i’m not an atheist, i just want to open up something. who would you call the “jerry falwell” of atheism? is there one? i would perfer someone living, but dead will work if nothing else. does he annoy other atheists as much as jerry falwell and tele-evangelists annoy me? (i suspect one would be hard pressed to find someone as crazy as jerry, but there’s always someone out there)
not sure if this is a “great” debate, but it is sort of religious.
thanks in advance… 
Don’t know of any living candidates, but I’ll nominate Madalyn Murry O’Hair.
Madalyn Murry O’Hair is worm food
ergo
Jerry Falwell is dead?
I’ll second that-legend has it that someone once said, “Bless you” when she sneezed and Ms O’Hair reportedly stabbed said person in the hand with a pen.
And while she was living, Ayn Rand was a pretty voracious atheist.
Just after I hit submit sigh I thought of someone living. What about Penn Jilette? He’s been known to be pretty damn snarky to theists.
Coincidentally enough, we just had a rather informative thread on the late Mrs. O’Hair.
Is that of Penn and Teller?
The equivalent of Jerry Falwell needs to be someone who has made a career of telling theists how foolish they are, of calling on atheistic principles to be enshrined in amendments to the Constitution, who’s advised political candidates, who raises money to support a lavish lifestyle while claiming the money goes toward the lack of God, and so on. I don’t think you’ll find such a person.
Sure, there have been evil atheists; a certain Mr. Stalin springs to mind. But I’m not sure the American political landscape has got many folks in it whose power is due in whole or in part to their atheism. We live in a very atheist-unfriendly country.
Daniel
Well, there’s Judith Hayes - the ‘Happy Heretic’ - not quite at the furthest extreme, but resoundingly in common with the theists at the other end of the scale, has not the tightest grip on reality and has been guilty of beating up the occasional straw person, for example.
For dealing with the reality of living in a theistic society, I’d suggest Bill Hicks.
Yep. I mean, he’s not an out right asshole like Falwell, but he’s pretty snide and smug. Of course, that’s part of his character. But that was the only one I could think of.
I nominate James Randi.
George Carlin is pretty outspoken about his atheism, but certainly not at a Falwell level of extremism.
While this might fit her character and it’s been repeated enough, we’ve never been able to confirm on this board that this is an actual incident. Still looking for a cite.
Extreme atheism? Is that where you should “There is no God!” while sledding down the hills of San Francisco and dodging traffic at 40 MPH?
You may laugh, but you should see the insurance premiums.
I nominate Rick Wingrove. From his Splendor of Islam page:
‘The Jerry Falwell of Atheism’ – wouldn’t that be someone who blamed the 9/11 attacks on theists?
On preview it sounds like that there guy might qualify.
I think it’s hard to classify “extreme atheists”. I think you’re thinking more along the lines of an anti-theist that also happens to be atheist.
Spreading the “word of God” (and discouraging other religions, to a certain degree) is actually part of the Christian religion, so it’s easy to identify the extremists, or those that take it too far. Conversely, there is no ‘law’ that atheists must share their beliefs or condemn those of others, so an anti-religious nut couldn’t be classified as an “extreme athiest”, but rather just plain-old anti-religious.
Damn…there there were a lot of quotation marks in this post.
Stalin was a closet believer, according to the recent bio by Simon Sebag Montefiore. He had trained as a priest in his younger days, and was privately religious in later life.
For the ultimate fundamentalist atheist, I nominate… my Mum!