Professed Atheists who have helped society (page 5)

RWC

To my knowledge Albert Einstein was Jewish and Thomas Jefferson was a Diest.

As far as the "top thinkers" are atheists I would assume that that would depend upon your definition of "top" thinker. I do not think that you can exclude believers in God from being major contributors to science or world peace in the next hundred years. There are still billions of people on the planet that profess a belief in God and at least in this country that number is still very significant.

A few prominent or famous athiests who are wealthy or entertainers have done great things for society, no doubt about it. But I don't think you can discount the actions of religious people who have also done great things towards world peace or science. Nor do I think you can discount the religious nature of those on my list by saying that if they were alive today they would be athiests. That is pure speculation and unwarranted.

funkyderek

RWC:

Your list mostly consists of people who had little choice but to be theists (or at least deists). Before 1859, it was difficult to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist so it's no surprise that most people born before then professed a religious belief (not to mention the social pressures of doing so). By today's standards, many of the people you listed would be considered racist and sexist. For this reason I chose only people alive today for my list (with one notable and sorely-missed exception).

Anyway, here are some quotes from people on your list that suggest they may not belong there.

Abraham Lincoln:

"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."

Benjamin Franklin:

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies."
"Lighthouses are more helpful then churches."

Thomas Jefferson:

"The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites."

And of course Albert Einstein:

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religion than it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism."
"I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."

Caedes

To my knowledge Albert Einstein was Jewish and Thomas Jefferson was a Diest.

RWC

The fact is, the more intelligent you are the more likely you are to be atheist, feel free to look up the correlation yourself, I am not going to do your research for you. What that doesn't mean however is that theists cannot contribute to science or any other field of human endeavour, remember it is you that is suggesting that atheists don't contribute. I am merely pointing out that the numbers show it is atheists, not theists that are contributing, that statement doesn't preclude individual theists from making a contribution.

My definition of a top thinker? Do you really need a definition? I'm afraid that was as broad a brush as I could think of on the spur of the moment.

As for your comment above, FunkyDerek has kindly provided some quotes as evidence of my point that regardless, neither would wish to be on your list.

I have never discounted the acheivements of 'professed' theists, Newton was supposedly a deeply religous man, of course he was a complete bastard as well but I'm sure the two are unrelated.

Why should I not speculate on how sincere the views held by these people were? It is entirely relevant to the thread if these people were forced to 'profess' theism due to the overwhelming power the church had at the time. I am not saying that they would all be atheists, that would be foolish. But as Newton said 'I stand on the shoulders of giants', people are influenced by society and the people around them. Had Galileo been able to read origin of species or a brief history of time then I have no doubt it would have had a profound impact on the thinking of a man who said he had more faith in a shadow than church dogma.

Given how vociferously some of your examples have decried the christian religion then I have no problem in thinking that atheism might have been a more obvious choice in a more enlightened age.

Of course I have no doubt that you could come up with a better list of theists but it would still fail to prove your suggestion that atheists don't contribute to society.

startingover

Funky D,

Thanks for posting that link to celbe athiests a few posts back. Lance Armstrong caught my eye, so I clicked on the link. A quote from him, "If there was a god, I'd still have both nuts."

RWC

"The fact is the more intelligent you are the more likely you will be an atheist"

That is an arrogant statement and an illogical conclusion. There have been brilliant people throughout history who have had faith in God. There are brilliant people today who are believers. Belief in God is not a correlation of a person's intelligence.

As for Abraham Lincoln, his belief in God in not in question-

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day."

"Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord mkes so many of them"

"The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just- a way which if followed, the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless."

Albert Einstein- "I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this ot that phenomenon. in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details."

JWdaughter

After reading of Liberal , I got the impression that the inhabitants that arrived in response to the advertising were more hell raisers than Atheists. The description of the town sounded less like a place where they did not believe in God and more like Never-never Land. Prisons are filled with faith, God, priests, ministers and church stuff. I wouldn't want to live in either place. Being able to be in a society that will accept Atheists as responsible and decent members of society without condemning them would be useful. I think the founder of Liberal tried to have an Atheist Utopia and ended up with the Wild West (as it sounded like many western towns I have read of). Somehow, I don't think Einstein would have fit in with that crowd, nor Marie Curie.

Madame Quixote

There are atheists in foxholes, too:

http://www.atheistfoxholes.org/

They deserve the same respect and admiration for their service to this country as those who claim to believe in god get.

RWC said,"As far as the "top thinkers" are atheists I would assume that that would depend upon your definition of "top" thinker. I do not think that you can exclude believers in God from being major contributors to science or world peace in the next hundred years. There are still billions of people on the planet that profess a belief in God and at least in this country that number is still very significant.

A few prominent or famous athiests who are wealthy or entertainers have done great things for society, no doubt about it. But I don't think you can discount the actions of religious people who have also done great things towards world peace or science. Nor do I think you can discount the religious nature of those on my list by saying that if they were alive today they would be athiests. That is pure speculation and unwarranted."

If your definition of "top thinkers" includes the world's most renowned scientists - (the members of the Royal Academy and the National Academy) - as being "top thinkers," then it is a fact that the world's top thinkers are in fact predominantly atheists. In fact, the believers among that "top thinkers" group are considered by their peers to be complete anomalies (per Larson and Witham, Nature, 1998).

Madame Quixote

RWC said:"To my knowledge Albert Einstein was Jewish and Thomas Jefferson was a Diest."

To my knowledge, my landlord is Jewish, too. He is also a supremely intelligent and kind atheist.

tetrapod.sapien

so, are we not all atheists? is an atheist someone who rejects every single last little tiny itsy bitsy god? but that's impossible, because by the definition he would be rejecting himself, at least.

so what's the point of who believes what?

are not pantheists also atheists? so then, could not pantheists alsos be included in the list of "atheists"? and so on....

if atheism regarding a certain god is good enough for someone, it should be because it's self evident, not because of who is on whose team.

atheist, a theist.

tetra

Caedes

That is an arrogant statement and an illogical conclusion. There have been brilliant people throughout history who have had faith in God. There are brilliant people today who are believers. Belief in God is not a correlation of a person's intelligence.

My statement doesn't mean that you can't be brilliant or intelligent and still be a theist, it merely states that highly intelligent people are more likely to be atheist than to be theists, which undermines your assertion that atheists dont contribute to society.

Professed Atheists who have helped society

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