Professed Atheists who have helped society

RWC

There seem to be quite a number of atheists who comment here. When they argue how bad religion has been for society they point to actions done in the name of religion that are indeed horrific, such as the inqusitions. There are also examples of course of non believers who have done great damage to society. Conversely there are vast examples of good done in the name of religion or by professed believers such as Mother Theresa. So the question I have is, are there professed Athiests who have done charitable or other type work that Athiests can name?

I am asking this not for confrontation but for knowledge. I certainly agree that Athiests are capable of doing good works for others, I just don't know of any prominent ones in history.

Nathan Natas

RWC, are you proposing that only religious people can do good deeds?

Mother Teresa might not be the best example you would want to display.

Please read, "Mommie Dearest: The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud" by Christopher Hitchens: http://www.slate.com/id/2090083/

RWC

I am not proposing that only religious persons can do good deeds for society. I am only asking for professed atheists who have supposedly done good deeds to be identifed.

As for Christopher Hitchens, I believe that his take on Mother Teresa should be taken with a large grain of salt. He is an admitted anti Cahtloic, alcoholic Marxists. Hardly the type of person who would admire her work.

kid-A

Authors

Asimov. Bierce.

Douglas Adams (1952–2001): British radio and television writer, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. [17]
Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914?): American writer, author of The Devil's Dictionary. [18]
Vardis Fisher (1895–1968): American writer, scholar. Author of atheistic Testament of Man series. [19]
Jan Guillou (1944–): Swedish author and Jounalist. [20]
Sam Harris (1967—): American author, researcher in neuroscience, author of The End of Faith. [21]
Harry Harrison (1925—): American Science Fiction author, anthologist and artist whose short story "The Streets of Ashkelon" took as its hero an atheist who tries to prevent a Christian missionary from indoctrinating a tribe of irreligious but ingenuous alien beings. [22]
Christopher Hitchens (1949—): Author, journalist and essayist. [23]
Michel Houellebecq (1958—) : French novelist. [24]
S. T. Joshi (1958—): American editor and literary critic. [25]
Ludovic Kennedy (1919—): British journalist, author, and campaigner for voluntary euthanasia. [26]
Stanislaw Lem (1921–2006): Polish science fiction novelist and essayist. [27]
Primo Levi (1919–1987): Italian novelist and chemist, survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp. [28]
Pierre Loti (1850–1923): French novelist and travel writer. [29]
Joseph McCabe (1867–1955): English writer, anti-religion campaigner. [30]
China Miéville (1972—): British Science Fiction author. [31]
Camille Paglia (1947—): American post-feminist literary and cultural critic. [32]
Terry Pratchett (1948—): English Fantasy author known for his satiricalDiscworld series. [33]
Philip Pullman (1946—): CBE, British author of His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy for young adults. [34]
Ayn Rand (1905–1982): Russian-born American author and founder of Objectivism. [35]
Ron Reagan (1958—): American magazine journalist, board member of the politically activistic Creative Coalition, son of former U. S. President Ronald Reagan. [36]
Salman Rushdie (1947—): Indian-born British essayist and author of fiction. [37]
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822): British Romantic poet, contemporary and associate of John Keats and Lord Byron, and author of The Necessity of Atheism. [38]
Warren Allen Smith (1921—): Author of Who's Who in Hell. [39]
Ibn Warraq (1946—): Best-selling author and secularist scholar of Islam currently living in the United States. He is a Muslim apostate and an outspoken critic of Islam who has written extensively on what he views as the oppressive nature of Islam. [40]

Business

Carnegie.

Sir Richard Branson (1950—): British entrepreneur, founder of the Virgin Group. [41]
Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919): Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist, sometimes described as the wealthiest man who ever lived. [42]
Larry Flynt (1942—): Founder of Hustler Magazine. [43]
George Soros (1930—): Hungarian-born investor, philanthropist and writer. [44]

Comedians

Allen

Woody Allen (1935—): American film director, actor and comedian. In a column in The New Yorker entitled "My Philosophy," Allen wrote: "Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends." [13]
George Carlin (1937—): American comedian, actor and author. Outspoken atheist, described religion as having "the best bullshit story ever told", that "there's an invisible man living in the sky." [45]
David Cross (1964—): American actor and comedian. [46]
Kathy Griffin (1963—): American comedian. [47]
Patton Oswalt (1969—): American actor and comedian. [48]
Penn Jillette (1955—): American actor, comedian, and Magician
Julia Sweeney (1961—): American actor and comedian. Alumna of Saturday Night Live, author/performer of a one-woman autobiographical stage show about finding atheism: Letting Go of God. [49]

Film, radio and television

Buñuel (caricature) .

Phillip Adams (1939—): Australian broadcaster, writer, film-maker, left-wing radical thinker, iconoclast, Australian Humanist of the Year 1987. [50]
Brannon Braga (1965–): American TV producer and writer, creator of Star Trek: Enterprise. [51]
Luis Buñuel (1900–1983): Spanish-born Mexican film-maker, activist of the surrealist movement. Known for his one-liner, "Thank God I'm still an atheist." [52]
Stanley Donen (1924—): American film director, best known for his musicals including Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Singin' in the Rain; awarded honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement. [53]
Ricky Gervais (1961—): British actor, co-creator of the original version of The Office; appears as the Curator in the 2006 film, Night at the Museum. [54]
Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003): American actress, who appeared in 53 films from 1932 to 1994; winner of four Academy Awards for Best Actress. [55]
John Humphrys (1943—): British radio and television presenter who hosted a series of programmes interviewing religious leaders, Humphrys in Search of God. [56]
Jamie Hyneman (1956—): co-host of MythBusters. [57]
Skandar Keynes (1991—): English actor (Chronicles of Narnia films). [58]
Tom Leykis (1956—): radio talk-show host. [59]
Paul Mazursky (1930—) American director, producer and actor [60]
Gene Roddenberry (1921—1991): American scriptwriter and producer, creator of Star Trek. [61]
Robert Smith (1972—): former Minnesota Vikings running back and NFL Network football analyst. [62]
Teller (1948—): American magician and co-host of Bullshit!. [63]
Joss Whedon (1964—): American screenwriter and director, most famous for creating Buffy the Vampire Slayer. [64]

Music

Rimsky-Korsakov

David Gilmour (1946—) English guitarist and vocalist with Pink Floyd. [65]
Kathleen Hanna (1969—): front woman of the 1990s band Bikini Kill and currently Le Tigre. [66]
Stephan Jenkins (1964—): Musician, lead singer for the American rock band, Third Eye Blind. [67]
Lemmy (1945—): English rock singer and bass guitarist, most famous for founding the heavy metal band Motörhead . [68]
Gary Numan (1958—): British New Wave and industrial musician whose albums Sacrifice (1994), Exile (1997), Pure (2000), and Jagged (2006) mock and condemn religious beliefs. [69]
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908): Russian Nationalist composer, member of "The Five", best-known for the tone poemScheherazade. [70]
Ned Rorem (1923—) American composer [71]

Philosophy

Diderot. Marx. Nietzsche.

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876): Russian philosopher, writer and anarchist. [72]
Albert Camus (1913–1960): French philosopher and novelist, a luminary of existentialism. [13]
Benedetto Croce (1886–1952): Italian philosopher and public figure. [73]
Daniel Dennett (1942—): American philosopher, author of Breaking the Spell [74]
Diagoras (5th century BCE): Ancient Greek poet and sophist known as the Atheist of Milos, who declared that there were no Gods. [75]
Denis Diderot (1713–84): editor-in-chief of the Encyclopédie, who succeeded in bringing about "a revolution in men's minds." [76]
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (1804–1872): German philosopher whose major work, The Essence of Christianity (1841), maintains that religion and divinity are projections of human nature. [77]
Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715–71): French philosopher whose ethical and social views helped shape the school of utilitarianism later made famous by Jeremy Bentham. [76]
Baron d'Holbach (1723–89): French philosopher and encyclopedist, most famous as being one of the first outspoken atheists in Europe. [78]
Karl Marx (1818–83): German-Jewish author of Das Kapital, known for his assertion that "Religion is... the opium of the people." [79]
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. [80] [81]
Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–51): French physician and philosopher, earliest materialist writer of the Enlightenment, claimed as a founder of cognitive science. [82]
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900): German Existentialist philosopher who wrote Beyond Good and Evil, which attempted to refute traditional notions of morality. Nietzsche is forever associated with the phrase, "God is dead" (first seen in his book, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft). [83]
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (1950—): Italian mathematician, philosopher and science writer. [84]
Bertrand Russell, (1872–1970): British philosopher and mathematician. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950. Though he considered himself an agnostic in a purely philosophical context, he said that the label atheist conveyed a more accurate understanding of his views in a popular context. [85]
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980): French existentialist philosopher, dramatist and novelist who declared that he had been an atheist from age twelve. Although he regarded God as a self-contradictory concept, he still thought of it as an ideal toward which people strive. [86] He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964. 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. [87]
Peter Singer (1946—): Australian utilitarian philosopher, proponent of animal rights, and Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. [88]

Politics and law

Charles Bradlaugh (1833–1891): A political activist and one of the most famous English atheists of the 19th century. [89]

Robin Cook (1946–2005): Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs of the UK 1997–2001, whose funeral service was held in the High Kirk of Scotland, where he was described as a "Presbyterian atheist." [90] ;
Mikhail Gorbachev (1931—):Former Soviet president and 1991-Nobel-laureate in Peace. [91]
Aleksander Kwasniewski (1954—): Former President of Poland (1995-2005). [92]
Alexander Lukashenko (1954—): President of Belarus, self-described "Russian Orthodox atheist." [93]
Joseph Stalin (1879–1953): Soviet head of state. [94]

Science and technology

Curie. Dawkins. Freud. Watson.

Paul D. Boyer (1918—): American biochemist and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1997. [95]
Francis Crick (1916–2004): 1962-Nobel-laureate co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, who described himself as a skeptic and an agnostic with "a strong inclination towards atheism." [96]
Marie Curie (1867–1934): Nobel Laureate in Physics (1903) and Chemistry (1911). First woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize, only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different scientific disciplines. [97]
Richard Dawkins (1941—): British zoologist, biologist, creator of the concepts of the selfish gene and the meme; outspoken atheist and popularizer of science, author of The God Delusion and founder of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. [98]
Richard Feynman (1918–1988): American 1965-Nobel-laureate theoretical physicist. [99]
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939): Father of psychoanalysis. [100]
Christer Fuglesang (1957—), Swedish astronaut and physicist, identified as an atheist in a Dagens Nyheter interview. [101]
Vitaly Ginzburg (1916—): 2003 Nobel Laureate in Physics. [102]
Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956): American biologist, sexologist and professor of entomology and zoology. [103]
Frédéric Joliot-Curie (1900–1958): French physicist and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1935. [104]
Irène Joliot-Curie (1897–1956): French scientist, the daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie and the wife of Frédéric Joliot-Curie, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry in 1935. [105]
Harold Kroto (1939—): 1996 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry. [106]
Sean M. Carroll (1956—): Theoretical cosmologist specializing in dark energy and general relativity. [107]
Richard Leakey (1944—): Kenyan paleontologist, archaeologist and conservationist. [108]
Jonathan Miller (1934—): British physician, actor, theatre and opera director, and (latterly) television presenter. Wrote and presented the 2004 television series, Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief, exploring the roots of his own atheism and investigating the history of atheism in the world. [109]
Peter D. Mitchell (1920–1992): 1978-Nobel-laureate British biochemist. Atheist mother, and himself atheist from age 15. [110]
Paul Nurse (1949—): 2001 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine. [111]
Linus Pauling (1901–1994): Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (1954) and Peace (1962). Near-discoverer of the structure of DNA. [112]
Steven Pinker (1954—): American psychologist. [113]
Amartya Kumar Sen (1933—): 1998 Nobel Laureate in Economics. [114] [115] [116] [117]
Claude Shannon (1916–2001): American electrical engineer and mathematician, has been called "the father of information theory", and was the founder of practical digital circuit design theory. [118]
Michael Smith (1932–2000): British-born Canadian biochemist and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1993. [119]
Richard Stallman (1953—): American software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer. [120]
Linus Torvalds (1969—): Finnish software engineer, creator of Linux. [121]
James D. Watson (1928—), 1962-Nobel-laureate co-discover of the structure of DNA, identified as an atheist in a Newsweek commentary by his acquaintance, Rabbi Marc Gellman. [122]
Steven Weinberg (1933—): 1979 Nobel Laureate in Physics. [123]

AND THOUSANDS MORE.......

lonelysheep

To me, it is not acceptable in this country to be a professed athiest!

Kid-A..great list.

Elsewhere

Any entity, whether an individual person, business, government or anything else that claims to be secular in nature rather than religious is inherently atheistic in nature.

Now think of every beneficial person, company or organization that ever existed, subtract all of the churches and religious organizations and you have your list of beneficial atheistic entities.

When you stop and think about it, that's a long list!

I am only asking for professed atheists who have supposedly done good deeds to be identified.

Wow... I find it interesting that you inserted "supposedly" in there.

Qcmbr

My Grandpa - he fought in El-Alamein and lost his faith watching all the death around him but he never gave up on his principles. I do miss him.

Nathan Natas

LonelySheep said,

To me, it is not acceptable in this country to be a professed atheist!
Kid-A..great list.

You are right about public confession of disbelief (atheism) in America today, LonelySheep, which is exactly why we have to be willing to say, "I am an atheist." and yes, Kid-A, well done. It strikes me as odd that a follower of the one who advised, "...when you go making gifts of mercy, do not blow a trumpet ahead of you, just as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be glorified by men. Truly I say to YOU, They are having their reward in full. But you, when making gifts of mercy, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, that your gifts of mercy may be in secret; then your Father who is looking on in secret will repay you." would require a listing of who all these generous atheists are, as though there couldn't possibly have been any. I am an atheist.

robhic

MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.

(Above taken from article cited by Nathan Natas)

Regardless of opinions of his veracity, you just gotta love Hitchens' turn of phrase.

"Livestock version of compulsory reproduction." What imagery!

RWC

That is a long list Kid -A Thank you.

But I can't say that I agree that they have all benefited society. Is it your position that all on this list have provided a benefit to society?