There have been many philosophers in recorded history who were atheists. This is a list of atheist philosophers with articles in Wikipedia. Living persons in this list are people relevant to their notable activities or public life, and who have publicly identified themselves as atheists.
Ibn al-Rawandi (827–911): Persian philosopher, who argued dogma as antithetical to reason, miracles are fake, prophets are just magicians, and that the Paradise described by the Qur'an is not actually desirable[1][2][3]
Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī (973–1057): Arab philosopher, poet, and writer who was known for attacking religious dogmas, advocating social justice and living an ascetic, vegan lifestyle
A. J. Ayer (1910–1989): British philosopher and an advocate of logical positivism. Though he viewed the concept of God existing as meaningless, he described himself as an atheist[7][8][9]
Roland Barthes (1915–1980): French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic and semiotician.[12]
Georges Bataille (1897–1962): French intellectual and literary figure. He was the author of Story of the Eye, and his writings explored areas relating to philosophy, mysticism, and eroticism.[13]
Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007): French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator and photographer.[15][16]
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986): French author and existentialist philosopher. Beauvoir wrote novels and monographs on philosophy, politics, social issues and feminism.[17][18]
Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832): English author, jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He is best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism.[21][22][23]
Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995): French philosopher of the late 20th century. From the early 1960s until his death, Deleuze wrote many works on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art.[45][46]
Dharmakirti (6th or 7th century): One of the main contributors to logic in classical India, he developed a refutation of God's existence like many of his fellow Buddhist thinkers.[55]
Paul Edwards (1923–2004): Austrian-American moral philosopher and editor of The Encyclopedia of Philosophy.[61]
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895): Karl Marx's collaborator in developing the theory of communism. Engels' atheistic beliefs strained his relations with his parents.[62]
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (1804–1872): German philosopher whose major work, The Essence of Christianity, maintains that religion and divinity are projections of human nature.[66]
Michel Foucault (1926–1984): French philosopher and political activist known for his analysis of power and discourse. He is best known for his revolutionary philosophical analyses of social institutions such as Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality.[68][69]
William Godwin (1756–1836): English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism.[70]
Eric Hoffer (1902–1983): American moral and social philosopher. He was the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, The True Believer, was published in 1951.[76]
David Kellogg Lewis (1941–2001): American philosopher. One of the writers of the second half of the 20th century.[90]
Peter Lipton (1954–2007): British philosopher, the Hans Rausing Professor and Head of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University until his unexpected death in November 2007. He was "one of the leading philosophers of science and epistemologists in the world."[91]
Lucretius (c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC): influential Roman philosopher and early proponent of atheism in 50 BC, wrote On the Nature of Things, one of the earliest texts in defense of Atheism.[92]
Kazimierz Łyszczyński (also known in English as "Casimir Liszinski"; (1634–1689): Polish-Lithuanian nobleman and philosopher, author of a philosophical treatise, De non existentia Dei (On the Non-existence of God), who was condemned to death and brutally executed for atheism.[95][96][97]
John Leslie Mackie (1917–1981): Australian philosopher who specialized in meta-ethics as a proponent of moral skepticism. Wrote The Miracle of Theism, discussing arguments for and against theism and concluding that theism is rationally untenable.[98]
Michael Martin (1932–2015): analytic philosopher and professor emeritus at Boston University, author of, amongst others, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification (1989) and The Impossibility of God (2003).[99]
Harriet Martineau (1802–1876): English writer and philosopher, renowned in her day as a controversial journalist, political economist, abolitionist and lifelong feminist.[100]
Karl Marx (1818–1883): philosopher, political economist, sociologist, political theorist and revolutionary. Often called the father of communism, Marx was both a scholar and a political activist. In 1843, Karl Marx published Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, in which he dealt more substantively with religion, describing it as "the opiate of the people".[101]
Jean Meslier (1678–1733): French village Catholic priest who was found, on his death, to have written a book-length philosophical essay, entitled Common Sense but commonly referred to as Meslier's Testament, promoting atheism.[104][105]
Hilary Putnam (1926–2016): American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist who was a central figure in analytic philosophy from the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science.[123][failed verification][124]
James Rachels (1941–2003): American philosopher who specialized in ethics.[127]
Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, also known as Thanthai Periyar (1879–1973): Indian philosopher, social activist, politician and businessman affectionately called by his followers as Periyar or E. V. R., who started the Self-Respect Movement or the Dravidian Movement. He is also the founder of political party, Dravidar Kazhagam.
Marquis de Sade (1740–1814): French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer, famous for his libertine sexuality.[140][141]
George Santayana (1863–1952): Philosopher in the naturalist and pragmatist traditions who called himself a "Catholic atheist".[142][143]
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980): Frenchexistentialistphilosopher, dramatist and novelist who declared that he had been an atheist from age twelve.[144] Although he regarded God as a self-contradictory concept, he still thought of it as an ideal toward which people strive.[145] According to Sartre, his most-repeated summary of his existentialist philosophy, "Existence precedes essence", implies that humans must abandon traditional notions of having been designed by a divine creator.[146]
John Searle (1932–): American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and to social philosophy.[154]
Quentin Smith (1952–2020): Philosopher of science. Smith co-authored the book Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology with William Lane Craig.[161]
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903): English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era.[162]
Theodorus the Atheist (lived around 300 BC): Philosopher of the Cyrenaic school who taught that the goal of life was to obtain joy and avoid grief.[164]
Jan Woleński (1940–): Polish philosopher specializing in the history of the Lwów-Warsaw school and in analytic philosophy. He is recognized in Poland as an atheist and has promoted the replacement of religion classes with philosophy classes in Polish schools.[176][177]
^Groff, Peter (2007). Islamic Philosophy A-Z. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd. pp. 86–87. ISBN978-0-7486-2089-0. A protean freethinker who experimented with Mu'tazilism and Shi'ism before finally embracing atheism, Ibn al-Rawandi was condemned by most Muslims as a dangerous heretic...In these works alone, he (1) rejects all religious dogmas as unacceptable to reason, (2) argues that prophets - Muhammad included - are like sorcerers and magicians, and that their miracles are entirely fictitious, (3) questions the necessity of prophecy and revelation if God is indeed all-powerful, (4) denies that the Qur'an is the revealed word of God and that it has any unique aesthetic value, (5) maintains that the God of the Qur'an is ultimately all-too-human and imperfect (i.e. lacking in knowledge and wisdom, easily angered, quick to punish, excessive, arbitrary, and unjust), (6) argues that the world is eternal and we are by no means compelled to posit a first divine cause, and (7) points out that Paradise as described in the Qur'an does not seem particularly desirable.
^Inati, Shams C (2000). Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York NY: Routledge. p. 377. ISBN0-415-22364-4. ... Ibn ar-Rawandi wavered between a number of Islamic sects and then abandoned all of them in favour of atheism.
^Grant, Edward (2007). A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 84–87. ISBN9780511292101. Retrieved 8 March 2021. Early in his life, Ibn al-Rawandi was a Mutazilite scholar, who, like all Mutazilite scholars sought to apply Greek philosophy to explicate Islamic theology. After rejecting Mutazilism, he turned for a while to Shi'ism. At some point, however, and for reasons that are apparently unknown, al-Rawnadi became a free thinker and repudiated Islam and revealed religion.
^Watenpaugh, Keith (Aug 1996). ""Creating Phantoms": Zaki al-Arsuzi, the Alexandretta Crisis, and the Formation of Modern Arab Nationalism in Syria". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 28 (3): 363–389. doi:10.1017/S0020743800063509. S2CID162435380.
^Passmore, John (2004). "Anderson, John (1893–1962)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/40280. Retrieved April 29, 2008. This degree of radicalism Sydney could endure. But what of a man who had signed up as a communist immediately on his arrival, who was unashamedly an atheist, a realist where philosophers were expected to be idealists, who freely mixed with students when he was expected to meet them only in classes or, very occasionally, in their studies? Trouble was bound to loom ahead(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^"Conversely, an absolute denial of God's existence is equally meaningless, since verification is impossible. However, despite this assertion, Ayer may be considered a practical atheist: one who sees no reason to worship an invisible deity." 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt, by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996, p. 276.
^"I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it." Ayer, A.J. (1966). "What I Believe," Humanist, Vol.81 (8) August, p. 226.
^"The reverend Dr Tom Ambrose was sacked yesterday by his bishop for being "arrogant, aggressive, rude, bullying, high-handed, disorganised and at times petty", as a Church of England tribunal put it. Twice, he even spat at parishioners. You might expect that, as an atheist, I might rub my hands over this clerical outrage." Julian Baggini, Thought for the day - BBC Radio Bristol, blog entry, April 11, 2008 (accessed April 22, 2008).
^Multiple quotes from Bakunin substantiating his atheist views [1]Archived 2000-01-25 at the Wayback Machine.
^Stuart Kendall (2007). Georges Bataille. Reaktion Books. An atheist in a deeply Catholic country, he rejected Surrealism, Marxism and Existentialism in turn.
^"Feuerbach's book received criticism from two quarters: expectedly from Christian theologians but surprisingly, from the atheists Max Stirner and Bruno Bauer." Van A. Harvey, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007 (accessed May 22, 2008).
^"As an atheist, Baudrillard took no interest in Kierkegaard's theological work (...)" Jon Bartley Stewart (2011). Kierkegaard's Influence on the Social Sciences. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., pg. 9
^"[Beauvoir] remained an atheist until her death." Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Accessed April 21, 2008)
^"I cannot be angry at God, in whom I do not believe." Haught (1996–), p. 293
^James E. Crimmins (1986). "Bentham on Religion: Atheism and the Secular Society". Journal of the History of Ideas. 47 (1). University of Pennsylvania Press: 95–110. doi:10.2307/2709597. JSTOR2709597. Bentham was an atheist and in no sense of the word could he be described as a theologian.
^Ana Marta González, ed. (2012). Contemporary Perspectives on Natural Law: Natural Law As a Limiting Concept. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 81. ISBN9781409485667. In sum, with Hume's agnosticism and Bentham's atheism, the fundamental voluntarist thesis about the gulf between the divine and the human mind reaches new depths, and this serves to reinforce and radicalize the rejection, begun by Pufendorf, of Grotian rights-theory as the appropriate means of formulating the conventionalist theory of the moral life.
^James E. Crimmins (1990). Secular Utilitarianism: Social Science and the Critique of Religion in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham. Clarendon Press. p. 283. ISBN9780198277415. Making allowance for Adams's cautious phrasing, this is a concise statement of Bentham's secular positivism, but it is also important to note the conviction with which Bentham held his atheism.
^"Some years ago, without realizing what it might mean, I accepted a dinner invitation from a Jewish colleague for dinner on Friday night. I should say that my colleague had never appeared particularly orthodox, and he would have known that I am an atheist." Simon Blackburn, Religion and RespectArchived 2009-09-03 at the Wayback Machine (pdf) on his website, August 2004 (accessed April 23, 2008.)
^Helen Heran Jun (2011). Race for Citizenship: Black Orientalism and Asian Uplift from Pre-Emancipation to Neoliberal America. NYU Press. p. 47. ISBN9780814742976. During her dissertation defense, Cooper responded to Bouglé, an atheist, that God's presence in all human beings, or "the singing something," was the origin of the principles of equality, justice, and democratic freedom.
^"Büchner's materialistic interpretation of the universe in Kraft und Stoff created an uproar for its rejection of God, creation, religion, and free will and for its explanation of mind and consciousness as physical states of the brain produced by matter in motion. His continued defense of atheism and atomism and his denial of any distinction between mind and matter (Natur und Geist, 1857; "Nature and Spirit") appealed strongly to freethinkers, but dialectical materialists condemned his acceptance of competitive capitalism, which Büchner viewed as an example of Charles Darwin's "struggle for survival." " 'Büchner, Ludwig', Encyclopædia Britannica Online (accessed August 1, 2008).
^Gustavo Bueno: Cuestiones cuodlibetales sobre Dios y la religión. Madrid: Mondadori, 1989.
^David Simpson writes that Camus affirmed "a defiantly atheistic creed." Albert Camus (1913–1960), The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006, (Accessed June 14, 2007).
^Haught, James A. (1996). 2,000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt. Prometheus Books. pp. 261–262. ISBN978-1-57392-067-4.
^R. Carnap: Intellectual Autobiography. in: P. A. Schilpp (editor): The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. Cambridge University Press, La Salle (Illinois) 1963.
^"Carnap had a modest but deeply religious family background, which might explain why, although he later became an atheist, he maintained a respectful and tolerant attitude in matters of faith throughout his life." Buldt, Bernd: "Carnap, Paul Rudolf", Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography Vol. 20 p.43. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008.
^"If I had to sum up my own atheism, I think I would have to say that it amounts to this: I have no interest in the supernatural. I also have no interest in what others believe about the supernatural as long as their belief does not involve intolerance of those who disagree with them." Robert Todd Carroll, Skeptic's Dictionary entry: atheism (accessed April 28, 2008).
^"Despite his atheism, Comte was concerned with moral regeneration and the establishment of a spiritual power." Mary Pickering, 'Auguste Comte and the Saint-Simonians', French Historical Studies Vol. 18, No. 1 (Spring 1993), pp. 211-236.
^"But tragically, Comte's "remarkable clearness and extent of vision as to natural things" was coupled with a "total blindness in regard to all that pertains to man's spiritual nature and relations." His "astonishing philosophic power" served only to increase the "plausibility" of a dangerous infidelity. Comte was, once unmasked, a "blank, avowed, unblushing Atheist." [...] Some of the Reformed writers were careful enough to note that technically Comte was not an atheist since he never denied the existence of God, merely his comprehensibility. Practically, however, this made little difference. It only pointed to the skepticism and nescience at the core of his positivism. The epistemological issues dominated the criticism of Comte. Quickly, his atheism was traced to his sensual psychology (or "sensualistic psychology", as Robert Dabney preferred to say)." Charles D. Cashdollar, 'Auguste Comte and the American Reformed Theologians', Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 39, No. 1 (January–March 1978), pp. 61-79.
^"An atheist, he rejected the burden of original sin, and preached the fundamental 'moral goodness of man.'" Condorcet's Reconsideration of America as a Model for Europe, Max M. Mintz, Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Winter, 1991), pp. 493-506 (p. 505), published by University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic
^Giancarlo Marchetti (May–Jun 2012). "Donald Davidson Interview". Philosophy Now. Interviewer: "What is your relation with religion? Which religion do you think is true?" Donald Davidson: "None. I am an atheist, and always have been. Many of the claims of religion are good candidates for propositions that lack a truth value."
^"Deleuze's atheist philosophy of immanence is an artistic (or creative) power at work on theology" Deleuze and Religion. Mary Bryden (2002). Routledge, p. 157.
^Dennett, Daniel C. (2006), Breaking the Spell, Viking (Penguin), ISBN0-670-03472-X
^Dennett recommends: "If the topic comes up, acknowledge you're an atheist. No big deal. Now let's talk about something interesting." "In Reason We Trust" advertisement, Scientific American, vol. 318, no. 1 (January 2018), p. 21.
^"So when I say “I rightly pass as an atheist” I know that because of everything that I’ve done so far, say in terms of deconstruction and so on and so forth, I’ve given a number of signs of my being a non-believer in God in a certain way, an atheist. And nevertheless, although I confirm that it is right to say “I’m an atheist”, I can’t say myself “I am an atheist” as a position, see “I am” or “I know what I am”: “I am this, and nothing else and I’m identifying myself as an atheist.” I would never say… this would sound obscene: “I am.” I wouldn’t say “I am an atheist” or I wouldn’t say “I am a believer” either." Jacques Derrida On ‘Atheism’ and ‘Belief’ (excerpt from an interview in Toronto, 2002)
^A. G. Rud; Jim Garrison; Lynda Stone, eds. (2009). Dewey at One Hundred Fifty. Purdue University Press. p. 22. ISBN9781557535504. With respect to his personal beliefs, Dewey wrote to Max Otto that "I feel the gods are pretty dead, tho I suppose I ought to know that however, to be somewhat more philosophical in the matter, if atheism means simply not being a theist, then of course I'm an atheist. But the popular if not the etymological significance of the word is much wider. ...Although he described himself as an atheist in one sense of the term, it is also clear that Dewey was opposed to militant atheism for the same reason that he was opposed to supernaturalism: he thought both positions dogmatic.
^A History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern, to the Period of the French Revolution, J.M. Robertson, Fourth Edition, Revised and Expanded, In Two Volumes, Vol. I, Watts, 1936. p173 - 174
^"This book... presents the strongest case yet for atheism... Drange carefully analyzes and assesses two major arguments for the nonexistence of God: the argument from Evil and the Argument from Nonbelief." [quoted from the dustjacket description] Nonbelief & Evil: Two arguments for the nonexistence of God Theodore M. Drange, Prometheus Books, 1998, ISBN1-57392-228-5
^"A Resounding Eco", Time, June 13, 2005, archived from the original on October 15, 2007, His new book touches on politics, but also on faith. Raised Catholic, Eco has long since left the church. 'Even though I'm still in love with that world, I stopped believing in God in my 20s after my doctoral studies on St. Thomas Aquinas. You could say he miraculously cured me of my faith,…'
^"'There is no God, there is no life after death, Jesus was a man, and, perhaps most important, the influence of religion is by and large bad,' he wrote in the current issue of Free Inquiry, a magazine about secular humanism, a school of thought that emphasizes values based on experience rather than religion." Paul Edwards, Professor and Editor of Philosophy, Dies at 81, by Jennifer Bayot, The New York Times, December 16, 2004 (Accessed April 21, 2008)
^Rice, Hugh (2005). "Reviewed Work: The Non-Existence of God by Nicholas Everitt". The Philosophical Quarterly. 55 (221): 692–693.
^Davison, Scott A. (2007). "Reviewed Work: The Non-Existence of God by Nicholas Everitt". International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. 61 (2): 127–129. doi:10.1007/s11153-007-9116-y. S2CID170168758.
^"An exponent of the Idealist school developed by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Forberg is best known for his essay Über die Entwicklung des Begriffs Religion (1798; "On the Development of the Concept of Religion"), a work that occasioned Fichte's dismissal from the University of Jena on the charge of atheism after he had published a corroborative treatise. Forberg also wrote further apologetical works in support of atheism." 'Forberg, Friedrich Karl', Encyclopædia Britannica Online, 2008 (accessed August 1, 2008).
^"If I were not a total atheist, I would be a monk...a good monk." David Macey (2004). Michel Foucault. Reaktion Books, p. 130.
^"Coleridge also introduced Charles Lamb to Godwin. Lamb had shown some sympathy for the New Philosophy but the arguments of Coleridge and his own religiosity and common sense quickly turned him against it. He was particularly repelled by Godwin's atheism." Peter H. Marshall, William Godwin (1984), page 240.
^Thomas Bethell (2012). Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher. Hoover Press. p. 7. ISBN9780817914165. Hoffer's attitude toward religion was hard to pin down. He generally described himself as an atheist, yet during our interview he described religion as a significant source of leadership.
^Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Voltaire: a History of Civilization in Western Europe from 1715 to 1756, with Special Emphasis on the Conflict between Religion and Philosophy, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1965, pp. 695-714
^"The principles of Hume's philosophy implied that the question of God's existence cannot be settled definitively either way, so he was in one sense an agnostic. However, since he does not seem to have entertained any belief in God, it is probably also fair to call him an atheist—just not a campaigning one." Anthony Gottlieb, "Who Was David Hume?" (review of James A. Harris, Hume: an Intellectual Biography, Cambridge University Press, 621 pp., "the first intellectual biography of Hume"), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIII, no. 9 (May 26, 2016), p. 70 (the full review: pp. 68, 70–71).Review of Jame Harris,'Hume: an Intellectual Biography', Cambridge University Press, by Paul Russell, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 26 May 2016. See also
Paul Russell. (2008). The Riddle of Hume's Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism and Irreligion. Oxford University Press.
^Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi (1965). The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Ajita...preached a thoroughgoing materialist doctrine: good deeds and charity gained a man nothing in the end. His body dissolved into the primary elements at death, no matter what he had or had not done. Nothing remained. Good and evil, charity and compassion were all irrelevant to a man's fate.
^Nasser Behnegar (2005). Leo Strauss, Max Weber, And The Scientific Study Of Politics. University of Chicago Press. p. 143. ISBN9780226041438. Consider the difference in Strauss's treatment of Alexandre Kojève, who was openly an atheist, a Stalinist, and one whose thought, in Strauss's words, produces "an amazingly lax morality" (WPP, 111).
^Leandro Konder: O discreto charme do marxismoArchived 2016-09-11 at the Wayback Machine. Pesquisa FAPESP. Acesso em 12/07/2016. "— O senhor é um socialista ateu? — Eu acho que sim. (...) minha revisão e reavaliação positiva do papel da consciência religiosa não significa o abandono da minha descrença básica de ateu. (...) não acredito em Deus, mas tenho boas relações com ele."
^"As a philosopher he became a firm atheist and loud sceptic on issues of supernature and the afterlife. He concluded in The Illusion Of Immortality (1935) that this life was all there was, and that humankind should therefore make the best of it here on earth - a theory honed in The Philosophy Of Humanism (1949), which remains a classic in its genre." Jonathan Freedland, 'Obituary: Corliss Lamont', The Guardian (London), May 19, 1995, Pg. 14.
^"I am an atheist." [David Lewis, "Evil for Freedom's Sake," in Papers in Ethics and Social Philosophy, 101-127 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). p. 102]
^"A self-confessed "religious atheist", Lipton was fully engaged with his religious culture, taking his family to synagogue on Saturdays and teaching children at the Sabbath school. He did not think it was necessary to believe in God to recognise the value of religion in providing the individual with a moral compass." 'Obituary of Professor Peter Lipton, Inspiring head of Cambridge's department of History and Philosophy whose atheism did not impede his religious observance', Daily Telegraph, December 17, 2007, Pg. 23.
^Marcelo., Gleiser (2015). Island of knowledge : the limits of science and the search for meaning. Basic Books. ISBN9780465049646. OCLC900624138.
^"Internetowa Lista Ateistów i Agnostyków" [The Kazimierz Łyszczyński Internet List of Atheists and Agnostics, of the Polish Society of Rationalists]. lista.racjonalista.pl.
^"Are there really no atheists? No good reason has yet been given for NA and, until one is, we professed atheists have every reason to suppose that we really are atheists." Michael Martin, Are There Really No Atheists?, 1996 (accessed April 21, 2008).
^"She became increasingly skeptical of religious beliefs, including her own liberal Unitarianism, and her avowal of atheism in the Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development (1851, with H.G. Atkinson) caused widespread shock." Martineau, HarrietEncyclopædia Britannica Online, 2008 (Accessed April 15, 2008)
^McDaniel, Kris (2020), "John M. E. McTaggart", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2021-03-13, In addition, he authored many important articles on metaphysics, including his famous "The Unreality of Time" in 1908, some of which are collected in his Philosophical Studies...He began preparatory school at Weybridge, but because of his frequent advocacy of atheism he was removed, and transplanted to Caterham...McTaggart denied that the truth of optimism required the truth of theism. As noted earlier, McTaggart was throughout his adult life an unwavering atheist.
^Darrell Berg (2009). Darrell Berg (ed.). The Correspondence of Christian Gottfried Krause: A Music Lover in the Age of Sensibility. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 106. ISBN9780754664291. Yet Friedrich, after he had ascertained that La Mettrie had not renounced his atheism on his deathbed,...
^Harmke Kamminga (1995). The Science and Culture of Nutrition, 1840-1940. Rodopi. p. 31. ISBN978-90-5183-818-3. Moleschott's atheism is much more prominent, for example, and he declares absurd Liebig's opinion that insights into the laws of nature inevitably lead us to the notion of a Being knowable only through revelation.
^"Since my mid-undergraduate days, I have been an atheist. By now I suppose there are some who would call me a professional atheist troikaing me with Antony Flew and Michael Scriven." Kai Nielsen, God and the Grounding of Morality, p.155 [2]
^Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, aphorisms 108 and 125 [3])
^Amazon listing for Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, by Michel Onfray. (Accessed March 23, 2008)
^In 'Is God Good By Definition?' (1992), Oppy presented a logical argument for God's nonexistence based upon an alleged fact of metaethics: the falsity of moral realism. If moral realism is false, then that is a fact that is incompatible with God's existence.
^Copeland, B. Jack (2020), "Arthur Prior", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2021-03-10, He was, at this stage of his life, obsessed with religion. He believed in the virgin birth and the voice of the devil, and was a devout Presbyterian (Prior 1940)...In later life, however, he described himself as having 'no religious beliefs' (Prior c.1967). In 1961, when Max Cresswell—then a logic student aged 21—met him for the first time, in Manchester, Prior announced: 'Mr Cresswell, isn't it a pity that God does not exist'.
^Cohen, L.J. (2006). Encyclopedia of philosophy. Donald M. Borchert (2nd ed.). Detroit: Thomson Gale/Macmillan Reference USA. ISBN0-02-865780-2. OCLC61151356. He was influenced for several years by the theologian Arthur Miller, who combined a strict adherence to Presbyterian doctrine with an equally strong support for socialism and opposition to nationalism. But Prior's pacifism weakened, and he served from 1942 to 1945 in the New Zealand air force. And the central focus of his interests gradually shifted - helped by an occasional bout of atheism - from theology to ethics and logic.
^"In my third year of high school I walked often with my new Jamaican friends, Fred and Harold Cassidy, trying to convert them from their Episcopalian faith to atheism." Willard Van Orman Quine, Lewis Edwin Hahn, Paul Arthur Schilpp, The Philosophy of W.V. Quine (1986).
^In God and Moral Autonomy (1997), Rachels argued for the nonexistence of God based on the impossibility of a being worthy of worship.
^"His tolerance and good humour enabled him to disagree strongly without giving or taking offence, for example with his brother Michael Ramsey whose ordination (he went on to become archbishop of Canterbury) Ramsey, as a militant atheist, naturally regretted." D. H. Mellor, 'Ramsey, Frank Plumpton (1903–1930)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, October 2005 (accessed May 2, 2008).
^" Asked if Rand was an atheist, [Yaron] Brook said, "Yes, she was - and I have been since the age of 6, before I read Ayn Rand. But more than anti-religion, she was for reason. She spends time on the positive. She believed the way to evaluate things in life and reality is through reason, rational thought. That's what we try to emphasize." " George Hohmann, 'Ayn Rand relevant today, speaker saysArchived 2015-04-02 at the Wayback Machine', Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia), June 1, 2009, Pg. P5A (accessed 5 June 2009).
^Johannes Quack (2011). Disenchanting India: Organized Rationalism and Criticism of Religion in India. Oxford University Press. p. 89, 338. ISBN978-0-19-981260-8. Gora stated that "Atheism is the opposite of theism. What then is theism? Theism means belief in the existence of god. But what is god? The form of god has changed considerably from the primitives, solid flesh to a metaphysical concept of the ultimate reality. Though the forms of god have varied widely, all the types have one common, namely that god is superior to man. So, in relation to the god of his belief, the believer places himself in a position of inferiority. The prayer, 'Thy will be done' expresses the believer's feeling of surrender and subordination to god. Because free will exists, god does not exist and the concept of an almighty god is clearly an absurdity. Belief in the existence of god is an expression of mans slave mind. Slave mind seeks a prop and an easy prop on which the slave-mind rested was a concept of god."
^Ronald J. Sider; Paul Charles Kemeny; Derek H. Davis; Clarke E. Cochran; Corwin Smidt (2009). Church, State and Public Justice: Five Views. InterVarsity Press. p. 34. ISBN9780830874743. Religious beliefs, argues John Rawls—a Harvard philosopher and self- identifying atheist—can be so divisive in a pluralistic culture that they subvert the stability of a society.
^"Despite asserting that he had always loathed the family, both the one he was born into and the ones he had created, in the same year he published Le Moine et le philosophe (1997, "The Monk and the Philosopher", 1998), a book-length dialogue between Revel, the convinced atheist, and his son Mathieu Ricard, who had abandoned a career in molecular biology research to go to live in Asia, to study Buddhism, and who subsequently became a Buddhist monk." David Drake, Obituary: Jean-François Revel, The Independent (London), May 10, 2006, Pg. 44.
^Christopher J. Voparil; Richard J. Bernstein, eds. (2010). "Trotsky and the Wild Orchids". The Rorty Reader. John Wiley & Sons. p. 509. ISBN9781405198318. The orthodox tend to think that people who, like the postmodernists and me, believe neither in God nor in some suitable substitute, should think that everything is permitted, that everybody can do what they like.
^"Philosopher Michael Ruse has written: ' The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist.' But in all the hype and embarrassment over geneticist Professor Richard Dawkins's anti-religious arguments, there is an important strand in his argument that has been overlooked: his views on morality." Richard Harries, 'It is possible to be moral without God', The Observer (England), December 30, 2007, Comment Pages, Pg. 25.
^Russell said: "As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist... None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of Homer really exist, and yet if you were to set to work to give a logical demonstration that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and the rest of them did not exist you would find it an awful job. You could not get such proof. Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line." Am I an Agnostic or an Atheist?, from Last Philosophical Testament 1943–1968, (1997) Routledge ISBN0-415-09409-7. Russell was chosen by LOOK magazine to speak for agnostics in their well-known series explaining the religions of the U.S., and authored the essay "What Is An Agnostic?" which appeared 3 November 1953 in that magazine
^"Santayana playfully called himself 'a Catholic atheist,' but in spite of the fact that he deliberately immersed himself in the stream of Catholic religious life, he never took the sacraments. He neither literally regarded himself as a Catholic nor did Catholics regard him as a Catholic." Empiricism, Theoretical Constructs, and God, by Kai Nielsen, The Journal of Religion, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Jul., 1974), pp. 199-217 (p. 205), published by The University of Chicago Press
^"My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe, and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests." George Santayana, 'On My Friendly Critics', in Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies, 1922 (from Rawson's Dictionary of American Quotations via credoreference.com (accessed August 1, 2008).
^"He was so thoroughly an atheist that he rarely mentioned it, considering the topic of God to be beneath discussion. In his autobiography, The Words, Sartre recalled deciding at about age twelve that God does not exist, and hardly thinking about it thereafter." 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt, James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996.
^Kemerling, Garth (October 27, 2001). "Sartre: Existential Life". Philosophy Pages. Britannica Internet Guide Selection. Retrieved 2006-11-12.
^William J. Deangelis (172). Ludwig Wittgenstein - a Cultural Point of View: Philosophy in the Darkness of This Time. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN9781409485377. Positivists did not merely reject religious discourse as meaningless, they rejected religion. They thought of religious belief as confused and nonsensical. ...their unofficial leader, Moritz Schlick, thought of religion as a kind of childhood phase in the intellectual development of humankind, a phase that will wither and become obsolete as scientific ways of knowing become the accepted paradigm. To this extent, one can say that Schlick's attitude and that of most of his fellow Positivists was atheistic.
^"...sagte Michael Schmidt-Salomon, Vorstand der Giordano-Bruno-Stiftung und damit so etwas wie Deutschlands Chef-Atheist." ("...said Michael Schmidt-Salomon, [who is] chairman of the Giordano Bruno Foundation, and therefore something of a 'chief atheist' for Germany.") Chef-Atheist im Chat: "Gynäkologen, die an die Jungfrauengeburt glauben", Spiegel Online, 29 May 2007 (Accessed 6 April 2008)
^David A. Leeming; Kathryn Madden; Stanton Marlan, eds. (2009). Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, Volume 2. Springer. p. 824. ISBN9780387718019. A more accurate statement might be that for a German – rather than a French or British writer of that time – Schopenhauer was an honest and open atheist.
^Dale Jacquette, ed. (2007). Schopenhauer, Philosophy and the Arts. Cambridge University Press. p. 22. ISBN9780521044066. For Kant, the mathematical sublime, as seen for example in the starry heavens, suggests to imagination the infinite, which in turn leads by subtle turns of contemplation to the concept of God. Schopenhauer's atheism will have none of this, and he rightly observes that despite adopting Kant's distinction between the dynamical and mathematical sublime, his theory of the sublime, making reference to the struggles and sufferings of struggles and sufferings of Will, is unlike Kant's.
^B. R. Hergenhahn (2008). An Introduction to the History of Psychology. Cengage Learning. p. 216. ISBN9780495506218. Although Schopenhauer was an atheist, he re- alized that his philosophy of denial had been part of several great religions; for example, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism.
^"Within Schopenhauer's vision of the world as Will, there is no God to be comprehended, and the world is conceived of as being meaningless." [4]
^Reviewing an episode of the Channel 4 series Voices: "On the one hand, Sir John Eccles, a quiet-spoken theist with the most devastating way of answering questions with a single "yes", on the other, Professor Searle, a flamboyant atheist using words I've never heard of or likely to again "now we know that renal secretions synthesize a substance called angiotensin and that angiotensin gets into the hypothalamus and causes a series of neuron firings". " Peter Dear, 'Today's television and radio programmes', The Times, February 22, 1984; pg. 31; Issue 61764; col A.
^Doug Renselle. "A Review of Amy Wallace's The Prodigy". Quantonics, Inc. Retrieved 20 June 2012. Rabid atheist by age six. (His father, Boris, was too, but intensely studied great religious works.)
^"Within a year I had gone to Miss Graves to tell her that I no longer believed in God. 'I know,' she said, 'I have been through that myself.' But her strategy misfired: I never went through it." B.F. Skinner, pp. 387-413, E.G. Boring and G. Lindzey's A History of Psychology in Autobiography (Vol. 5), New York: Appleton Century-Crofts, 1967.
^"This book is a presentation and defense of atheism." Atheism: The Case Against God, by George H. Smith, Prometheus Books, 1989, ISBN0-87975-124-X
^Smith has written numerous papers arguing for the nonexistence of God.
^Naomi Zack (2010). "Herbert Spencer". Philosophy. Visible Ink Press. p. 250. ISBN9781578592265. Herbert Spencer was an atheist who believed science was the only way to uncover true knowledge.
^"As he wrote: "Stirner's egoism springs from a conscious and total atheism, with this playful indifference and apathy to any higher essence being the prerequisite for encountering one's own being, one's uniqueness, Einzigkeit." Laurel Jean Fredrickson, Duke University, Kate Millett and Jean-Jacques Lebel: Sexual outlaws in the intermedia borderlands of art and politics, page 136.
^"Theodorus, the atheistic philosopher of Cyrene, appears in Athens during the Phalerean regime." Athenian Impiety Trials in the Late Fourth Century B. C., L. L. O'Sullivan, The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 47, No. 1 (1997), pp. 136-152 (p. 142), published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
^Ann Thomson (1981). Discours Préliminaire. Librairie Droz. p. 130. ISBN9782600035859. Another example of the virtuous atheist given by La Mettrie is Lucilio Vanini, burned for atheism in Toulouse in 1619.
^Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; Austin M. Farrer; E. M. Huggard (2010). Austin M. Farrer (ed.). Theodicy. Cosimo, Inc. p. 434. ISBN9781616402952. Here is another example cited by the author: an atheist, a man like Lucilio Vanini (that is what many people call him, whereas he himself adopts the magnificent name of Giulio Cesare Vanini in his works), will suffer a preposterous martyrdom for his chimera rather than renounce his impiety.
^"While Shirley was (and is) a devout Catholic and so took the marriage as a commitment for eternity, Bernard, an atheist, had not done so when he made the wedding vows. Shirley says: "The Church and Bernard had a wonderful time debating all this. The theologians were so thrilled to be discussing it with a leading philosopher." " Stuart Jeffries, 'Profile: Bernard Williams', The Guardian, November 30, 2002, Saturday Review, Pg. 20.