1. Isaac Newton
2. Joseph Fourier
3. Thomas Edison
4. Chuck Peddle
5. RuPaul
6. Norman Ernest Borlaug (Saved more people than Jesus)
7. Thomas Jefferson
8. Nelson Mandela
9. Barbara Mcclintock
10. Anton Lavey
Heroes
by done4good 40 Replies latest jw friends
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Saintbertholdt
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Ucantnome
The guy who invented Scotch -
truthseeker100
Newton what a mind! He was definitely a hero!!!
http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/the-questioning-mind-newton-darwin-einstein/505
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DarioKehl
1) Thomas Jefferson: at best, an atheist. At worst, a deist. He was a lawyer, a scientist, a historian, a philosopher, a meteorologist, an architect, a revolutionist and a ruler of a new nation. What a badass (and don't come at me for the whole "slave owner" thing -- I get it. Google the fallacy of presentism before you jump down my throat. I'm highlighting his positive attributes for this thread.)
2) Tied for 2nd, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie & Carl Sagan
3) Tied for 3rd, Hitchens and Dawkins.
4) Tied for 4th, Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson
5) tied for 5th, Quinten Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Seth McFarlane, Trey Parker & Matt Stone
6) definitely deserving to be in my top 10... Lady Gaga
7) Ray Franz, you know why!
8) Ronald Reagan
9) tied: Ellen, for her LGBT activism/raising awareness and Dorthea Dix
10) Michael Jackson
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Xanthippe
Dariokehl, Marie Curie is one of my heroes too. The first woman to win a Nobel prize and the first person and only woman to win two Nobels. She won a joint Nobel with her husband for physics and a Nobel in chemistry on her own. An amazing person. -
truthseeker100
There is also the musical heroes like Beethoven! -
Pistoff
Joseph Campbell-his history of scholarship and body of work about mythology, ancient and modern, is amazing.
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rebel8
Great thread.
5. Jimmy Carter - Four years as president and not one war. Into his 90's a worker for better things in the world, health and political. Helped wipe out a major disease in africa that killed millions.
He also publicly quit a xian church for being misogynistic.
I would add Matilda Gage, who acted fearlessly for civil rights of women, American Indians, slaves and atheists. Because of the latter, the other major women's rights activists shunned her, and history was rewritten to not give her credit for her own acts.She was also an employed writer in an era and culture that did not permit women to be educated and employed. She encouraged her son-in-law's writings, which included The Wizard of Oz.
She was willing to change her viewpoint. She had been involved in something offensive to the local tribes. She apologized and made amends, eventually receiving their forgiveness.
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ihunt
To name a few, (and my favorite work from them)
1) Leohnard Euler - Euler's identity
2) Albert Camus - Exile and the Kingdom
3) Friedrich Nietzsche - The Antichrist
4) John von Neumann - First Draft
5) Paul Dirac - Dirac Equation
6) linus Torvalds - Linux
7) Carl Guass - Modern mathmatics, matrix algebra
8) Linus Pauling - bonding theory
9) Dante Alighieri - The Divine Commedy
10) Lou Reed - The VU
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Oubliette
Great thread. Heroes, or role-models of any kind, are very threatening to authoritarian leaders because it challenges their narcissistic need for adoration.
A lot of very worthy people have been mentioned so far. Rather than merely adding names I'd like to riff on Mille's comment by qualifying as heroic anyone that takes a stand against unrighteousness whether they do so in a loud and vocal manner or if they do so with quiet dignity.
In fact, my preference is definitely for the latter variety. Too often individuals do something noteworthy but then start banging their own drum in attention getting behavior that to my mind detracts from the great good they do. In a very counter-productive way, they often, and (to paraphrase Ray Franz) with "depressing regularity," end up just like the leaders they condemn."