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Well, that’s not going to work - Galileo has been voted out fair and square. Lobby to get Kepler kicked out as much as you want, but nobody is going to be reinstated.
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Not even Jesus? After 3 days?
Invention. Joseph Lister
Leaders. Alexander the Great
Philosophy. Francis Bacon
Religion. Martin Luther
Science. John Dalton
A couple of changes for me: I looked at the remaining choices afresh and really tried to see influence as opposed to achievement. It’s a tough ol’ world in this thread now.
And I agree with Tom Scud re Luther: Following picks in religion will be much more difficult following Luther’s departure, whenever that occurs.
He might cheat Death, but not my game! 
absolutely, but one has to make a choice somewhere, and Luther strikes me as more important at his point. In fact, I see Luther as more important than Jesus. Jesus didn’t “create” anything, that’s all on Paul. What the hell, eh?
What did Luther really create? There had been dissent against the Catholic Church for centuries before Luther came along. Luther didn’t abolish Catholicism - he just institutionalized an alternative form of Christianity in Western Europe. (Eastern Europe already had an existing alternative form of Christianity.) And Luther’s personal theology isn’t that influential. Protestantism quickly factionalized into dozens of different religions and only a relatively small number of people still adhere to Luther’s beliefs.
It’s true that Luther’s Reformation had a bunch of indirect non-religious results. But you could say the same thing about Galileo or Gutenberg or Columbus - all of them did something that had indirect consequences they hadn’t foreseen.
I’m glad to see our lists are very similar. I’d rank Aristotle and perhaps Descartes as very influential (though often wrong!) but they appear in another sublist. I might put Faraday ahead of Maxwell. (And some very influential scientists are missing from Hart’s List, e.g. Leibniz.)
As for Galileo, I’ll agree there are some physicists from that era who seem more brilliant (Cardano, Kepler, Huygens). My reaction is mainly due to the opinions of other great physicists. I quoted Hawking above; Newton and Einstein also praised Galileo’s influence in superlative terms.
I am delighted Kepler has lasted this long. He was a truly great mathematician. His Laws of Planetary Motion were a supreme achievement. Here’s a page which mentions Kepler’s comments on snowflake symmetries (though not his conclusion that these symmetries implied the atomic theory. It seems a very nice website with a dozen or so other interesting pages about Kepler, though I didn’t notice his famous Wine Barrel Problem or even his famous extension to Plato’s regular solids.)
But even though I’m a fan of Kepler, was he truly near the top of the “influential”? Newton published 80 years after Kepler, and derived Kepler’s laws as a consequence of Newton’s laws. To regard Kepler as having supreme influence, one would have to believe that Kepler’s work inspired Newton to pursue celestial motions, etc. That Kepler was a key inspiration for Newton seems plausible, but is this known?
Busting up the Catholic Church is HUGE. Centuries of monolithic thought police openly mocked and finally overthrown. Dissent against isn’t the same as actual revolt and unforeseen consequences often *influence * many other events.
And in this case, Gutenberg and the printing press certainly take a good deal of credit of getting the Reformation spread across Europe, something Luther wasn’t prepared for. Nonetheless, a pivotal moment in history.
But this wasn’t even Luther’s intent. He had no desire to bust up or overthrow the Catholic Church – he saw that the churched had erred is some important ways, and he wanted to steer it back to the right track (reformation). When the hierarchy resisted, he began to recognize corruption in the church. But the division of the church and his excommunication was upsetting to him and the splintering of protestant denominations – the violence that ensued – was abhorrent.
:dubious:
" It is right and lawful to slay at the first opportunity a rebellious person, who is known as such, for he is already under God’s and the emperor’s ban. Every man is at once judge and executioner of a public rebel; just as, when a fire starts, he who can extinguish it first is the best fellow. Rebellion is not simply vile murder, but is like a great fire that kindles and devastates a country; it fills the land with murder and bloodshed, makes widows and orphans, and destroys everything, like the greatest calamity. Therefore, whosoever can, should smite, strangle, and stab, secretly or publicly, and should remember that there is nothing more poisonous, pernicious, and devilish than a rebellious man. Just as one must slay a mad dog, so, if you do not fight the rebels, they will fight you, and the whole country with you."
http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/peasants1525.html
Luther was many things, but a pacifist who found violence abhorrent he is decidedly not. (He’s also one who wasn’t used to testing himself against his own words, apparently. 
)
Luther wrote Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants in 1525 in which he argued that the peasants who were uprising in Germany should not resort to violence. According to ReligionFacts:
I probably overstated he opposition to violence in general, but my point was that he did not support violence as a legitimate response to authoritarianism; in fact your own quote indicates just the opposite, that those in authority are obligated to use violence to quell rebellion.
I find the insistence to link intent with influence odd. Actions have consequences. Whether or not the person doing it intended the consequences is irrelevant or at least merely a footnote as far as history is concerned. A lot of historical people are influential for reasons they might not have liked or intended themselves.
If I intend to build a better way of processing data, but end up creating the first Artifical Intelligence by accident in a movie like twist, does it mean it doesn’t count as influence because I didn’t intend for it to happen? If the Pope acts with the intent to spread Catholicism, but ends up splintering the Catholic church into a thousand pieces and destroying the papal institution, does that not count as influence because he didn’t intend it?
No, of course not. There’s no question he was influential; I just find it odd to consider him more influential than the others remaining on the list. More influential than Jesus? That’s crazy talk.
If the Church you’re talking about had existed and Luther had overthrown it, I might agree. But the facts are that the Church wasn’t a monolith; it was heavily factionalized, there were numerous opposition groups besides Luther’s, there was the entire Orthodox Church as an alternative institution, and the “thought police” came as a result of the Reformation not as a cause of it.
Four more hours until round… whatever… ends.
Of all the things Jesus was, and of all the things he might have been, he was never ever a “Christian.” That burden belongs to other people. And saying that Jesus is your guiding hand while going off to murder thousands in crusades or millions to secure oil doesn’t shift the blame to Jesus either. Huge difference between “influence” and “handy excuse to rape, pillage and plunder other people who look different from me.” Take a note of the number of times “Jesus” has lead armies into battle. Okay, that wasn’t Jesus after all, just another prick itching for a fight.
Luther left behind writings. Jesus did not. Luther’s likeness is known. Jesus’ likeness is based upon Italian fantasies from the Renascence a time when long hair and facial hair where sure signs that you didn’t have syphilis, and thus were living clean. Luther’s life is known. Jesus is possibly fictional, certainly unclear.
There’s a whole squad of right royal bastards who embrace the Jesus from the Book of Revelations, written by known whack-job St John the Divine. St John was a Greek Christian Jew – meaning that Christianity was still a Jewish cult at the time and dearly afraid of just about everything. His Jesus is also a big influence, but that’s St John, not Jesus.
So once you boil away all that is Jesus from all that is not, even a crazy person could see that Luther has more influence than the so called son of god.
I’ve got a busy day tomorrow, capped with 5 hours of driving at the end of it, so I’m calling round 12.
The losers are…
Category, Name, # of votes
I, Guglielmo Marconi, 6
L, Alexander the Great, 4
P, Thomas Jefferson, 4
R, Martin Luther, 7
S, Ernest Rutherford, 5
The last person known as “the Great” wasn’t even good enough to get a top-20 ranking - sorry, Alexander, there’s a higher standard now…
Rutherford lost the tie-breaker with Dalton.
Remaining names are:
Inventions
Alexander Fleming, Scientist, Invented Penicillin
Antony van Leeuwenhoek, Scientist, Inventor of Microscope
Edward Jenner, Scientist, Developed Vaccination for Smallpox
James Watt, British Scientist, Invented Steam Engine
Johann Gutenberg, Scientist, Inventor of Printing Press
Joseph Lister, Scientist, Developed Antiseptic Methods
Thomas Edison, American Scientist, 1,000+ inventions
Ts’ai Lun, Scientist, Inventor of Paper
Leaders
Augustus Caesar, Roman Princep, Founded Roman Empire
Genghis Khan, Mongol Ruler, Founded Mongol Empire
George Washington, American Statesman and General, Fought For Independence of United States
Josef Stalin, Dictator of USSR, Expanded Communism
Julius Caesar, Roman General, Ended Roman Civil Wars
Lenin, Russian Leader, Founded Communism in Russia
Mao Zedong, Chinese Dictator, Established Communism in China
Napoleon Bonaparte, French Emperor, Waged Napoleonic Wars
Sui Wen Ti, Chinese Emperor, Reunited China
William the Conquerer, Norman Duke and English King, Led In Norman Conquest of England
Philosophy
Adam Smith, Economist, Advocated Capitalism
Aristotle, Greek Philosopher
Confucius, Chinese Philosopher, Founder of Confucianism
Francis Bacon, Philosopher, Developed Scientific Method
John Locke, British Philosopher, Developed Democratic Ideas
Karl Marx, Economist, Founder of Communism
Plato, Greek Philosopher, Developed Platonism
William Shakespeare, English Playwright
Religion
Buddha, Founder of Buddhism
Jesus Christ, Founder of Christianity
Mohammed, Founder of Islam
Moses, Jewish Prophet
St Paul, Christian Missionary and Apostle
Science
Albert Einstein, Scientist, Physicist, Theory of Relativity
Charles Darwin, British Scientist, Theory of Evolution
Euclid, Greek Mathematician
Isaac Newton, British Scientist, Theory of Universal Gravitation and Motion
Johannes Kepler, Scientist, Developed Theories of Planetary Motion
John Dalton, Scientist, Atomic Theory
Louis Pasteur, Scientist, Pasteurization, Germ Theory of Disease
Max Planck, Scientist, Developed Therodynamics
Michael Faraday, British Scientist, Discovered Electromagnetism
Only one of my previous choices lost…
Inventors. Joseph Lister
Leaders. Mao Zedong
Philosophy. Karl Marx
Religion. Buddha
Science. John Dalton
Little known fact: “Ze Dong” means “the Great” in Chinese. 
I still don’t see how Mao and Stalin can be considered more influential than Alexander, however… AtG was in my top 3 in the Leader category.
I’ve no expertise in history of religion, but let me get involved anyway. 
In the recent Greatest American game I dropped out rather than voting against Miss Anthony and being labeled a chauvinist! I see no votes against Jesus yet; are some worried about being compared with Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate?
I’ve read that Judaea, at the time of Jesus, was eager for a Messiah; Jesus may have been one of several. What about John the Baptist who was also martyred? There’s only smallish evidence for Jesus’ historiocity outside the New Testament; what about for John the Baptist? People voted against Columbus and Maxwell despite their great importance on grounds they were replaceable; might Jesus not also have been “replaceable”?
I’m sure many Dopers, including myself, do not believe the story of the Resurrection. But true or false, the story is very influential. Several Dopers are supporting Moses here despite that he was probably fictional; wouldn’t the same argument work in Jesus’ favor even if his famous deeds were fictional?