- Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins (born March 26, 1941) is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene", which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme into the lexicon, helping found memetics. - Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (born April 13, 1949, in Portsmouth , England ) is a journalist, author and literary critic. Hitchens received degrees in philosophy, politics and economics from Balliol College , Oxford , in 1970. From 1971-1981, he worked in Britain as book reviewer for The Times newspaper. He emigrated to the United States in 1981, and has written regularly, or been a contributing editor for Harper's , Vanity Fair and The Nation . - Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a prominent American philosopher whose research centers on philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. Dennett is currently the Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. - Antony Flew
Professor Antony Garrard Newton Flew (born February 11 1923) is a British philosopher. Known for several decades as a prominent atheist, Flew first publicly expressed deist views in 2004. - Alister McGrath
Alister E. McGrath (b. January 23, 1953) is a Christian theologian, with a background in molecular biophysics, noted for his work on historical, systematic and scientific theology In his writing and public speaking, he promotes "scientific theology" and opposes atheism. McGrath was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and is currently Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Oxford. He was until 2005 Principal of Wycliffe Hall. - Julia Sweeney
Julia Sweeney (born October 10, 1959 in Spokane, Washington) is an American actress and comedian who lives in Hollywood, California. She is best known for her roles on "Saturday Night Live", especially as the androgynous character "Pat." She is also well known for her critically acclaimed 1996 one-woman monologue, "God Said, Ha!" in which she addressed her experience of surviving cancer. A film version of the show was released in 1998. - Ravi Zacharias
Ravi Zacharias (full name Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias, born 1946) is an Indian-born, Canadian-American evangelical Christian philosopher, apologist and evangelist. Zacharias is a descendant of two rich religious traditions, first Hindu priests (of the Nambudiri Brahmin caste), and later as Christian ministers. In one of his lectures, Zacharias asserts that a Swiss-German priest spoke to one of his ancestors about Christianity, … - Matt Ridley
Matthew (Matt) Ridley (born February 7, 1958 at Newcastle upon Tyne) is an English science writer. He received a doctorate in zoology from the University of Oxford before commencing a career in science journalism. Ridley worked as a science correspondent for The Economist and The Daily Telegraph. - Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Madalyn Murray O'Hair was an American who founded American Atheists, and campaigned for the separation of church and state. She was murdered at age 76. - Michael Martin
Michael L. Martin (born 3 February 1932) is an analytic philosopher and retired professor emeritus at Boston University. Martin has concerned himself largely with philosophy of religion, though the philosophies of science, law, and sport have not escaped his attention. On the former, Martin has published a number of books and copious articles defending atheism and various arguments against the existence of god in exhaustive detail (among them, … - Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer (born July 6, 1946 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) is a Jewish-Australian philosopher. He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, University of Melbourne. He specializes in practical ethics, approaching ethical issues from a preference utilitarian perspective. In addition, he holds an atheistic view of the world. - David Mills
David Mills is an atheist and an author who argues that science and religion cannot be successfully reconciled. Mills' best-known book, "Atheist Universe", rebuts both young- and old-earth creation science, as well as multiple facets of the Intelligent Design movement. At one point, the book was Amazon's best-selling book on atheism. David Mills was born on January 24th, 1959 and lives in Huntington, West Virginia. - Michael Newdow
Dr. Michael Arthur Newdow (born June 24 1953) is a Sacramento, California attorney and emergency medicine physician. He is an atheist and an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church. In 1997, Newdow started FACTS (First Amendmist Church of True Science), which advocates a strong separation of church and state in public institutions. - Baron D'Holbach
Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d'Holbach was a German-French author, philosopher and encyclopedist. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, Germany but lived and worked mainly in Paris. He is most famous as being one of the first self-described atheists in Europe. - Madeleine Bunting
Madeleine Bunting is a British journalist and writer who is an Associate Editor and columnist on "The Guardian". Born in Oswaldkirk, North Yorkshire, Bunting was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where she read History, and won a Knox postgraduate fellowship to study Politics and teach at Harvard. After a period working for Brooks Productions (1988-89) she joined "The Guardian" taking up posts as a news reporter, leader writer, … - Joan Smith
Joan Alison Smith (born August 27, 1953 in London) is an English novelist, journalist and human rights activist, who is a former chair of the Writers in Prison committee in the English section of International PEN. Smith read Latin at the University of Reading in the early 1970s. After a spell as a journalist in local radio in Manchester, she joined the staff of the "Sunday Times" in 1979 and stayed at the newspaper until 1984, … - Charles Bradlaugh
Charles Bradlaugh was a political activist and one of the most famous English atheists of the 19th century. - Natalie Angier
Natalie Angier (born February 16, 1958) is a nonfiction writer and a science journalist for the "New York Times". Angier was born in the Bronx borough of New York City, New York. After completing two years at the University of Michigan, she studied physics and English at Barnard College, where she graduated with high honors in 1978. From 1980 to 1984, Angier wrote about biology for "Discover Magazine". - Kai Nielsen
Kai Nielsen is adjunct professor of philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal and professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Calgary. Before moving to Canada Nielsen taught for many years at New York University (NYU). He specializes in metaphilosophy, ethics, and social and political philosophy. Nielsen has also written about philosophy of religion, and is a leading advocate of contemporary, atheist philosophy. - Walter Kaufmann
Walter Arnold Kaufmann (July 1, 1921 - September 4, 1980 Princeton, New Jersey) was an American philosopher, translator, and poet. A prolific author, he wrote extensively on a broad range of subjects, such as authenticity and death, moral philosophy and existentialism, theism and atheism, Christianity and Judaism, and philosophy and literature. He is particularly renowned as a scholar and translator of Nietzsche. - Luigi Cascioli
Luigi Cascioli is an Italian atheist and author of the book "The Fable of Christ". When Cascioli was younger he trained to become a Roman Catholic priest, but he left his training to become a pronounced atheist and he asserted that Jesus never existed. He later expounded on this in his book, which claims that Jesus was a fictionalisation of the historical John of Gamala. In response to this book, in 2002, a local priest, Father Enrico Righi, … - Joseph Lewis
Joseph Lewis (11 June 1889 - 1968) was an American freethinker, and atheist who was born in Montgomery, Alabama. At the age of nine he left school to find an employment and became mostly self-educated. Lewis developed his ideas from reading, among other, Robert G. Ingersoll and Thomas Paine. In 1920, Lewis moved to New York where he became the president of Freethinkers of America (a title he would keep for the rest of his life). - Don Cupitt
Don Cupitt (b. May 22, 1934) has been described as a "radical theologian", implying that he is a scholar of theology with atheistic beliefs. - Jean Meslier
Jean Meslier, was a Catholic priest who was discovered, upon his death, to have written a book-length philosophical essay promoting atheism. Described by the author as his "testament" to his parishioners, the text denounces all religion, and argues the superiority of atheist morality. - Robert Todd Carroll
Robert Todd Carroll (1945-), Ph.D., is an American writer and academic, acting as a philosophy professor and chairman of the Philosophy Department at Sacramento City College. Carroll has authored several books and skeptical essays. A longtime advocate of atheism, scientific skepticism, and critical thinking, in 1994 he set up the Skeptic's Dictionary online, initially consisting of fewer than fifty articles, mostly on logical fallacies and pseudoscience. - Heather Mac Donald
Heather Lynn Mac Donald is a conservative author (a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor to the New York City Journal) and former lawyer. She graduated from Berkeley College, Yale University in 1978 "summa cum laude," studying literary deconstructionism, which she later repudiated. She won a Mellon Fellowship to attend Clare College, University of Cambridge, receiving an M.A. in English literature. - Kersey Graves
Kersey Graves was a skeptic, atheist, spiritualist, theological reformist and writer. His parents were Quakers, and as a young man he followed them in their observance, and then later moved to the Hicksite wing of Quakerism. Graves was largely self-educated, and at the age of 19 was teaching in a school at Richmond, a career he was to follow for more than twenty years. He was an advocate of Abolitionism was also interested in language reform, … - Diagoras
Diagoras the Atheist of Melos was a Greek poet and sophist of the 5th century BC. He became an atheist after an incident that happened against him went unpunished by the gods. He spoke out against the orthodox religions, and criticized the Eleusinian Mysteries. He once threw a wooden image of a god into a fire, remarking that the deity should perform another miracle and save itself. Diagoras has been called a student of Democritus, … - Rick Scarborough
Rick Scarborough is a former Baptist pastor from Pearland, Texas, who heads Vision America, Vision America Action and the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration. Vision America is focused on encouraging pastors across the United States to be involved in society, and to encourage their parishoners to vote their values. It is reported that the Vision America Patriot Pastor program has thousands of active members. - William J. Murray
William J. Murray is a born again Christian who might be best known to the public for writing "My Life Without God" and heading the William J. Murray Evangelistic Association. He is the chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition, a socially conservative organization in Washington, D.C. He has been active on issues related to aiding Christians in Islamic and Communist nations. Murray is the son of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, … - Steve Benson
Stephen R. Benson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning liberal U.S. editorial cartoonist for "The Arizona Republic". Benson is the grandson of former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and former LDS Church president Ezra Taft Benson. Benson's more controversial cartoons include one that depicts a firefighter carrying a child from the Oklahoma City bombing similar to a well-known photo of a firefighter's futile rescue of 1-year old Baylee Almon. - Ron Barrier
Ron Barrier is national spokesperson and media coordinator of "American Atheists" and frequently appears in U.S. media to present arguments from an atheist perspective. He produces the cable TV program "The Atheist Viewpoint" in Staten Island, New York. - Michael Harrington
Edward Michael Harrington (February 24, 1928 - July 31, 1989) was an American democratic socialist, writer, and political activist. - Robert Locke
Robert Locke is a former editor for "FrontPage Magazine". He is a conservative American. He is critical of liberals, libertarians, and some "compassionate conservatives", such as George W. Bush. He is an admirer of neoconservative scholar Leo Strauss (although, as a self-proclaimed agnostic, he is critical of Strauss' atheism), architect Robert A.M. Stern, and photorealist painter Richard Estes. Many of his writings are archived at FrontPage Magazine. - Matthew Turner
Matthew Turner (d. 1788), a Liverpool physician, is considered (for example by Berman, 1990) to be the author or co-author of the 1782 pamphlet, "Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever", the first published work of avowed atheism in Britain. Turner was also a pioneer in the use of ether for medical purposes, and wrote a pamphlet on the subject. In a footnote, Turner was the man who introduced Josiah Wedgwood to Thomas Bentley in Liverpool, … - André Comte-Sponville
André Comte-Sponville is a French philosopher, proponent of atheism and materialism. He was born in Paris, France. He studied in the École Normale Supérieure, and is aggregated in philosophy. - Nicolas Walter
Nicolas Hardy Walter (November 22, 1934-March 7, 2000) was a British anarchist and atheist writer, speaker and activist. - Richard Packham
Richard Packham (born Howard Richard Packham on September 21, 1933), is a critic of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and Christian belief in general and is active in the Exmormon community. He helped establish the Exmormon Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to "offering emotional support to those who are leaving (or who have left) Mormonism." The Foundation operates exmormonfoundation.org, … - Vardis Fisher
Vardis Alvero Fisher (born March 31, 1895, in Annis, Idaho - died July 9, 1968, in Hagerman, Idaho) was a writer best known for historical novels of the old West and the monumental 12-volume "Testament of Man" series of novels, depicting the history of humans from cave to civilization. - Joseph Glanvill
Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680) was an English writer, philosopher, and clergyman. Educated at Oxford University (B.A. from Exeter College, M.A. from Lincoln College), Glanvill was made Vicar of Frome in 1662, rector of the Abbey Church at Bath in 1666, and prebendary of Worcester in 1678. His writings display a variety of beliefs that may appear deeply contradictory to contemporary people. On the one hand, he was the author of "The Vanity of Dogmatizing", …
|
| |