puritanical Plymouth Brethren, so he was barred from watching films and television and even visiting other churches. Sounds like a strict upbringing. Perhaps too strict, given that he is now an atheist. 'Yeah, as soon as I reached the age of reason – about 16 – I stopped going to church. But I also have a sybaritic streak and could never have been happy in any puritanical religion. Self-denial is not my thing." Nigel Farndale, 'Damn Right I Got The Talent', The Sunday Telegraph, October 7, 2007, Section 7 (Books), p. 22.
^"In 1989 a stroke slightly impaired his memory. But the death of Elizabeth, who had been in all his novels, was an incomparably worse blow. "As an atheist, it made me very angry with someone – He, She or It – who doesn't exist", he said. It was the paradox his books had been written to solve." John Ezard, 'Obituary: John Fowles', The Guardian, November 8, 2005, p. 36.
^"Hijuelos has a way of making even the most uninspiring life unique, the ugliest scene beautiful. This devout atheist was moved and at moments even transported." Maureen Freely, reviewing Mr Ives' Christmas by Oscar Hijuelos, The Guardian (London), December 17, 1995, The Observer Review Page, p. 15
^"I don't believe in God or a higher power. I believe that you shouldn't be allowed to impose morality on people because a book written several thousand years ago says so." James Frey, 'This Much I Know', The Observer (England), 14 September 2008, Observer Magazine, p. 10.
^"Frederick Furnivall was a man of diverse causes, all based on passionately held beliefs: vegetarianism, sculling, spelling reform, atheism (in his later years), socialism, egalitarianism, teetotalism, and above all the supreme importance of editing historic and literary texts that could shed light on the cultural and social life of England's past." William S. Peterson, 'Furnivall, Frederick James (1825–1910)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edition, May 2007 (accessed May 2, 2008).
^In his introduction to the Sunshine screenplay (Faber and Faber 2007), Garland writes: "Aside from being a love letter to its antecedents, I wrote Sunshine as a film about atheism. A crew is en route to a God-like entity: the Sun. The Sun is larger and more powerful than we can imagine. The Sun gave us life, and can take it away. It is nurturing, in that it provides the means of our survival, but also terrifying and hostile ... Ultimately, even the most rational crew member is overwhelmed by his sense of wonder and, as he falls into the star, he believes he is touching the face of God. But he isn't. The Sun is God-like, but not God. Not a conscious being. Not a divine architect. And the crew member is only doing what man has always done: making an awestruck category error when confronted with our small place within the vast and neutral scheme of things. The director, Danny Boyle, who is not atheistic in the way that I am, felt differently. He believed that the crew actually were meeting God. I didn't see this as a major problem, because the difference in our approach wasn't in conflict with the way in which the story would be told."
^"Constance became a lifelong sceptic and atheist." Patrick Waddington: 'Garnett, Constance Clara (1861–1946)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edition, May 2007 [11] (accessed May 1, 2008).
^"I am an atheist who married in a register office, but I can sympathise with those who don't want the clerkish atmosphere of the civic ceremony, the threadbare, legalistic words." Nicci Gerrard, 'Beyond belief', The Observer, January 2, 2000, Observer Review Pages; p. 1.
^From an interview with Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein by Steve Paulson for Salon magazine: "Spinoza certainly dismissed the religion he'd been exposed to. Do both of you consider yourselves atheists? [pause] Goldstein: Yes. Pinker: Yes. Goldstein: Proud atheists. Pinker: There, we said it. [Laughs.] [Paulson:] So you have to hesitate for a moment before you use that dirty word? PINKER: Atheists are the most reviled minority in the United States, so it's no small matter to come out and say it." 'Proud AtheistsArchived 2008-07-25 at the Wayback Machine', Salon.com, October 15, 2007 (accessed August 5, 2008).
^"I have no religion – I'm an atheist, and I don't believe in any afterlife..." Gordimer looks towards end", BBC News, 2003-06-06. Retrieved on 2007-07-07.
^Evgeniĭ Aleksandrovich Dobrenko (2007). Political Economy of Socialist Realism. Yale University Press. p. 76. ISBN9780300122800. Gorky hated religion with all the passion of a former God-builder. Probably no other Russian writer (unless one considers Dem'ian Bednyi a writer) expressed so many angry words about God, religion, and the church. But Gorky's atheism always fed on that same hatred of nature. He wrote about God and about nature in the very same terms.
^Gottlieb, Robert (2016). Avid Reader: A Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 13–15. ISBN978-1250141057.
^Jones, Steve (2006). Antonio Gramsci. Taylor & Francis. p. 46. ISBN978-0-415-31947-8. Yet, despite his own atheism, Gramsci did not see the Church as automatically reactionary.
^"In addition, between 1919 and 1924 Nancy gave birth to four children in under five years; while Graves (now an atheist like his wife) suffered from recurring bouts of shell-shock." Richard Perceval Graves, 'Graves, Robert von Ranke (1895–1985)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edition, October 2006 [12] (accessed May 1, 2008).
^"Though Greene later objected to being called a 'Catholic novelist', he became celebrated for employing religious themes in his works, praised by Catholic critics during his lifetime for the powerful way in which his novels explore the subjects of sin, damnation, evil, and divine forgiveness. But Greene's relationship with the church was never easy, and he was often critical of the religion. In his last years he began referring to himself as a 'Catholic atheist' (Shelden, 6)." Michael Shelden: 'Greene, (Henry) Graham (1904–1991)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edition, January 2006 [13] (accessed May 1, 2008).
^"I don't like conventional religious piety. I'm more at ease with the Catholicism of Catholic countries. I've always found it difficult to believe in God. I suppose I'd now call myself a Catholic atheist." Graham Greene, interviewed by VS Pritchett, Saturday Review: Graham Greene into the light', The Times, March 18, 1978; p. 6; Issue 60260; col A.
^"I am still a Catholic, I just don't believe in God. I am an atheist Catholic – there are a lot of them around. One thing lapsed Catholics do not do is go in for an 'inferior' religion with less in the way of tradition and intellectual content." Greer, Germaine (November 27, 2003), The habit of a lifetime, The Guardian. Accessed February 12, 2008.
^"Sitting in his home in Jerusalem, Grossman says he can see nothing in his own 'banal' upbringing to explain the path he took. His father emigrated from Poland to Palestine in 1933, working as a bus driver and raising his family along traditional lines. Grossman describes himself as 'very secular, an atheist and very, very Jewish.'" Sarah Helm, 'The moral guardian, writing to create an emotional bridge', The Independent (London), May 29, 1993, Weekend section, p. 29.
^(in Swedish)Translation: "I am [an] atheist, but Ann-Marie and I light a candle anyway. I have dedicated "Madame Terror" to her. Since she has helped me much with [my] books, not least with this one, the latest. Much talk on and forth, I've had a lot yellings." "Det ska mycket till för att reta upp mig". Expressen. 2006-12-03. Archived from the original on 2007-01-19. Retrieved 2007-01-20.
^"Mr. Handler... describes himself as a 'secular humanist.'", Lemony Snicket reaches 'The End', by Todd Leopold, CNN, October 5, 2006 (Accessed April 5, 2008)
^Interviewer: "Are the Baudelaires Jewish?" Handler: "I think that if you had that many terrible things happen to you, you'd probably become an atheist." A Very Frustrating DialogueArchived 2008-06-24 at the Wayback Machine, by Marc Silver, U.S. News & World Report web exclusive, 5/20/02 (Accessed April 5, 2008)
^"Although Hansberry was an atheist – that is, she did not believe in God – she strongly disagreed with the absurdist philosophy and its logical conclusion, hopelessness." Janet Tripp, Janet Tripp, Lorraine Hansberry (1997), p. 56.
^"Although his parents never saw the poems he wrote about them, they are still included in his audience. "I'm a total atheist but I do write things for them." " The Guardian Profile: Tony Harrison, April 1, 2000 (accessed April 15, 2008)
^"I am not a believer. In fact, on religious matters, I am inclined to take the Christopher Hitchens line – not only am I atheist, I am anti-theist. (If God did exist, I would be against him on any number of grounds, not least of which is that He is always behaving in such an unreasonable, autocratic manner.)" Zoë Heller, 'God doesn't have the best tunes New York', The Daily Telegraph, March 27, 2004, Features, Comment, p. 22.
^New, David S. (2013). Holy War. McFarland. ISBN9781476603919. Herzl, for example, was an atheist.
^Standish, David (2007). Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations, and Marvelous Machines Below the Earth's Surface. Da Capo Press. p. 126. ISBN978-0-306-81533-1. Various biographers have pointed out that his publisher, Hetzel, an atheist, routinely urged Verne to insert more family values–style Christianity into his stories to make them more commercially viable among mainstream readers.
^"She was educated at home, by correspondence and at Perth College. This was run by Anglican nuns who, she said, informed her she would never enter the kingdom of heaven. Since she was already an atheist – which she remained all her life – she greeted this news with a certain nonchalance. She was amused when, in later life, she was designated as a patron saint of Australian writers." Philip Jones, 'Obituary: Dorothy Hewett', The Guardian, September 5, 2002, p. 26.
^"Hind became a socialist and an atheist, and at 14 left Riverside high school, Carntyne, and became a process clerk at Britain's largest engineering firm, Beardmore." Jackie Kemp, 'Obituary: Archie Hind: Author of a novel of Glasgow working-class life which won the Guardian award', The Guardian, February 29, 2008, p. 41.
^"Secularism is not just a smug attitude. It is a possible way of democratic and pluralistic life that only became thinkable after several wars and revolutions had ruthlessly smashed the hold of the clergy on the state. ... I have spent all my life on the atheist side of this argument..." Hitchens in Slate.com article, "Bush's Secularist Triumph".
^"Grimly atheist, he appreciated Nietzsche's attempt to establish a philosophy that was simultaneously nihilist and life-affirming. He understood Nietzsche's keen wit, and was very funny in his own fashion, cracking many a joke, often at his own expense. ("A drink? Oh alright, just a large one!")" Carol Diethe, 'Obituary: RJ Hollingdale', The Guardian, October 10, 2001, p. 24.
^Jim Page, the chairman of the Housman Society, said: ... "He writes about church bells in his poems and his ashes are buried at the church in Ludlow. He was an atheist but retained an affection for churches and the sound of the bells." Richard Savill, "Housman's bells ring again at Bredon", The Daily Telegraph, June 28, 2004, p. 8.
^"Hyman blatantly proclaimed his biases: for example, he vigorously opposed any critical approach that took organized religion seriously (he often described himself as a "militant atheist"), and his dismissal of Eliot and Winters was based in part on their religious sympathies." Ann T. Keene: "Hyman, Stanley Edgar", American National Biography Online, February 2000 (accessed April 28, 2008) [14].
^McLeish, Kenneth; Mulrine, Stephen (2005). Ibsen: Three Plays. Nick Hern Books. p. xxvi. ISBN9781854598462. Sternly atheist, unswervingly rationalist, he allows religion no part in the events of Hedda Gabler. When characters do invoke God (Tesman; Mrs Elvsted; Miss Tesman) it is a superficial, conventional way of talking, to add emphasis to otherwise bland remarks – and Ibsen the ironist takes it one step further when he makes Brack invoke, for the same purpose, not the deity but the devil.
^"But what had religion to do with it? I am not remotely religious. What brought out the venom of my attack – in so far as that's a fair description, which it isn't – was the complacency of Dawkins' prose, his inability, which he mistakes for a virtue, to imagine how another living soul imagines the universe. All of which I could have said exactly as I said it and still been more of an atheist than he is." Howard Jacobson, The Independent (London), September 15, 2007, Comment, p. 52.
^"Despite his interest in theology, Jacobson is not much of a believer, but whatever you do, don't call him an atheist. "I don't believe in God in the way believers believe in God, but I suddenly don't want to call myself an atheist, because atheists talk with such certainty. I don't know where you get this certainty from. There are things we don't know." " Luiza Sauma, 'Howard Jacobson', The New Review, 11 January 2009, p. 41.
^"As an atheist and an ex-Catholic, I cannot claim to be displeased at the spectacle of the Roman Catholic Church continuing to shoot itself in the foot by refusing to ordain women or to allow priests to marry." Susan Jacoby, 'Priestly celibacy: The Vatican's self-inflicted wound', The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC), May 18, 2009, p. a7.
^"I really do think religions are just advertising agencies for a product that doesn't exist." [15] retrieved September 16, 2008
^Reviewing Jenkins's The Missionaries, Paul Binding wrote: "In addition to registering as a pacifist Jenkins became a member of the Independent Labour Party and was a declared atheist." Paul Binding, 'Saints and sinners', The Guardian, November 5, 2005, Review Pages, p. 17.
^"Born near the Greek border in Gjirokaster in 1936, of two Muslim parents, Kadare claims to be an atheist. However, much of his language, especially when he talks of forgiving the old Stalinist order rather than seeking revenge, is Christian. The paradox, then, is that Kadare is a humanist who claims that the greatest riches of Albanian culture derive from its Christian tradition." John Murray, 'The Orphan's Voice', The Independent (London), January 25, 1998, Page 25.
^Gilman, Sander L. (2005). Franz Kafka. Reaktion Books. p. 31. ISBN9781861892546. Through his consumption of such books Kafka rejected both capitalism and religion as a teenager – declaring himself to be a socialist and an atheist.
^"K". Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature. Merriam-Webster. 1995. p. 617. ISBN9780877790426. As an adolescent, he declared himself a socialist as well as an atheist. As a Jew, Kafka was isolated from the German community in Prague, but as a modern intellectual he was also alienated from his own Jewish heritage.
^J. E. Luebering, ed. (2009). "Franz Kafka". The 100 Most Influential Writers of All Time. The Rosen Publishing Group. p. 272. ISBN9781615300969. Kafka's opposition to established society became apparent when, as an adolescent, he declared himself a socialist as well as an atheist.
^Golgotha Press (2012). The Life and Times of Franz Kafka. BookCaps Study Guides. ISBN9781621071518. In time Kafka would become an atheist.
^Leavitt, June (2011). The Mystical Life of Franz Kafka: Theosophy, Cabala, and the Modern Spiritual Revival. Oxford University Press. p. 8. ISBN978-0-19-982783-1. Undoubtedly, synagogue life appalled Kafka, but not because he was an atheist. It appalled him because, in his words, he was trying to "build his faith", and the conventional forms were not adequate.
^Lazarus, Benjamin (July 16, 2012). "Israel must relinquish ownership over Kafka". The Jewish Chronicle Online. Retrieved 15 March 2013. Whilst Kafka had a brief interest in Kabbalah, mysticism, and Yiddish theatre, he rarely attended synagogue and considered himself an atheist.
^C.D. Merriman (2005). "Franz Kafka". Jalic Inc. Retrieved 15 March 2013. Kafka eventually declared himself a socialist atheist, Spinoza, Darwin and Nietzsche some of his influences.
^Si. En Rāmacandran (2001). K. Shivarama Karanth. Sahitya Akademi. p. 15. ISBN978-81-260-1071-4. "I remember now that mother also, like our father, was an atheist; and she used to read and explain Bertrand Russel for us", writes Ullas Karanth, her second son, after the death of both Karanth and Leela.
^"It should be clear from the above, and is made explicit in an essay on 'The Importance of Glasgow in My Work', that Kelman's strengths as a writer and thinker have nothing inherent to do with his being (as he likes to put it) "a white middle-aged Glaswegian atheist Protestant-bred male writer and father of two mature daughters who spent his early years in Govan, Drumchapel, Partick and Maryhill"." Jenny Turner, 'Some Recent Attacks: Essays Cultural and Political', The Guardian (London), November 17, 1992, Features, p. 9.
^"Now I'm a pretty hardened atheist – not to mention something of a metropolitan sceptic – but I do appreciate the human need to believe that, behind life's important happenstantial events, there is a larger meaning. And even if we don't buy the "controlling hand of God", we often try to console ourselves with the "to everything a purpose" theory of chance. This is especially true in instances of random calamity." Douglas Kennedy, 'The Hand of Fate', The Independent (London), April 28, 2001, Features, p. 30-33.
^"Keyes remains "totally unapologetic" for her happy endings. "I get criticised for it, but I just think life is hard enough. At the risk of sounding like a smug wagon, my life was horrible and now it's not. I hate this attitude that we are all ricocheting around in despair. Hope is not my default position, but we have to work for it. I don't believe in God – I wish I did – so the only way for me is through other people: a connection with other people is what makes us whole. Misery is optional." " Aine O'Connor interviewing Keyes, 'Passing the character test', Sunday Times (London), 11 September 2005, Features, Eire Culture, p. 10.
^Krassner contributed a piece entitled 'Confessions of an Atheist' to the anthology Everything You Know About God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion (The Disinformation Company 2007, ISBN1-932857-59-1). Excerpt: "I had developed that habit of communicating with my imaginary friend when I was a kid who actually believed in an all-knowing, all-powerful Being. ... My faith disappeared when I was thirteen. ... On the day after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, I would read that headline over and over and over and over again. That afternoon, I told God I couldn't believe in him any more because he had allowed such devastation to happen. "Allowed? Why do you think I gave humans free will?" "Okay, well, I'm exercising my free will to believe that you don't exist." "All right, it's your loss!" So at least we would remain on speaking terms."
^"...Lagerkvist... wrote of himself that he was 'a believer without a belief, a religious atheist.'" The Religious Atheist, Time Magazine review of Lagerkvist's book The Death of Ahasuerus, February 23, 1962. Retrieved July 24, 2007.
^"Larkin, a typical moody 20th-century atheist, thought religion was "that vast moth-eaten musical brocade / Created to pretend we never die". A.N. Wilson, 'Give me that old-time religion', The Daily Telegraph, April 17, 2006, News section, End column, p. 19.
^"It is a curious fact, but if I want a poet who will get me in an Easter frame of mind, I turn not to these orthodox followers of the Creed, but to that out-and-out atheist and self-confessed nihilist Philip Larkin." A.N. Wilson, 'This is the time when Larkin comes into his own', The Daily Telegraph, April 21, 2003, World of Books section, p. 21.
^"In view of the enduring influence of Moses Gaster it is a mark of Marghanita Laski's true independence of mind that, while remaining proud of her Jewishness, she renounced her faith even before she went up to Oxford and declared herself to be an atheist." R. W. Burchfield, 'Laski, Marghanita (1915–1988)', rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2007 (accessed May 1, 2008).
^Laskier wrote: "The little faith I used to have has been completely shattered. If God existed, He would have certainly not permitted that human beings be thrown alive into furnaces, and the heads of little toddlers be smashed with gun butts or shoved into sacks and gassed to death." Aron Heller, "New Pages of Past Horror: Writings depict the innocence of a Jewish teen coming of age – and Nazi brutality", Associated Press, June 6, 2006.
^Le Guin, Ursula K. (1980). Wood, Susan (ed.). The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction. Ultramarine Publishing. p. 158. ISBN9780399504822. I talk about the gods, I an atheist.
^Howard Freedman, Carl, ed. (2008). Conversations with Ursula K. Le Guin. Univ. Press of Mississippi. p. 54. ISBN9781604730944. I am an atheist and I always have been; I have a great deal of trouble with C. S. Lewis, with the way his mind works.
^In his posthumously published Zibaldone, Leopardi writes, among other such arguments: "In sum, the foundation of everything, and of God himself, is nothing. Since nothing is absolutely necessary, there is no absolute reason why something could not be, or not be in a certain way...And everything is possible, that is there is no absolute reason why some arbitrary thing can not exist, or exist in a certain manner....And there is no absolute distinction between all these possibilities, nor absolute difference between all the possible perfections and so on....It is certain that since the Platonic forms that preexist all things have been destroyed, God is destroyed." (Zib. 1341-42, July 18, 1821) – trans. Francesco Franco
^Kauffman, Bill. America First!: Its History, Culture, and Politics. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1995. Print. "Sinclair Lewis was...town atheist..." p. 118
^"Religion was to her but the go-kart of the infant race; to be cast aside so soon as it could walk alone." Bio
^Gabel, Stewart (2012). Jack London: a Man in Search of Meaning: A Jungian Perspective. AuthorHouse. p. 14. ISBN9781477283332. When he was tramping, arrested and jailed for one month for vagrancy at about 19 years of age, he listed "atheist" as his religion on the necessary forms (Kershaw, 1997).
^Kershaw, Alex (2013). Jack London: A Life. HarperCollins UK. ISBN9780007496631. 'On June 29, 1894,' his prison record read, ' one John London, age 18: Single: Father & Mother Living, Occupation – Sailor; Religion – Atheist; – was received at the Erie County Penitentiary, for a term of 30 Days, charge of Tramp,...
^Repeatedly mentioned in Lesley Blanch's biography of him: Pierre Loti – Travels with the Legendary Romantic.
^Joshi, The Scriptorium, "H. P. Lovecraft", section II.
^"A convinced atheist, he had discussed the possibility of suicide with his friend Fruttero in the past, at one time contemplating driving his car into a canal with his companion, Simone Bennes Darses, at his side. On this occasion he rose early, leaving her sleeping undisturbed in bed." Philip Willan, 'Obituary: Franco Lucentini', The Guardian, August 9, 2002, p. 18.
^Matthew W. Dickie, "Lucian's Gods: Lucian's Understanding of the Divine" in The Gods of Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations (Edinburgh University Press, 2010), pp. 348–361. Dickie emphasizes that Lucian wrote in a sometimes self-contradictory range of first-person personae that make it difficult to assess his own beliefs.
^Lieutinent- Hime (2004). "Lucian's Philosophy and Religion". Lucian the Syrian Satirist. Kessinger Publishing. p. 43. ISBN9781417927746. Both of them struck at a great religion, but they had very different objects in view. Voltaire, a theist, tried to level the obstacles that barred the way into the temple of Theism; Lucian, an atheist, tried to raze the temple itself.
^Dickie, "Lucian's Gods", p. 352: "Lucian's appointment to a position of high authority in the concilium, the inner circle, of the praefectus of Egypt suggests a man not viewed as dangerously irreligious, in ancient terms, an ἄθεος [atheos], let alone as atheistical in the modern understanding of the word."
^"During the Second World War McCaig was a conscientious objector, though not on religious grounds for, as he asserted in an interview, 'I was born an atheist' (Murray, 88)." Hilda D. Spear, 'MacCaig, Norman Alexander (1910–1996)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edition, May 2007 (accessed May 2, 2008).
^Erin Maglaque, "Free from Humbug" (review of Alexander Lee, Machiavelli: His Life and Times, Picador, 2020, ISBN978 1 4472 749 9 5, 762 pp.), London Review of Books, vol. 42, no. 14 (16 July 2020), pp. 37, 39. Quotation: p. 37.
^"There was grim humour in such careful planning. Perhaps Mackay, also, was serious about sainthood. Amongst the allusions and quotations in his memoir, the King James Bible and Bunyan's wonderful Pilgrim's Progress are predominant. He was an atheist, he reiterated, but his disappointment with the world – with failed and brutal Communism, with crass capitalist consumerism – moved him towards "prophecy" in the Judaeo-Christian tradition." Obituary: Colin Mackay, The Independent (London), August 9, 2003, p. 20.
^"He was a robust atheist whose Jewishness oozed from every pore." Marcus's wife Ita Daly in his obituary, 'Sarah and I were his pride and joy – as he was ours', Irish Independent, 16 May 2009.
^"Gide's campaign of liberation extended to religion and politics. His friend Roger Martin du Gard saw disbelief as a modern responsibility, and claimed that 'my atheism was formed at the same time as my mind'." Peter Conrad, reviewing André Gide: A Life in the Present by Alan Sheridan, The Observer, November 15, 1998, The Observer Review Page; p. 15.
^"I thought the world would be colder when I became an atheist, but afterwards, I felt more wonder about everything, because all this was made without God", says Massicotte. "Love is just a biological function of our evolution. It sounds cold, but at the same time, it's important to remember how wonderful that is. So, I guess I'm still a romantic." Alan Cho interviewing Massicotte, 'Massicotte thinks your religion is stupidArchived 2009-03-15 at the Wayback Machine', Fast Forward Weekly, March 5, 2009 (accessed 30 April 2009).
^"So why should Maugham, self-declared atheist, "continental" more than English, choose so inappropriate a burial place?" Shona Crawford Poole, 'Pilgrimage to the heart of England', The Times, January 26, 1985; p. 12; Issue 62046; col D.
^"In The Summing Up (1938) and A Writer's Notebook (1949) Maugham explains his philosophy of life as a resigned atheism and a certain skepticism about the extent of man's innate goodness and intelligence; it is this that gives his work its astringent cynicism." 'Maugham, W. Somerset', Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed May 8, 2008.
^"Throughout her childhood, McCarthy took refuge in Catholicism, but, although she was schooled in convents and considered herself a devout Catholic, she tried to call attention to herself as a teenager by pretending to have lost her faith. Questioned about her claim, she found that she had in fact done so. She remained an atheist." Kathy D. Hadley: "McCarthy, Mary", American National Biography Online, February 2000 (accessed April 28, 2008) [17].
^" I am certainly an atheist, but prefer the description rationalist or even better, normal" The Times (London), June 25, 1986, page 15
^"Yes, I am an atheist, and probably Briony is, too. Atheists have as much conscience, possibly more, than people with deep religious conviction, and they still have the same problem of how they reconcile themselves to a bad deed in the past. It's a little easier if you've got a god to forgive you." Solomon, Deborah (December 2, 2007). "A Sinner's Tale: Questions for Ian McEwan". The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-12-02.
^"My distaste for Lewis and Tolkien as writers does not stem from the fact that, as an atheist, I disagree with their religious beliefs or think that religious concerns cannot make great literature." – Reinvigorating the Fantastic, Accessed February 12, 2007.
^Interviewed in 2004 by Jonathan Miller for his television series Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief, Arthur Miller said: "Well I tried to be a religious person when I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, it lasted about two years. And then it simply vanished. I simply lay down one evening to go to sleep and woke up the next day and it wasn't there anymore. ... Of course, I could no longer believe. I quickly, at some point in my late teens, began reading and surmising that the idea of religion was a creation of man's longing to be a permanent part of the universe. ... But myself, personally, I don't have the talent to believe. ... It just seems to me so patent that what man has done is to project himself into the heavens, where he can be all-powerful as he's not here, and moral, and decent, and vengeful, and all the things he's not allowed to do on the earth, and to don that white garment and the beard and be what he wished in his dreams he could be... and I just can't get past that." The Atheism Tapes: Arthur Miller, 3.25–6.14, BBC television, first broadcast October 2004.
^"The books live on. But in real life Toad is dead; Alice is dead; Peter Pan and Wendy are long flown; and now Christopher Robin, a 'sweet and decent' man who overcame a childhood in which he was haunted by Pooh and taunted by peers, has left without saying his prayers – he was a dedicated atheist – aged 75." Euan Ferguson, Robin's gone, but swallows linger on', The Observer, April 28, 1996, News, p. 14.
^Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism.[18]
^"At the close of the Franco regime, he was already advocating personal liberation on every front – he was atheist, homosexual, anti-bourgeois and a leading figure of the early "Movida" led by artists and film-makers with provocative zest typical of what became called "the divine left-wing"." James Kirkup, 'Obituary: Terenci Moix', The Independent (London), April 7, 2003, p. 19.
^"Themes of guilt, sin and religion have always preoccupied him. 'I'm interested in them as themes – I'm not obsessed. I'm interested in people who struggle with these things. But I have never suffered from them myself. I was never personally convinced by religion.' With the calmness of a man discussing his favourite TV show, he said 'There is no such thing as heaven. I've never believed in God. I still don't. But I am certainly fascinated by those who do.' " Eileen Battersby, 'Brian Moore 1921–1999', The Irish Times, 13 January 1999, Home News, p. 11.
^"I'm also obsessed by religion, being an atheist myself. There's something eternally fascinating about respectability gone wrong." Quoted in Sheridan Morley, 'Mortimer on Heaven and Hell', The Times, May 27, 1976; p. 7; issue 59714; col. E.
^"Mr Motion said that generations of teachers with less and less knowledge of the Bible had left even the brightest students with a "sketchy" understanding of once familiar stories. The poet, who describes himself as an atheist, called for an overhaul of the school curriculum to reverse the "depressing" trend which threatened to leave future generations unable to fully understand the works of Milton and Shakespeare or even more recent writers such as TS Eliot." John Bingham, 'Poet Laureate Andrew Motion calls for all children to be taught the Bible', The Daily Telegraph, 17 February 2009 (accessed 6 March 2009).
^Clare Mulley's website [19] ("About the Author" page) describes her as "a left-wing atheist."
^"Iris was a rare being in the modern world – a dispassionate scholar who understood passion, an atheist who, with a sense of the sacred understood faith, a moral philosopher who was truly unjudgmental towards individuals. She was devoted yet never demanding, serious yet never solemn, a lover of all living things yet never a preacher, and in laughter never jeering but always joyful." Natasha Spender, 'Books: Nothing like a dame', The Observer, February 14, 1999, The Observer Review Page; p. 16.
^Feinstein, Adam (2005). Pablo Neruda: A Passion For Life. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. p. 97. ISBN9781582345949. Despite their political differences and the fact that she was religious and Neruda was an atheist, Pablo had far more in common with Bombal than with Maruca.
^"He [Salman Rushdie] emphasised that the direct cause of the riot seemed to be a speech by Nesin, rather than The Satanic Verses. "I'm damned if I'm going to carry the can for this one", he said. Versions of the speech that Nesin delivered differ, but all agree that he said he was an atheist, that religion should be adapted to modern times and that there was no reason to obey books written hundreds of years ago, including the Koran." Hugh Pope, 'Turks say publisher provoked 35 deaths', The Independent (London), July 4, 1993, Pg 15.
^Interview with Michael Nugent[permanent dead link]Sunday Business Post, 28 June 2009: "As far back as I can remember, I have been an atheist. I probably stopped believing in God around the same time – and for the same reasons – as I stopped believing in Santa Claus. It seemed to me to be just another fictional story."
^"Q: I noticed that nobody uses the "A-word" – atheist – for you. Perhaps it is a step beyond nontheist or humanist. Do you identify as an atheist? Oates: That's a good question. I have met Christopher Hitchens once or twice, and he has a book that I'm sure you've either read or are aware of titled God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. He is very adversarial, very eloquent, and very funny in his interviews. And, of course, he is very much a self-declared atheist. I'm not averse to acknowledging it, but as a novelist and a writer, I really don't want to confront and be antagonistic toward people. As soon as you declare that you are an atheist, it's like somebody declaring that he is the son of God; it arouses a lot antagonism. I'm wondering whether it might be better to avoid arousing this antagonism in order to find – not compromise – some common ground." Joyce Carol Oates, Humanism and Its DiscontentsArchived 2012-11-24 at the Wayback Machine, The Humanist, November/December 2007 (accessed June 9, 2008).
^" He had been very religious as a boy – 'You have to be to survive being brought up in a vicarage' – but he became, on discovering Darwin at 14, not merely an agnostic, but a militant atheist, much to his father's distress. They still don't talk about it. His mother, he says, is also very religious but in an emotional way: 'She believes that in heaven she will be reunited with every spaniel she has ever owned.' While O'Hanlon was away in Africa, his older brother, a book rep, took Belinda and the children to communion. O'Hanlon was shocked, but 'I decided not to be angry about it. A real atheist, you see, is not exercised about it.' " Lynn Barber interviewing O'Hanlon, 'Carry On Up the Congo', The Observer, October 13, 1996, The Observer Review Page, p. 7.
^"Oswald, a vegetarian and atheist, used the pseudonyms Ignotus (in the Political Herald, 1785–7), Sylvester Otway (London newspapers 1788–9), and H. K." T. F. Henderson, 'Oswald, John (c.1760–1793)', rev. Ralph A. Manogue, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, May 2006 (accessed May 2, 2008).
^"Frances Partidge was a pacifist long before she met Ralph. She says she cannot pinpoint the day with the same clarity with which she can remember discovering herself an atheist – at the age of 11 in an Isle of Wight boarding house – but hearing about the outbreak of World War I in the company of bellicose friends, and a feminist cousin who supported conscientious objectors, put her on the path." Caroline Moorehead, 'Love and laughter on the fringe of the Bloomsbury set', The Times, August 12, 1978; p. 12; Issue 60378; col A.
^"Not since 1964 had Pasolini created such a stir, and even then it was not the content of his The Gospel According to St. Matthew that stunned people. It was the discovery that a director who was both a communist and an atheist could bring such fervor and insight to a religious subject. ... There are times when Pasolini sounds remarkably religious for a self-acknowledged atheist. "I suffer from the nostalgia of a peasant-type religion, and that is why I am on the side of the servant", he says. "But I do not believe in a metaphysical god. I am religious because I have a natural identification between reality and God. Reality is divine. That is why my films are never naturalistic. The motivation that unites all of my films is to give back to reality its original sacred significance." Guy Flatley, The Atheist who was Obsessed with GodArchived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine, 1969, located at Moviecrazed.com (accessed April 25, 2008).
^Collins, Lauren (29 November 2010). "Are You the Messiah?". The New Yorker. Retrieved 29 July 2012. Patel grew up a 'God-fearing Hindu', but now calls himself an 'atheist Hindu'.
^Paloni, Piermassimo, Il giornalismo di Cesare Pavese, Landoni, 1977, p. 11.
^"Penning-Rowsell and his sister were born Roman Catholic, but he was, if anything, an atheist. He was at Marlborough at the same time as John Betjeman, where his disposition to dissent first showed itself when he was the only boy to refuse to join the Corps." Paul Levy, 'Penning-Rowsell: surely the most conservative Communist ever', The Independent (London), March 7, 2002, Obituaries, p. 6.
^"The Meeting is a about the afterlife, despite Pinter being well known as an atheist. He admitted it was a "strange" piece for him to have written." Pinter 'on road to recovery', BBC News, 26 August 2002.
^"As a child she was very religious, and planned to become the first woman vicar. But she lost her faith when she discovered snogging because she couldn't bring herself to believe that it was sinful. She now describes herself as an atheist, but with "a penchant for the pagan gods"." Lynn Barber interviewing Pitt-Kethley, The Independent (London), June 2, 1991, The Sunday Review Page, p. 9.
^In response to the question 'Is there a God?', Pollack replied: "God does not exist, unless you are my mother-in-law and are reading this, in which case I definitely do believe that He exists, and will raise my children accordingly. But if you're not my mother-in-law, and she's not reading this, then He does not exist." AV Club 9 October 2002 (accessed 6 March 2009).
^"Marcel Proust was the son of a Christian father and a Jewish mother. He himself was baptized (on August 5, 1871, at the church of Saint-Louis d'Antin) and later confirmed as a Catholic, but he never practiced that faith and as an adult could best be described as a mystical atheist, someone imbued with spirituality who nonetheless did not believe in a personal God, much less in a savior." Edmund White, Marcel Proust: A Life (2009).
^Proust, Marcel (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford University Press. p. 594. ISBN978-0-19-860173-9. ...the highest praise of God consists in the denial of him by the atheist who finds creation so perfect that it can dispense with a creator.
^"Spanish churches are dark and gloomy, fitting locations for a Christianity that often seems completely demented to an appreciative atheist like myself." Kate Pullinger, 'Extremadura's Moorish tendency', The Independent, November 18, 1989, Weekend Travel, p. 49.
^"As an atheist I'm rather on difficult ground here, but presumably this is what a Christian believes." The Dark Materials debate: life, God, the universe... (interview of Pullman by Rowan Williams), Telegraph.co.uk, March 17, 2004 (Accessed November 12, 2007).
^Miller, Laura. "Far From Narnia"(Life and Letters article). The New Yorker. Retrieved 31 October 2007. he is one of England's most outspoken atheists. ... He added, 'Although I call myself an atheist, I am a Church of England atheist, and a 1662 Book of Common Prayer atheist, because that's the tradition I was brought up in and I cannot escape those early influences.'
^Davis, Natalie Zemon. "Beyond Babel" in Davis & Hampton, "Rabelais and His Critics". Occasional Papers Series, University of California Press.
^"Most are agreed on Rabelais as a Christian humanist", as stated by Richard Cooper, "Reading and Unraveling Rabelais through the Ages", in The Cambridge Companion to Rabelais (Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 150. See also Max von Habsburg, "Rabelais, Françoise" in Renaissance and Reformation (Marshall Cavendish, 2007), p. 1176; "Rabelais, Françoise", in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Taylor & Francis, 1988), pp. 15–16; Max Gauna, The Rabelaisian Mythologies (Associated University Press, 1996), p. 32.
^Reviewing Raine's collection In Defence of T. S. Eliot, Charles Osborne and Sally Cousins wrote: "Raine, a fine poet, is also an entertaining and thought-provoking critic, and his subjects range widely from the Bible, which as an atheist he appreciates for its short stories, "some of the greatest ever written", to Bruce Chatwin, whom he sensibly does not take too seriously." The Sunday Telegraph, October 14, 2001, Paperbacks, p. 14.
^Derek Raymond was the pen name of Robert Cook. "Cook was an atheist, but he described his probes into abjection and despair with almost religious intensity." Phil Baker: 'Cook, Robert William Arthur (1931–1994)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [21] (accessed April 30, 2008).
^Reviewing Anne Rice's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, Matt Thorne noted: "In a long author's note, Rice explains how she experienced an old-fashioned, strict Roman Catholic childhood in the 1940s and 1950s, before leaving the Church at 18 due to sexual pressure and her desire to read authors she considered forbidden to her, such as Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Camus. Two years later she married a passionate atheist, the poet and artist Stan Rice, and in 1974, began a literary career that she now retrospectively views as representing her 'quest for meaning in a world without God'." The Sunday Telegraph, December 18, 2005, section 7, p. 43.
^Tristram Stuart, The Bloodless Revolution, pp. 361–171; Joseph Ritson, Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food
^"Monica asked my parents if they minded if I said grace (my family are Jewish), they said not at all. Apparently, though, I wouldn't close my eyes, put my hands together or say the prayer but would only shout 'No thank you, God!' I am an atheist now." Michael Rosen interviewed by Emily Moore, The Guardian (London), June 6, 1995, Education Page, p. 2.
^The Wit and Blasphemy of Atheists: 500 Greatest Quips and Quotes from Freethinkers, Non-Believers and the Happily Damned. Ulysses Press. 2011. p. 190. ISBN9781569759707. "When the whole world doesn't believe in God, it'll be a great place." – Philip Roth
^"Here I am, a rationalist, atheist person..." Salman Rushdie, interviewed on National Public Radio, 22 September 2015.
^CNN reports that: "Among these works are mythical stories through which Saramago, a communist and atheist, weaves his own brand of social and political commentary." In praise of PortugueseArchived 2008-06-05 at the Wayback Machine (Accessed May 30, 2007)
^"The Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese novelist was an atheist and a communist." 2010: José Saramago, 87", Newsweek, December 27, 2010 / January 3, 2011, special edition, p. 74.
^"If Osama bin Laden were in charge, he would slit my throat; my God, I'm an atheist, a hedonist, and a faggot." Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America, Dan Savage, Plume, 2002, p. 258.
^Savage declared in his syndicated sex advice column: "I'm Catholic – in a cultural sense, not an eat-the-wafer, say-the-rosary, burn-down-the-women's-health-center sense. I attended Quigley Preparatory Seminary North, a Catholic high school in Chicago for boys thinking of becoming priests. I got to meet the Pope in 1979..." Savage LoveArchived 2009-06-28 at the Wayback Machine (column), The Village Voice, April 12, 2005.
^On Maurice Sendak's death (8 May 2012), Terry Gross, host of National Public Radio's Fresh Air, aired 2003 and 2011 interviews she had conducted with Sendak. In September 2011 she said, "You're very secular, you don't believe in God." Sendak replied, "I don't", and elaborated. Among other things, he remarked, "It [religion, and belief in God] must have made life much easier [for some religious friends of his]. It's harder for us nonbelievers."
^Henderson, Archibald (2004). George Bernard Shaw: His Life And Works, a Critical Biography. Kessinger Publishing. p. 135. ISBN9781417961771. It was at the Shelley Society's first large meeting that Shaw startled London by announcing himself as, " like Shelley, a Socialist, an atheist, and a vegetarian."
^Pathak, Dayananda (1985). George Bernard Shaw, His Religion & Values. Mittal Publications. p. 19. Shaw explains what atheism really meant in his time. Belief in God in his time meant belief in the old tribal idol "I preferred to call myself an atheist", writes Shaw, "because belief in God then meant belief in the old tribal idol called Jehovah. "I preferred to call myself an atheist", writes Shaw, "because belief in God then meant belief in the old tribal idol called Jehovah, and I would not, by calling myself an agnostic, pretend that I did not know whether it existed or not." He also adds: "I still, when I am dealing with old fashioned Fundamentalists, tell them that as I do not believe in this idol of theirs they may as well write me off as, for their purpose, I am an atheist."
^G. K. Chesterton (2008). George Bernard Shaw. Echo Library. p. 21. ISBN9781406890204. 'I was', he writes, 'wholly unmoved by their eloquence; and felt bound to inform the public that I was, on the whole, an atheist.'
^Levenson, Leah; Nattersand, Jerry H. (1989). Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington: Irish Feminist. Syracuse University Press. p. 26. ISBN978-0-8156-2480-6. Though Francis was always referred to as an atheist, Hanna, for reasons that remain uncertain, was usually labeled an agnostic.
^"I am an atheist. There, I said it. Are you happy, all you atheists out there who have remonstrated with me for adopting the agnostic moniker? If "atheist" means someone who does not believe in God, then an atheist is what I am. But I detest all such labels. Call me what you like – humanist, secular humanist, agnostic, nonbeliever, nontheist, freethinker, heretic, or even bright. I prefer skeptic." Why I Am An Atheist, Michael Shermer, June 2005 (accessed March 31, 2008).
^Duffy, Jean H.; Duncan, Alastair B. (2002). Claude Simon: A Retrospective. Liverpool University Press. p. 203. ISBN978-0-85323-857-7. While it is true that Simon's earlier fiction provides considerable evidence both of his atheism and his fascination for religious iconography, it is in Le Jardin des Plantes that one finds his most sustained meditation upon religion,...
^"Like most atheists, I don't mind in the least being insulted for my beliefs, as long as I am not prevented from expressing them." -Smith, Joan (October 21, 2001). "Take offence if you will, but don't drag the law in". The Independent on Sunday. p. 30. Retrieved January 1, 2020.
^Rieff, David (2008). Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 87. ISBN978-0743299473.
^"I already had certain agnostic tendencies – which would later develop into outright atheistic convictions – so it was not that I believed in any kind of divine protection." Wole Soyinka, Climate of Fear: The Quest for Dignity in a Dehumanized World, p. 119.
^Reviewing Steele's book, Victor J. Stenger called it "A clear, concise, complete, and convincing presentation of the case for atheism."
^"By early 1890 Steevens had broken with his family's Brethrenism, and he described himself as 'a discontented atheist' (Steevens to Browning; Oscar Browning MSS)." Sidney Lee, 'Steevens, George Warrington (1869–1900)', rev. Roger T. Stearn, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, October 2007 (accessed May 2, 2008).
^In response to the question "What do you think about Umberto Ecco's words that "libraries are the houses of God", and since you are doing that Dead Media project – I kinda connected you two in my head?", Sterling said "I don't believe in God. I read Umberto Eco, though." Interview with Bruce Sterling[permanent dead link]
^"A decadent dandy who envied the manly Victorian achievements of his family, a professed atheist haunted by religious terrors, a generous and loving man who fell out with many of his friends – the Robert Louis Stevenson of Claire Harman's biography is all of these and, of course, a bed-ridden invalid who wrote some of the finest adventure stories in the language. ... Worse still, he affected a Bohemian style, haunted the seedier parts of the Old Town, read Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, and declared himself an atheist. This caused a painful rift with his father, who damned him as a 'careless infidel'." Theo Tait, review of Robert Louis Stevenson: a Biography by Claire Harman, The Daily Telegraph, January 29, 2005, p. 3
^Klossowski, Pierre (2007). Such a Deathly Desire. SUNY Press. p. 30. ISBN9780791471968. Andre Suares (1868–1948) was a French poet and essayist famous for his atheism.
^Casoli, Giovanni, Vangelo e letteratura, Città Nuova, 2008, p. 90.
^Commenting on Tendryakov's obituary in the Times, Professor Geoffrey A. Hosking wrote: "Perhaps because of his concern for the human personality, Tendryakov was the first writer in the post-Stalin period to raise religious questions seriously in fiction. Though an atheist himself, he understood the intrinsic importance of religion, and did not treat it merely satirically or condescendingly." 'Vladimir Tendryakov', The Times, August 17, 1984; p. 10; Issue 61912; col G.
^"Characterizing himself as an atheist, an anarchist, and a skeptic, he enjoyed his image of impudent prurience, though he revealed little to the public of his personal life." Dennis Wepman: "Thayer, Tiffany", American National Biography Online, February 2000 (accessed April 28, 2008) [22].
^"Many of these men were, like Holbach, avowed atheists and many also pushed radical, even revolutionary political agendas."LeBuffe, Michael (2010). "Paul-Henri Thiry (Baron) d'Holbach". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 9 June 2013.
^"His beliefs moved from pantheism to an atheism which causes less of a frisson now than it did in his own day, and his apocalyptic vision of the megalopolis in 'The City of Dreadful Night' continues to have resonance." Ann Margaret Ridler, 'Thomson, James (1834–1882)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 (accessed May 6, 2008).
^"His education in Jesuit seminaries made of him a lifelong atheist, though he sometimes used the less sadistic imagery of Christianity." James Kirkup, 'Obituary: Miguel Torga', The Independent (London), January 20, 1995, p. 16.
^"A republican, atheist and socialist, she is married, has four children and five grandchildren, and lives in Leicester." 'You Ask the Questions', The Independent (London), April 24, 2003, Features, p. 6.
^"Her parents were radicals in their outlook and they educated their daughter in a rationalist and humanist mode. As an atheist she saw religion only as the shield of tyranny, intolerance, and cruelty." D. A. Farnie, 'Utley, Winifred (1899–1978)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 (accessed May 2, 2008).
^Simona Cigliana, Roberto Fedi, Giovanni Verga, Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 2002, p. 287.
^"She was educated partly at Cranborne Chase, a free-thinking school where there was no religious education, and was a committed atheist." Caroline Brandenburger, 'Obituary: Frances Vernon', The Independent (London), July 20, 1991, p. 42.
^In response to the question 'Is there a God?', Vowell replied simply: "Absolutely not." AV Club 9 October 2002 (accessed 6 March 2009).
^"She returned to England an atheist and radical, eager to view nihilism in Russia." Patrick Waddington, 'Voynich, Ethel Lilian (1864–1960)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edition, October 2007 (accessed May 2, 2008).
^"... I don't literally believe in miracles. But I think one has to be a, a little bit careful of that, that there are sudden reversals that can happen in people's lives, sudden epiphanies. And one might say that they have no rational explanation, and therefore they can be categorised with the miraculous. But I don't now believe in the superstructure of God dispensing em any wonders in the world. I don't, that's not something I believe in. ... Interviewer: "When you left the, the field of faith, you gave up these very, very clear beliefs in God, Jesus, Mary, the saints, the Church. Did you feel that you'd walked into a wilderness?" Warner: "Well as, actually I didn't, em, I felt a kind of, I did miss the solace. I did miss the sense of being held in the merciful hands of God, certainly I felt that. But actually I felt liberated into a kind of, y'know a world where people had thought many things and invented many things, and they were there to be discovered and there in a sense to be retrieved or selected from. ... I have absolutely lost my faith, I'm afraid, absolutely lost it. I mean I lost it quite a long time ago. And when my mother was dying earlier this year [2008] I wished for her to have the faith of her childhood sufficiently to help her. But I couldn't have it for her, I couldn't pray for her." Transcript: Belief interview with Marina Warner, BBC Radio 3, 24 December 2008 (accessed 23 March 2009).
^"Warraq, 60, describes himself now as an agnostic..." Dissident voices, World Magazine, June 16, 2007, Vol. 22, No. 22.
^Gardner, Martin (1995), Introduction to H.G. Wells, The Conquest of Time [1941]; New York: Dover Books. This introduction was also published in Gardner's book From the Wandering Jew to William F. Buckley, Jr: On Science, Literature and Religion (2000), Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, pp 235-238.
^"If I were a believer, perhaps I'd have some answers. As an atheist, I can't even imagine that I was spared so that I wouldn't die a fool or a sinner. Of course the values we're left with are all the residue of Christianity, though shorn of system and stripped of finality. An atheist lives in the present, since there will be no eternity ('They were shut up in days,' John McGahern says with strangely beautiful concision in Amongst Women.) Perhaps that's why I was given so much of the present to work with, since it's all I'll be getting." Edmund White, "Thinking positive", The Observer, November 29, 1998, The Observer Review Page; p. 1.
^"Creation myths tap into the same kind of issues as post-human SF, albeit sometimes turned upside-down: "Where are we going?" instead of "Where did we come from?" "What does it mean to be human or to play god?" I find these kind of questions perpetually interesting, so will probably keep coming back to them forever. The solo space opera books are certainly tapping into the same vein, perhaps more overtly than ever. This is what comes of being an atheist, perhaps: we think about these things more than most people. Obsess about them, probably." Interview with Sean Williams, SFFWorld.com, 19 November 2006 (accessed 9 March 2009)).
^"An interview with author Simon Winchester is presented. He states that the book Science and Civilization, by Joseph Needham is focused on every issues linked to China's relationship with water. Winchester admits that he is an atheist in a nonpolemical way." Abstract of the article "An Eclectic Writer Takes on an Eccentric One", The Wall Street Journal – Eastern Edition; 5/6/2008, Vol. 251 Issue 106, p. D7. (Located via EBSCOhost August 6, 2008; full text not available).
^"He was brought up in Reform Judaism, became an atheist in his teens, and remained sceptical about the religious temperament." S. P. Rosenbaum, 'Woolf, Leonard Sidney (1880–1969)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 (accessed May 2, 2008).
^"However, approaching moments of being as a version of theological mysticism is complicated by Woolf's atheism: in 'A Sketch of the Past', she declares that 'certainly and emphatically there is no God' (MB,72)." Lorraine Sim, Virginia Woolf: the patterns of ordinary experience (2010), page 148.
^The Herald, "Why did this "saint" fail to act on sinners within his flock?", Anne Simpson, May 26, 2007
^"Like most of the Godless (or Godfree), I have no desire to proselytise for atheism or to persuade people out of religions that may offer them comfort and companionship." Wicked untruths from the Church, David Aaronovitch, Times Online, March 25, 2008 (Accessed March 26, 2008)
^"What makes me think I "can reduce the function of religion to the provision of 'comfort and companionship'" instead of seeing it as a "public truth"? Being an atheist, I suppose. I see religion as a cultural and psychological construct, which fulfils certain almost universal needs and which, as a consequence, I am disinclined to condemn." Who wants to kill the elderly?, David Aaronovitch, Times Online, March 31, 2008 (Accessed March 31, 2008)
^"Come on, somebody tell me I can't possibly have morals because I'm an atheist." Amy Alkon/Advice Goddess Blog, Awww, How Sweet!, May 25, 2008 (accessed June 9, 2008).
^"But you don't have to believe in the supernatural to have morals: many atheists, myself included, have the habit of examining their consciences. "Of course you do", he says soothingly, "and I think for people who have been well brought up and educated and so on, this does apply. But for a great many people who don't have those advantages a religious framework is very important." Lynn Barber interviewing Paul Johnson, The Independent (London), August 25, 1991, p. 23.
^"What was I doing here, I wondered, as I sat holding a little candle at the carol service in the local church? I am, in fact, an atheist. Yet here I was, listening to the readings, and singing several verses of the occasional carol I sort-of-knew." Paul Barker, 'Even an atheist can't resist the lure of Christmas', The Independent (London), December 27, 2003, Comment, p. 21.
^"It is surely not only born- again atheists such as myself who start the day by fuming at the idiocies of Radio 4's Thought for the Day and Prayer for the Day. Famine, earthquakes, plane crashes, unemployment figures, plagues, wars all are grist to the Panglossean mill. Nothing is too horrible for it not to be used as evidence of the mysterious way in which God is working His purpose out. Nothing is too ghastly for it not to be further proof of His infinite love. On the media God-slots, they pray for anything from better weather to the release of hostages. To me the logic is incomprehensible. If this omnipotent God is in control of the climate then in His infinite wisdom he must have sent the floods and hurricanes and droughts, and if he is capable of releasing the hostages then he must be responsible for their having been taken in the first place. If I was a hostage I would rather put my trust in Ted Heath, Tony Benn, Jesse Jackson or even Kurt Waldheim." Richard Boston, 'Spirit of Christmas futile', The Guardian, December 24, 1990.
^"Father Denis, who, for more than a year now, has been attempting to convert me from staunch atheism to Catholicism, is trying a different tack." Anna Blundy, The Daily Telegraph, March 7, 2001, p. 21.
^"The very practical nature of Islam, a religion that enjoins the faithful to act in the world to change it, is also a boon to activists, good and bad, as does its emphasis on public demonstration of faith. The sight of rows of believers facing Mecca to answer the call to prayer often moves me, an atheist, deeply. Yet the Arabic word for martyr – and currently suicide bomber – comes from the same linguistic stem as the word for bearing witness." Jason Burke, 'Ideology's violent face', The Guardian, July 22, 2005, Weekly Pages, p. 6.
^"People ask me, "Is there that much to write about perfume?" Lanvin just sent me its latest, Rumeur. If I weren't already an atheist, I would lose my faith in God again. But it gave me an idea for another piece for the Times." Chandler Burr, The Independent (London), September 4, 2006, p. 11.
^"So I want to make my position clear to anyone who may be thinking of trying to convert me to anything at all, and it is this: I am an atheist. I am an atheist because God wants me to be an atheist. And the God who wants me to be an atheist is stern, uncompromising and rigidly doctrinaire, not to mention immature, petulant, fond of flashy theatrical effects, and duplicitous." Michael Bywater, 'Salvation? No thanks', The Independent (London), 17 October 1999, Features, p. 28.
^"My name is Nick Cohen, and I think I'm turning into a Jew. Despite being called "Cohen", I've never been Jewish before. It's not simply that I am an atheist. My Jewish friends tell me that it is hard to find an educated London Jew who is not an atheist, but that I have no connection with Jewish culture." Hatred is turning me into a Jew, The Jewish Chronicle, 12 February 2009 (accessed 9 March 2009).
^"In recent years, he had begun to write an always witty column for the Jewish Chronicle and, after his diagnosis, had even joined a synagogue – though this, he told friends, was not because he had discovered God. He remained an atheist to the end, but, he said, he wanted his children, Cosima and Bruno, to know something of the Judaism into which they had been born." Jay Rayner and Roy Greenslade, 'Obituary: John Diamond', The Guardian, March 3, 2001, p. 22.
^"That I usually describe myself as an agnostic rather than an atheist is, my inner therapist tells me, a matter of neurosis rather than one of logic: there is still some spiritually atavistic part of me which worries about what God will think if he discovers my guilty atheism. But all these years in I still don't know what to do about the evangelists. ... But since I started dying so publicly I get something more than random evangelism. I've written here before about the problem I have disposing with the tracts, pamphlets, Bibles, crucifixes and so on which I get sent pretty regularly: the neurosis which stops me proclaiming my atheism is the same which stops me binning glossy books promising me life eternal. There is some part of me which pictures my spectral self at the pearly gates being forgiven for the sundry lies, thefts, treacheries and so on to which we're all so humanly prone, but seeing the archangelic finger run down the column until it hits "Put Children of God pamphlet in cat litter tray", and starting to quiver angrily." John Diamond, 'The last word', The Times (London), January 6, 2001, Features Section.
^Criticising Desert Island Discs presenter Kirsty Young, Gillian Reynolds wrote: "Fisk is an atheist. Why didn't she pick up his constant conversational invocations of God, press him on his choice of Psalm 23 as disc six?" 'It's time to come off the fence on Kirsty's island', The Daily Telegraph, October 17, 2006, Features: Arts, p. 28.
^"Describing his old friend as a "devout atheist", Ingrams said Paul Foot had been much upset to discover, after he suffered a near-fatal aneurysm five years ago, that some of his religious friends had been praying for him – and even more indignant to hear that some of them thought that their prayers had been answered when he survived to go on campaigning and writing." Duncan Campbell, 'Funeral of Paul Foot', The Guardian, July 28, 2004, p. 5.
^" Above all, Gessen says, she wishes she could believe the decision was not hers to make. An Ashkenazi Jew who doesn't believe in God or "in karmic challenges that could be defeated with the strength of one's spirit", she does believe "in action and, most of all...knowledge". " Anne Harding, 'Knowing our destiny', The Lancet, vol. 372, no. 9641, p. 796 (6–12 September 2008).
^"What's stopping me is that I don't believe in God. Not in an agnostic sense but in the spirit of pure atheism which asserts that man invented divinities to account for the temporarily inexplicable. ... Jews were just as welcoming, as long as you're Jewish by birth or conversion. Would I, as an avowed atheist, be turned away, I asked Rabbi Pini." Linda Grant, 'Almighty gamble', The Guardian, June 25, 1999, Art Pages, p. 2.
^"She doesn't like religions (in fact, the day I meet her, she has just penned a vitriolic attack on Catholicism for the Guardian, and blithely talks to me of rosaries being shoved up arses). She is disturbed by 'the dark clouds of religious fervour that are closing in again', and doesn't believe in God. She grew up an agnostic and for four years has been more of an atheist, there being no room for God in a world in which her daughter lost so much. But she has no fear of death, not any more." Nicci Gerrard interviewing Gray, 'A darker shade of Gray', The Observer, April 29, 2001, Observer Review Pages, p. 3.
^"This is my Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens moment here I suppose, but the problem with arguments like this really is we are a largely secularized society now, particularly when it comes to Christianity, and I worry a bit that we tiptoe around religious belief systems because they have got God in them. ... My belief system hasn't got God in it so it is not privileged in the way that Christianity is here, and I personally think that is wrong, you know. ... It is a funny kind of Christianity where the loudest things we hear from it are sexism, homophobia etc etc that I would much rather Christianity... re rooted itself back to what I, in my atheistic way, understand to being the central tenets of what Jesus had to say." John Harris, Any Questions? BBC Radio 4, July 11, 2008. (Transcript, accessed July 22, 2008.)
^"In a hideous act of precocity, I saw as a child that, having tried as hard as I could, I could not believe in God. I greatly regret this, but, despite extensive reflection, I can see no reason after all these years to revise my view." However, "... I rejoice wholeheartedly as an atheist that I live in a Christian culture". Stop apologising for being Christian, Simon Heffer, Telegraph, December 21, 2005 (Accessed March 31, 2008)
^"The church does not emerge well, with its ferocious insistence on doctrinal orthodoxy; but nor, for all the affection with which he is portrayed, does Galileo – the victim of either religious philistinism or his own mortal frailty. We lucky atheists can skip the dilemma and savour the score – vintage Glass, as if his musical imagination had moved on barely a bar since the repetitive rhythmic patterns he pioneered 30 years ago." Anthony Holden reviewing Glass's Galileo Galilei, The Observer, November 10, 2002, Review Pages, p. 14.
^The article is subtitled "At Easter I, a longstanding atheist, find myself feeling affinity with religious folk", and begins "As a godless, atheistic Marxist, I have never been less worried about religion. What does worry me is the rise of a New Atheism that, never mind God, appears to have lost faith in humanity." It looks like Man crucified, Mick Hume, Times Online, March 21, 2008 (Accessed March 31, 2008)
^"For us atheists there is a nagging suspicion that the whole attraction of the concept of reincarnation is the idea that in a previous existence everybody was Alexander the Great or Plato. What if, however, every incarnation for eternity was just a life of disappointment. Suppose you were born and reborn and born again to great fanfare and welcome and died every time to indifference and derision. See. You probably wouldn't be so keen on reincarnation if it was like the National Football League." Tom Humphries, 'Decent finale to the annual diminuendo', The Irish Times, April 28, 2008, p. 12.
^"I don't believe in God; but I've never raped children. If my lack of faith is the greatest of evils, what words do you have left, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, to describe the priest who gained sexual gratification from attacking altar boys, who raped a boy in a wheelchair, and whom you allowed to work as a chaplain though you knew of his proclivities?" Oliver Kamm, 'The greatest of evilsArchived 2009-05-24 at the Wayback Machine', Times Online, 21 May 2009 (accessed 26 May 2009).
^"Speaking as one atheist to another, I find that when I say with absolute certainty 'I'm an atheist', there's always a slight look of shock on the face of the person that I'm talking to, as though this is the one area where we're not permitted to be absolutely certain." Terry Lane interviews Graeme Samuel, Big Ideas, ABC Radio National, May 2006 (accessed June 11, 2008).
^"Lawson doesn't think he'll fall for god – any god. "One's feelings are governed by one's upbringing" is how he rationalises it. He comes from a long-line of atheists; his mother and his step-father, AJ Ayer included. "I can't make myself believe in something. That is not the way I am. I believe we're utterly alone, and we must do the best we can in that emptiness." " John Cunningham interviewing Lawson, 'Stirrer with a silver spoon', The Guardian (London), June 26, 1995.
^"Thank God I'm an atheist. It's a big step to take, but it was becoming difficult to cling to the agnostic fig-leaf any longer. As Lloyd George once said, if you sit on the fence too long it means that the iron enters your soul. Now, however, I am reassured by Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, that I can "stand tall to face the far horizon"." Magnus Linklater, 'Like any half-decent atheist, I'm fond of a bit of religion', The Times (London), September 5, 2007, Features, p. 17.
^"Mr Coleman revealed that McGuinness, a staunch atheist, was a fan of the prayer from the Gospels known as the Magnificat. The lines he quoted – "He has filled the hungry with good things / And the rich he has sent empty away" – were a reminder McGuinness's sympathies were with working people and that he remained true to the Irish revolutionary spirit of Padraic Pearse, after whom he was named." Imre Salusinszky, 'Hayden laments attack on PaddyArchived 2008-07-04 at the Wayback Machine', The Australian, February 2, 2008 (accessed May 29, 2008).
^"What's all the fuss about? Stephen Bates explains, while political sketch-writer Simon Hoggart, theatre critic Lyn Gardner and gay atheist Gareth McLean review the bishop's performance." Gareth McLean: "As someone who doesn't have faith – as well as one of those whose sexuality is considered abominable by many of those who do – I sometimes struggle to take seriously any of the brouhaha surrounding the schism in the Church of England. ... Now even if I didn't think that the Bible was just a book – one that's thousands of years old, that is made-up, that was compiled, edited, translated and has had bits omitted over the years – we all know that, for centuries, it's been cherry-picked to justify all sorts of abhorrent thought and behaviour. ... Of course, there are millions of people who do believe, even if I don't, and if the battle is for their hearts and minds and, consequently, for a wider tolerance of the gay people among them, then we should engage at least a little." Preaching to the converted, The Guardian, July 15, 2008 (accessed July 15, 2008).
^"I'm an atheist. So is everyone I know, or maybe they're being Canadian and refraining from mentioning their religion. Don't poke atheists with a stick or we'll want our own morning manifesto." Religion in the public discourse? It's a can of worms cbc.ca, February 18, 2008 (Accessed 25 Mars 2008).
^"For those of us without religious faith, there are awful questions to be faced about living well in a world that we are still struggling to understand. We, too, need stories about moral choices, about love and a life's priorities. Because we still stand on the edge of a Christian culture, or at the very least a Mosaic one, these stories have not yet been written." Andrew Marr, 'Pullman does for atheism what C S Lewis did for God', The Daily Telegraph, January 24, 2002, p. 26.
^"Revelation or recreation? It is, clearly, hard to be sure. As an atheist, I was not predisposed to believe the church's claims; but neither, having experienced them first-hand, was I particularly disposed to dismiss them. On balance my reaction was not so much to question my world view as to ask a more obvious question: what is this stuff and how does it work?" Jules Marshall, 'The Outdoors of Perception', The Independent (London), September 8, 1996, Features, p. 12.
^"My ideology is atheism. The interest I have to 'fess up to is being an honorary fellow of the National Secular Society. It's one of those things that happens. One day I was an everyday atheist, next day (I'd just made a film about the pointlessness of building churches as anything other than essays in architectural hubris) and Keith Porteous Wood writes to me to tell me I am now – how shall I put it? – a cardinal of atheism." Jonathan Meades, Independent on Sunday (London), May 20, 2001, p. 24.
^"And I'd be the first to admit that without the whole nativity business, attempting to extract any worthwhile non-commercial values from the festive season leaves you with the kind of sticky, non-specific sentiment to be found in the Santa Clause movies. It's just that I can't quite admit it out loud, what with being an atheist. So, as in every situation, I ask myself: what would Richard Dawkins do? (The answer, inevitably, would be something involving memes and therefore of little use.)" Stephanie Merritt, 'The Santa delusion', The Observer, December 30, 2007, Observer Review Arts Pages, p. 26.
^" "Marty really rattled the paramilitaries because he had such good contacts", said John Keane, a friend and colleague of O'Hagan's. "He'd be able to tell you what they had for breakfast before they went out to kill. He had a cynical eye and he was very aware of the sub-structure of society, the unusual alliances, the way people weren't always what they seemed. He was an atheist and a Marxist, liable to start spouting Hegel if you gave him a chance. He used to say, my enemy's enemy is my friend. Very little that happened in Northern Ireland would have surprised Marty." " Susan McKay, 'Faith, Hate and Murder', The Guardian, November 17, 2001, Weekend Pages, p. 19.
^"As a fully paid-up atheist, I need no persuasion that God is neither great nor real. But, at times, as I hear for the umpteenth time the assertion that religion is the cause of all human strife, I start to find myself thinking that blaming religion for war is like blaming coloured bibs for school netball. The belief that religion is the root of all human evil is as blinkered and simplistic as the most unquestioning faith of religious adherents." Deborah Orr, 'Assaults on religion are all too easy; what we need is to define human rights', The Independent (London), December 26, 2007.
^"I found the self-mocking humour relentless, and would have almost been relieved if Ruth had given way to complete despair, which I'm sure she sometimes did in private. She and most of her friends were atheists. Would it have been easier for her, and for them, if they hadn't been? Instead, as a self-confessed "post-feminist chick" she found solace in Pret-a-Manger, Ghost and style magazines. It seems sad that these products acted as life-lines, but I suppose this is the reality of life in a secular age." Elisa Segrave reviewing Before I Say Goodbye by Ruth Picardie, The Independent (London), May 6, 1998, Features, p. 2.
^"I tell you something, in case anyone wonders, not a single out-of-body experience, no long corridors of light, I was an atheist when it started and I've remained one. People used to say to me, 'You wait until something really bad happens, you'll start praying', but I didn't and I can't. I don't put this down to any superior being, I put it down to the superb training and skill of the people looking after me. I remain the humanist I always was." Claire Rayner, interviewed by Libby Brooks, The Guardian, September 12, 2003, Features Pages, p. 6.
^"For however devout an atheist I may be (and, by God, I am), and however little time I have for the rituals of the tribe of which I am a part, there is still something about the taste of a fine piece of salt beef which speaks to a fundamental part of me." Jay Rayner, 'Salt beef of the earth', The Observer, January 26, 2003, Observer Magazine: Life: Restaurants, Observer Magazine Pages, p. 75.
^When asked by Larry King if he would ever run for office, Reagan Jr. responded by saying, "I'm an atheist so... I can't be elected to anything, because polls all say that people won't elect an atheist." Interview on Larry King Live, June 26, 2004. See clipArchived 2008-06-11 at the Wayback Machine
^"I love Christmas. Some might think I have no right to because I am an atheist. But for countless millions of non-believers across the world, today is still a very special day. ... Like Dawkins, I am an atheist who is deeply concerned about the rapidly escalating intolerance of free thought and speech that is being fuelled by religious fundamentalism, whether we are talking about Australia, the US, Iraq, Indonesia or Saudi Arabia." Jill Singer, 'Another view of Christmas', Herald Sun (Australia), December 25, 2006 (accessed May 29, 2008).
^Matt Taibbi, interviewed by 'Friendly Atheist' Hemant Mehta: "HM: What role should religion play in the political arena? MT: Well, I'm an atheist/agnostic, so I would say none. People should stick to solving the problems they have the tools to solve." 'Interview with Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi'Archived 2011-05-22 at the Wayback Machine, friendlyatheist.com, April 29, 2008 (accessed May 10, 2008).
^"But despite his own atheism and his distaste at his companion's relentless evangelising, he comes to understand the appeal of religion to desert dwellers. "Nowhere for me had words Qur'anic or biblical taken on as much life as they had here in the Sahara, where, apart from the Word, there was nothing but rock, sky and sun." " Matthew Collin reviewing Tayler's Valley of the Casbahs: A Journey Across the Moroccan Sahara, The Guardian (London), April 12, 2003, Guardian Saturday Pages, p. 14.
^"BBC 2 (Ch. 33) 10.20 Doubts and Certainties: a Dean talks to an atheist, with Harry Williams, Nicholas Tomalin." 'Television and radio', The Times, September 17, 1968; p. 18; Issue 57358; col A.
^"Facebook knows I'm an atheist, and if Facebook knows it then the CIA probably knows it too, which could be a problem if I tried to stand for election in South Carolina, Mississippi or any of the other seven US States which require candidates to believe in a supreme being." Facebook knows I'm an atheist, New Humanist (web exclusive article), January 2008 (accessed April 17, 2008).
^"As a godless atheist I never cared much for the church or the papacy. I disliked the fact that the papacy bore down so heavily on Poland." Jerzy Urban, quoted in 'Pope John Paul II 1920–2005: The world pays tribute', The Observer, April 3, 2005, Observer News Pages, p. 3.
^"I am a devout atheist but can't explain why the moon is exactly the right size, and gets positioned so precisely between the Earth and the sun, that total solar eclipses are perfect. It bothers me." Gene Weingarten, 'Me, in a Nutshell', The Washington Post (USA), 8 March 2009, Page W32 (accessed 9 March 2009).
^"I'm an admirer of what you might call 'Enlightenment values' (though they go way beyond the Enlightenment). Things like scientific empiricism, the separation of church and state, the waning of absolutism and tyranny, yes, I cling to those. ... It [his childhood home] was quite a religious household. I wouldn't be surprised, frankly, if I'm the first Wheen to be an atheist. And so, of course, there was a lot of church-going and all the rest of it, and gradually, through my childhood, I found myself rejecting more and more of it, until finally all I was left with was the Litany and the hymns. I know the Book of Common Prayer and Hymns Ancient and Modern and the King James Bible practically backwards, and I'm very fond of them all." Interview with Francis Wheen by Simon Jones for Third Way magazine, reprinted in Wheen's 2004 book How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, Harper Collins paperback 'P.S.' section, p. 2, ISBN0-00-714097-5.
^"These are powerful arguments. But as a practising atheist (as I like to call myself), I cannot accept them. I fear community pressures will force parents to use all-Muslim schools, when they would prefer not to do so; that Muslims who go to non-faith schools will be left more isolated; that the mosque's hold on Muslim areas will be strengthened; and that government support will legitimise what would amount to ethnic segregation." Peter Wilby, 'In a godless land, faith schools are the betrayal', The Times Educational Supplement, July 11, 2008, News, Comment; p. 28, no. 0210.
^" With his frequent collaborator and Economist colleague Adrian Wooldridge, Micklethwait has written God is Back, a thought-provoking exploration of, as the subtitle summarises, the way in which the global rise of faith is changing the world. ... Micklethwait is Catholic, his co-author an atheist, but he points out that both were "bred in a classical liberal education, where the general presumption was that as the world got more modern, it would get more secular". " Lee Randall interviewing John Micklethwait, 'Keeping the faith', The Scotsman, 19 May 2009, p. 18.
From Wikipedia - Reading time: 85 min
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