Is there anyone who’s known for being an athiest? I am writing something and I’d like to get some ideas of people who would be known for being an athiest.
I am not sure anyone really qualifies, but I thought I’d ask. Like “Gus Hall,” and “Angela Davis,” were pretty well known for being Communists. And if you think of the name Squeaky Fromme, you think of crazy lady.
I guess what I’m looking for is a name of a person, when you think of him/her would be instantly associated with the term “athiest.” The way when you hear “Charles Darwin” you think “evolution.”
Bertrand Russell.
Voltaire.
PS: Angela Davis was a communist? I thought she was just a typically seventies leftie and a fashion-conscious black pride movement figurehead.
Abraham Lincoln
Albert Einstein
Aldous Huxley
Andrew Carnegie
Ernest Hemingway
Arthur C. Clarke
Charles Darwin
Ayn Rand
Benjamin Franklin
Carl Sagan
Bertrand Russell
Billy Joel
Voltaire
Clarence Darrow
Frank Zappa
Gene Roddenberry
George Bernard Shaw
Helen Keller
Gloria Steinem
James Madison
John Adams
John Stuart Mill
Karl Marx
Kurt Vonnegut
Dr. James Watson
Jawaharlal Nehru
James Joyce
H. L. Mencken
John Lennon
Frank Lloyd Wright
Sir Alfred Hitchcock
Robert Heinlein
George Orwell
Irving Berlin
Samuel Langhorn Clemens
Robert Frost
Susan B. Anthony
Vincent Van Gogh
Thomas Edison
Sigmund Freud
Jonathon Swift
Ambrose Bierce
Oscar Wilde
there’s lots more.
This site also has a long list, but it’s mostly American pop culture people.
ETA: On re-reading after posting, I think pedescribe and MPB in Salt Lake have prolly given you two of the names most recognizable and directly linked to atheism in the US & UK today.
Third, Angela Davis was a communist, but she isn’t any more. Also, I just about walked right into her once. (She was a professor at my undergrad and was connected to the research group where I had work-study.)
There’s some questionable assertions on that site, to say the least. Just this one is enough to suggest that it’s hardly a place to take for granted…“From the age of forty he was, to use his own words, a complete dis-believer in Christianity. He professed himself an Agnostic”…
Snowboarder Bo, the problem is that most of the people mentioned on that website were not atheists. That’s merely a list of people who, while nearly all living in majority-Christian nations, didn’t consider themselves to be orthodox Christians. There is a wide variety of beliefs among the people in that list. This is why it’s not a good idea to just copy down lists from websites that are pushing a particular philosophical viewpoint. The people who create such websites are too eager to include as many people as possible in their lists.
I second Wendell’s point. Never believe a list of famous anythings compiled by a group that promotes that thing. The tendency is to pick one or two comments and incidents, misinterpret what was said or done, and then say proudly, “Gooble Gooble, we accept you. One of us. One of us.”
It’s sort of a guessing game. Deists in the 18th Century were likely the atheists of today. Lots of agnostics could probably be said to be atheists but who are unwilling to hold a strong stance on the subject. Anyone previous to the 20th century is unlikely to have called themselves an atheist, probably even anywhere prior to the latter half of the 20th century even.
Douglas Adams
Isaac Asimov
Arthur C. Clarke
Harlan Ellison
William Golding
Robert Graves
Terry Pratchett
Kurt Vonnegut
Ron Reagan (son of Ronald)
Richard Dawkins
Richard Feynman
Richard Leakey
Richard Stallman
Ivan Pavlov
John Maynard Smith
Carl Sagan
Linus Torvalds
Lance Armstrong
If you want the readers to get that the reason you mention the person is because of their atheism, I’d definitely go with Richard Dawkins. I think he is the only person who is really famous FOR being an atheist.
(Madalyn Murray O’Hair would work too but I think most young people would not recognize the name).