List of atheist philosophers

Last updated

There have been many philosophers in recorded history who were atheists. This is a list of atheist philosophers with articles in Wikipedia. Living persons in this list are people relevant to their notable activities or public life, and who have publicly identified themselves as atheists.

A. J. Ayer Alfred Jules Ayer.png
A. J. Ayer
Georges Bataille Bataille crop.jpg
Georges Bataille
Jeremy Bentham Jeremy Bentham by Henry William Pickersgill detail.jpg
Jeremy Bentham
Auguste Comte Auguste Comte2.jpg
Auguste Comte
Daniel Dennett Daniel Dennett 2.jpg
Daniel Dennett
John Dewey John Dewey in 1902.jpg
John Dewey
Friedrich Engels Engels 1856.jpg
Friedrich Engels
Ludwig Feuerbach Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach.jpg
Ludwig Feuerbach
William Godwin William Godwin by Henry William Pickersgill.jpg
William Godwin
Baron d'Holbach Paul Heinrich Dietrich Baron d'Holbach Roslin.jpg
Baron d'Holbach
David Hume Painting of David Hume.jpg
David Hume
Kazimierz Lyszczynski Kazimierz Lyszczynski.jpg
Kazimierz Łyszczyński
Karl Marx Marx old.jpg
Karl Marx
Friedrich Nietzsche Nietzsche1882.jpg
Friedrich Nietzsche
Bertrand Russell Bertrand Russell photo (cropped).jpg
Bertrand Russell
Marquis de Sade Marquis de Sade portrait.jpg
Marquis de Sade
George Santayana George Santayana.jpg
George Santayana
Jean-Paul Sartre Jean Paul Sartre 1965.jpg
Jean-Paul Sartre
Moritz Schlick Schlick sitting.jpg
Moritz Schlick
Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer Portrait by Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl 1815.jpeg
Arthur Schopenhauer
John R. Searle John Searle speaking at Google 1.jpg
John R. Searle
Peter Singer Peter Singer MIT Veritas (cropped).jpg
Peter Singer
Herbert Spencer Spencer1.jpg
Herbert Spencer
Max Stirner Max stirner.jpg
Max Stirner
Lucilio Vanini 6655 - Roma - Ettore Ferrari, Giulio Cesare Vanini (1889) - Foto Giovanni Dall'Orto, 6-Apr-2008.jpg
Lucilio Vanini
Vasubandhu Vasubandhu.JPG
Vasubandhu
Etienne Vermeersch Etienne Vermeersch 2014.jpg
Etienne Vermeersch
Slavoj Zizek Slavoj Zizek in Liverpool 2.jpg
Slavoj Žižek

Notes and references

  1. Groff, Peter (2007). Islamic Philosophy A-Z. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd. pp. 86–87. ISBN   978-0-7486-2089-0. A protean freethinker who experimented with Mu'tazilism and Shi'ism before finally embracing atheism, Ibn al-Rawandi was condemned by most Muslims as a dangerous heretic...In these works alone, he (1) rejects all religious dogmas as unacceptable to reason, (2) argues that prophets - Muhammad included - are like sorcerers and magicians, and that their miracles are entirely fictitious, (3) questions the necessity of prophecy and revelation if God is indeed all-powerful, (4) denies that the Qur'an is the revealed word of God and that it has any unique aesthetic value, (5) maintains that the God of the Qur'an is ultimately all-too-human and imperfect (i.e. lacking in knowledge and wisdom, easily angered, quick to punish, excessive, arbitrary, and unjust), (6) argues that the world is eternal and we are by no means compelled to posit a first divine cause, and (7) points out that Paradise as described in the Qur'an does not seem particularly desirable.
  2. Inati, Shams C (2000). Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York NY: Routledge. p. 377. ISBN   0-415-22364-4. ... Ibn ar-Rawandi wavered between a number of Islamic sects and then abandoned all of them in favour of atheism.
  3. Grant, Edward (2007). A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 84–87. ISBN   9780511292101 . Retrieved 8 March 2021. Early in his life, Ibn al-Rawandi was a Mutazilite scholar, who, like all Mutazilite scholars sought to apply Greek philosophy to explicate Islamic theology. After rejecting Mutazilism, he turned for a while to Shi'ism. At some point, however, and for reasons that are apparently unknown, al-Rawnadi became a free thinker and repudiated Islam and revealed religion.
  4. Watenpaugh, Keith (Aug 1996). ""Creating Phantoms": Zaki al-Arsuzi, the Alexandretta Crisis, and the Formation of Modern Arab Nationalism in Syria". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 28 (3): 363–389. doi:10.1017/S0020743800063509. S2CID   162435380.
  5. Passmore, John (2004). "Anderson, John (1893–1962)" . Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/40280 . Retrieved April 29, 2008. This degree of radicalism Sydney could endure. But what of a man who had signed up as a communist immediately on his arrival, who was unashamedly an atheist, a realist where philosophers were expected to be idealists, who freely mixed with students when he was expected to meet them only in classes or, very occasionally, in their studies? Trouble was bound to loom ahead(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. Antony, Louise M. (December 18, 2011). "Good Minus God".
  7. "Conversely, an absolute denial of God's existence is equally meaningless, since verification is impossible. However, despite this assertion, Ayer may be considered a practical atheist: one who sees no reason to worship an invisible deity." 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt, by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996, p. 276.
  8. "I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it." Ayer, A.J. (1966). "What I Believe," Humanist, Vol.81 (8) August, p. 226.
  9. Ayer, A. J. (1989). "That Undiscovered Country". New Humanist. 104 (1): 12. I trust that my remaining an atheist will allay the anxieties of my fellow supporters of the British Humanist Association, the Rationalist Press Association and the South Place Ethical Society.
  10. "The reverend Dr Tom Ambrose was sacked yesterday by his bishop for being "arrogant, aggressive, rude, bullying, high-handed, disorganised and at times petty", as a Church of England tribunal put it. Twice, he even spat at parishioners. You might expect that, as an atheist, I might rub my hands over this clerical outrage." Julian Baggini, Thought for the day - BBC Radio Bristol, blog entry, April 11, 2008 (accessed April 22, 2008).
  11. Multiple quotes from Bakunin substantiating his atheist views Archived 2000-01-25 at the Wayback Machine .
  12. "(...) the writings of such atheistic post-modernists as (...) Roland Barthes (...)" Michael D. Waggoner (2011). Sacred and Secular Tensions in Higher Education: Connecting Parallel Universities. Taylor & Francis, pg. 88
  13. Stuart Kendall (2007). Georges Bataille. Reaktion Books. An atheist in a deeply Catholic country, he rejected Surrealism, Marxism and Existentialism in turn.
  14. "Feuerbach's book received criticism from two quarters: expectedly from Christian theologians but surprisingly, from the atheists Max Stirner and Bruno Bauer." Van A. Harvey, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007 (accessed May 22, 2008).
  15. "(...) the writings of such atheistic post-modernists as Jean Baudrillard (...)" Michael D. Waggoner (2011). Sacred and Secular Tensions in Higher Education: Connecting Parallel Universities. Taylor & Francis, pg. 88
  16. "As an atheist, Baudrillard took no interest in Kierkegaard's theological work (...)" Jon Bartley Stewart (2011). Kierkegaard's Influence on the Social Sciences. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., pg. 9
  17. "[Beauvoir] remained an atheist until her death." Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Accessed April 21, 2008)
  18. "I cannot be angry at God, in whom I do not believe." Haught (1996–), p. 293
  19. "Antinatalism – should we let humanity go extinct? David Benatar vs Bruce Blackshaw". YouTube. 13 March 2020. Retrieved 14 March 2020.
  20. "The Harm of Coming Into Existence". YouTube. 13 June 2020. 8:36 minutes in. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
  21. James E. Crimmins (1986). "Bentham on Religion: Atheism and the Secular Society". Journal of the History of Ideas. 47 (1). University of Pennsylvania Press: 95–110. doi:10.2307/2709597. JSTOR   2709597. Bentham was an atheist and in no sense of the word could he be described as a theologian.
  22. Ana Marta González, ed. (2012). Contemporary Perspectives on Natural Law: Natural Law As a Limiting Concept. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 81. ISBN   9781409485667. In sum, with Hume's agnosticism and Bentham's atheism, the fundamental voluntarist thesis about the gulf between the divine and the human mind reaches new depths, and this serves to reinforce and radicalize the rejection, begun by Pufendorf, of Grotian rights-theory as the appropriate means of formulating the conventionalist theory of the moral life.
  23. James E. Crimmins (1990). Secular Utilitarianism: Social Science and the Critique of Religion in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham. Clarendon Press. p. 283. ISBN   9780198277415. Making allowance for Adams's cautious phrasing, this is a concise statement of Bentham's secular positivism, but it is also important to note the conviction with which Bentham held his atheism.
  24. "Some years ago, without realizing what it might mean, I accepted a dinner invitation from a Jewish colleague for dinner on Friday night. I should say that my colleague had never appeared particularly orthodox, and he would have known that I am an atheist." Simon Blackburn, Religion and Respect Archived 2009-09-03 at the Wayback Machine (pdf) on his website, August 2004 (accessed April 23, 2008.)
  25. Winston, Kimberly (November 18, 2013). "Got faith? 'A Manual for Creating Atheists' would like to change that". The Washington Post . Retrieved November 30, 2013.
  26. KlaasJan Baas (30 January 2014). "Nationaal Religiedebat: Dansen om de hete brij" (in Dutch). Evangelische Omroep. Retrieved 18 February 2017.
  27. Helen Heran Jun (2011). Race for Citizenship: Black Orientalism and Asian Uplift from Pre-Emancipation to Neoliberal America. NYU Press. p. 47. ISBN   9780814742976. During her dissertation defense, Cooper responded to Bouglé, an atheist, that God's presence in all human beings, or "the singing something," was the origin of the principles of equality, justice, and democratic freedom.
  28. "Büchner's materialistic interpretation of the universe in Kraft und Stoff created an uproar for its rejection of God, creation, religion, and free will and for its explanation of mind and consciousness as physical states of the brain produced by matter in motion. His continued defense of atheism and atomism and his denial of any distinction between mind and matter (Natur und Geist, 1857; "Nature and Spirit") appealed strongly to freethinkers, but dialectical materialists condemned his acceptance of competitive capitalism, which Büchner viewed as an example of Charles Darwin's "struggle for survival." " 'Büchner, Ludwig', Encyclopædia Britannica Online (accessed August 1, 2008).
  29. Gustavo Bueno: Cuestiones cuodlibetales sobre Dios y la religión. Madrid: Mondadori, 1989.
  30. "Bunge: 'La muerte no es un misterio para quien sepa algo de biología.'". ABC Digital. Retrieved 2021-02-21.
  31. David Simpson writes that Camus affirmed "a defiantly atheistic creed." Albert Camus (19131960), The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006, (Accessed June 14, 2007).
  32. Haught, James A. (1996). 2,000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt. Prometheus Books. pp. 261–262. ISBN   978-1-57392-067-4.
  33. R. Carnap: Intellectual Autobiography. in: P. A. Schilpp (editor): The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap. Cambridge University Press, La Salle (Illinois) 1963.
  34. Martin Gardner said "Carnap was an atheist..." A Mind at Play: An Interview with Martin Gardner Archived 2008-05-15 at the Wayback Machine , by Kendrick Frazier, Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 1998 (Accessed July 2, 2007).
  35. "Carnap had a modest but deeply religious family background, which might explain why, although he later became an atheist, he maintained a respectful and tolerant attitude in matters of faith throughout his life." Buldt, Bernd: "Carnap, Paul Rudolf", Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography Vol. 20 p.43. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008.
  36. "If I had to sum up my own atheism, I think I would have to say that it amounts to this: I have no interest in the supernatural. I also have no interest in what others believe about the supernatural as long as their belief does not involve intolerance of those who disagree with them." Robert Todd Carroll, Skeptic's Dictionary entry: atheism (accessed April 28, 2008).
  37. The problem of consciousness meets "Intelligent Design", David Chalmers's blog ("As it happens, I'm an atheist").
  38. Madissertation (2018-09-10). "Emile-Auguste Chartier, dit Alain (1868 - 1951)". Ma dissertation de culture générale (in French). Retrieved 2022-11-28.
  39. Ana Siljak, Angel of Vengeance, page 58
  40. "Despite his atheism, Comte was concerned with moral regeneration and the establishment of a spiritual power." Mary Pickering, 'Auguste Comte and the Saint-Simonians', French Historical Studies Vol. 18, No. 1 (Spring 1993), pp. 211-236.
  41. "But tragically, Comte's "remarkable clearness and extent of vision as to natural things" was coupled with a "total blindness in regard to all that pertains to man's spiritual nature and relations." His "astonishing philosophic power" served only to increase the "plausibility" of a dangerous infidelity. Comte was, once unmasked, a "blank, avowed, unblushing Atheist." [...] Some of the Reformed writers were careful enough to note that technically Comte was not an atheist since he never denied the existence of God, merely his comprehensibility. Practically, however, this made little difference. It only pointed to the skepticism and nescience at the core of his positivism. The epistemological issues dominated the criticism of Comte. Quickly, his atheism was traced to his sensual psychology (or "sensualistic psychology", as Robert Dabney preferred to say)." Charles D. Cashdollar, 'Auguste Comte and the American Reformed Theologians', Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 39, No. 1 (January–March 1978), pp. 61-79.
  42. "An atheist, he rejected the burden of original sin, and preached the fundamental 'moral goodness of man.'" Condorcet's Reconsideration of America as a Model for Europe, Max M. Mintz, Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Winter, 1991), pp. 493-506 (p. 505), published by University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic
  43. Stated in Will Durant's Outlines of Philosophy
  44. Giancarlo Marchetti (May–Jun 2012). "Donald Davidson Interview". Philosophy Now. Interviewer: "What is your relation with religion? Which religion do you think is true?" Donald Davidson: "None. I am an atheist, and always have been. Many of the claims of religion are good candidates for propositions that lack a truth value."
  45. "Deleuze's atheist philosophy of immanence is an artistic (or creative) power at work on theology" Deleuze and Religion. Mary Bryden (2002). Routledge, p. 157.
  46. "Deleuze's atheist critique is powerful (...)" Iconoclastic Theology: Gilles Deleuze and the Secretion of Atheism. F. LeRon Shults (2014). Edinburgh University Press, p. 103.
  47. Alain de Botton told interviewer Chris Hedges, "I'm an atheist." C-SPAN 2 "After Words" interview, 31 March 2012.
  48. Dennett, Daniel C. (2006), Breaking the Spell, Viking (Penguin), ISBN   0-670-03472-X
  49. Dennett recommends: "If the topic comes up, acknowledge you're an atheist. No big deal. Now let's talk about something interesting." "In Reason We Trust" advertisement, Scientific American , vol. 318, no. 1 (January 2018), p. 21.
  50. "(...) the writings of such atheistic post-modernists as (...) Jacques Derrida (...)" Michael D. Waggoner (2011). Sacred and Secular Tensions in Higher Education: Connecting Parallel Universities. Taylor & Francis, pg. 88
  51. Martin Hägglund (2008). Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life. Stanford University Press.
  52. "So when I say “I rightly pass as an atheist” I know that because of everything that I’ve done so far, say in terms of deconstruction and so on and so forth, I’ve given a number of signs of my being a non-believer in God in a certain way, an atheist. And nevertheless, although I confirm that it is right to say “I’m an atheist”, I can’t say myself “I am an atheist” as a position, see “I am” or “I know what I am”: “I am this, and nothing else and I’m identifying myself as an atheist.” I would never say… this would sound obscene: “I am.” I wouldn’t say “I am an atheist” or I wouldn’t say “I am a believer” either." Jacques Derrida On ‘Atheism’ and ‘Belief’ (excerpt from an interview in Toronto, 2002)
  53. "Derozio and the Hindu College".
  54. A. G. Rud; Jim Garrison; Lynda Stone, eds. (2009). Dewey at One Hundred Fifty. Purdue University Press. p. 22. ISBN   9781557535504. With respect to his personal beliefs, Dewey wrote to Max Otto that "I feel the gods are pretty dead, tho I suppose I ought to know that however, to be somewhat more philosophical in the matter, if atheism means simply not being a theist, then of course I'm an atheist. But the popular if not the etymological significance of the word is much wider. ...Although he described himself as an atheist in one sense of the term, it is also clear that Dewey was opposed to militant atheism for the same reason that he was opposed to supernaturalism: he thought both positions dogmatic.
  55. Jackson, Roger (1986). "Dharmakīrti's Refutation of Theism". Philosophy East and West. 36 (4): 315–348. doi:10.2307/1398992. JSTOR   1398992.
  56. A History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern, to the Period of the French Revolution, J.M. Robertson, Fourth Edition, Revised and Expanded, In Two Volumes, Vol. I, Watts, 1936. p173 - 174
  57. 1 2 Will and Ariel Durant, Rousseau and Revolution, p. 183
  58. "This book... presents the strongest case yet for atheism... Drange carefully analyzes and assesses two major arguments for the nonexistence of God: the argument from Evil and the Argument from Nonbelief." [quoted from the dustjacket description] Nonbelief & Evil: Two arguments for the nonexistence of God Theodore M. Drange, Prometheus Books, 1998, ISBN   1-57392-228-5
  59. The Existence of God: William Lane Craig vs Paul Draper U.S. Military Academy at West Point. September 30, 1997.
  60. "A Resounding Eco", Time, June 13, 2005, archived from the original on October 15, 2007, His new book touches on politics, but also on faith. Raised Catholic, Eco has long since left the church. 'Even though I'm still in love with that world, I stopped believing in God in my 20s after my doctoral studies on St. Thomas Aquinas. You could say he miraculously cured me of my faith,…'
  61. "'There is no God, there is no life after death, Jesus was a man, and, perhaps most important, the influence of religion is by and large bad,' he wrote in the current issue of Free Inquiry, a magazine about secular humanism, a school of thought that emphasizes values based on experience rather than religion." Paul Edwards, Professor and Editor of Philosophy, Dies at 81, by Jennifer Bayot, The New York Times, December 16, 2004 (Accessed April 21, 2008)
  62. Friedrich Engels. "Letters of Marx and Engels, 1845". Marxists.org. Retrieved 2010-02-13.
  63. Rice, Hugh (2005). "Reviewed Work: The Non-Existence of God by Nicholas Everitt". The Philosophical Quarterly . 55 (221): 692–693.
  64. Davison, Scott A. (2007). "Reviewed Work: The Non-Existence of God by Nicholas Everitt". International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. 61 (2): 127–129. doi:10.1007/s11153-007-9116-y. S2CID   170168758.
  65. "The Non-Existence of God". Routledge. Retrieved 12 February 2021.
  66. "positiveatheism.org". Archived from the original on 2000-01-26. Retrieved 2008-05-27.
  67. "An exponent of the Idealist school developed by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Forberg is best known for his essay Über die Entwicklung des Begriffs Religion (1798; "On the Development of the Concept of Religion"), a work that occasioned Fichte's dismissal from the University of Jena on the charge of atheism after he had published a corroborative treatise. Forberg also wrote further apologetical works in support of atheism." 'Forberg, Friedrich Karl', Encyclopædia Britannica Online, 2008 (accessed August 1, 2008).
  68. "If I were not a total atheist, I would be a monk...a good monk." David Macey (2004). Michel Foucault. Reaktion Books, p. 130.
  69. "(...) the writings of such atheistic post-modernists as (...) Michel Foucault (...)" Michael D. Waggoner (2011). Sacred and Secular Tensions in Higher Education: Connecting Parallel Universities. Taylor & Francis, pg. 88.
  70. "Coleridge also introduced Charles Lamb to Godwin. Lamb had shown some sympathy for the New Philosophy but the arguments of Coleridge and his own religiosity and common sense quickly turned him against it. He was particularly repelled by Godwin's atheism." Peter H. Marshall, William Godwin (1984), page 240.
  71. Luke Ford, "Interview with Novelist Rebecca Goldstein - The Mind-Body Problem", conducted by phone April 11, 2006, transcript posted at lukeford.net
  72. Fulton, John (1987). "Religion and Politics in Gramsci: An Introduction". Sociological Analysis. 48 (3): 197–216. ISSN   0038-0210. JSTOR   3711518.
  73. Preston, John. "John Gray interview: how an English academic become the world's pre-eminent prophet of doom".
  74. "I would certainly describe myself as a robust or uncompromising atheist..." House Philosopher: An Interview with AC Grayling, conducted and hosted by Amazon.co.uk (Accessed April 1, 2008)
  75. "Susan Haack — Passionate Moderate". July 26, 2015.
  76. Thomas Bethell (2012). Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher. Hoover Press. p. 7. ISBN   9780817914165. Hoffer's attitude toward religion was hard to pin down. He generally described himself as an atheist, yet during our interview he described religion as a significant source of leadership.
  77. Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Voltaire: a History of Civilization in Western Europe from 1715 to 1756, with Special Emphasis on the Conflict between Religion and Philosophy, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1965, pp. 695-714
  78. "The principles of Hume's philosophy implied that the question of God's existence cannot be settled definitively either way, so he was in one sense an agnostic. However, since he does not seem to have entertained any belief in God, it is probably also fair to call him an atheist—just not a campaigning one." Anthony Gottlieb, "Who Was David Hume?" (review of James A. Harris, Hume: an Intellectual Biography, Cambridge University Press, 621 pp., "the first intellectual biography of Hume"), The New York Review of Books , vol. LXIII, no. 9 (May 26, 2016), p. 70 (the full review: pp. 68, 70–71).Review of Jame Harris,'Hume: an Intellectual Biography', Cambridge University Press, by Paul Russell, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 26 May 2016. See also Paul Russell. (2008). The Riddle of Hume's Treatise: Skepticism, Naturalism and Irreligion. Oxford University Press.
  79. Mckown, Delos B. (1975), Mckown, Delos B. (ed.), "Kautsky's Critique of Religion", The Classical Marxist Critiques of Religion: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Kautsky, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 122–157, doi:10.1007/978-94-010-1606-3_5, ISBN   978-94-010-1606-3 , retrieved 2023-02-17
  80. See: Rhys-Davids.T.W: Dialogues of the Buddha, 1899 quoted in Chattopadhyaya (1964/1993) pp.194
  81. Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi (1965). The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Ajita...preached a thoroughgoing materialist doctrine: good deeds and charity gained a man nothing in the end. His body dissolved into the primary elements at death, no matter what he had or had not done. Nothing remained. Good and evil, charity and compassion were all irrelevant to a man's fate.
  82. Nasser Behnegar (2005). Leo Strauss, Max Weber, And The Scientific Study Of Politics. University of Chicago Press. p. 143. ISBN   9780226041438. Consider the difference in Strauss's treatment of Alexandre Kojève, who was openly an atheist, a Stalinist, and one whose thought, in Strauss's words, produces "an amazingly lax morality" (WPP, 111).
  83. Leandro Konder: O discreto charme do marxismo Archived 2016-09-11 at the Wayback Machine . Pesquisa FAPESP. Acesso em 12/07/2016. "— O senhor é um socialista ateu? — Eu acho que sim. (...) minha revisão e reavaliação positiva do papel da consciência religiosa não significa o abandono da minha descrença básica de ateu. (...) não acredito em Deus, mas tenho boas relações com ele."
  84. 1 2 Reichert, William O. (1967). "Proudhon and Kropotkin on Church and State". Journal of Church and State. 9 (1): 87–100. doi:10.1093/jcs/9.1.87. ISSN   0021-969X. JSTOR   23913385.
  85. Kumārila. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2020.{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  86. "As a philosopher he became a firm atheist and loud sceptic on issues of supernature and the afterlife. He concluded in The Illusion Of Immortality (1935) that this life was all there was, and that humankind should therefore make the best of it here on earth - a theory honed in The Philosophy Of Humanism (1949), which remains a classic in its genre." Jonathan Freedland, 'Obituary: Corliss Lamont', The Guardian (London), May 19, 1995, Pg. 14.
  87. "Royal Institute Philosophy". www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2018-05-10.
  88. "Royal Institute Philosophy". www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org.
  89. "Triablogue: Why I Am an Atheist: A Conversation with Dr. Stephen Law". May 11, 2017.
  90. "I am an atheist." [David Lewis, "Evil for Freedom's Sake," in Papers in Ethics and Social Philosophy, 101-127 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). p. 102]
  91. "A self-confessed "religious atheist", Lipton was fully engaged with his religious culture, taking his family to synagogue on Saturdays and teaching children at the Sabbath school. He did not think it was necessary to believe in God to recognise the value of religion in providing the individual with a moral compass." 'Obituary of Professor Peter Lipton, Inspiring head of Cambridge's department of History and Philosophy whose atheism did not impede his religious observance', Daily Telegraph, December 17, 2007, Pg. 23.
  92. Marcelo., Gleiser (2015). Island of knowledge : the limits of science and the search for meaning. Basic Books. ISBN   9780465049646. OCLC   900624138.
  93. "(...) the writings of such atheistic post-modernists as (...) Jean-François Lyotard." Michael D. Waggoner (2011). Sacred and Secular Tensions in Higher Education: Connecting Parallel Universities. Taylor & Francis, pg. 88
  94. Nick Land (2002). The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism. Routledge, pg. 12
  95. "Internetowa Lista Ateistów i Agnostyków" [The Kazimierz Łyszczyński Internet List of Atheists and Agnostics, of the Polish Society of Rationalists]. lista.racjonalista.pl.
  96. Aleksander Gieysztor et al., History of Poland, 1979, p. 261.
  97. Jerzy Kłoczowski, A History of Polish Christianity, 2000, p. 155.
  98. J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism, 1982.
  99. "Are there really no atheists? No good reason has yet been given for NA and, until one is, we professed atheists have every reason to suppose that we really are atheists." Michael Martin, Are There Really No Atheists?, 1996 (accessed April 21, 2008).
  100. "She became increasingly skeptical of religious beliefs, including her own liberal Unitarianism, and her avowal of atheism in the Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development (1851, with H.G. Atkinson) caused widespread shock." Martineau, Harriet Encyclopædia Britannica Online, 2008 (Accessed April 15, 2008)
  101. "Karl Marx (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2013-06-16.
  102. Yancy, George (October 20, 2020). "Opinion | How Should an Atheist Think About Death?". The New York Times.
  103. McDaniel, Kris (2020), "John M. E. McTaggart", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2021-03-13, In addition, he authored many important articles on metaphysics, including his famous "The Unreality of Time" in 1908, some of which are collected in his Philosophical Studies...He began preparatory school at Weybridge, but because of his frequent advocacy of atheism he was removed, and transplanted to Caterham...McTaggart denied that the truth of optimism required the truth of theism. As noted earlier, McTaggart was throughout his adult life an unwavering atheist.
  104. Extracts from Moi Testament published as Superstition in All Ages
  105. Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Voltaire, 1965, pp. 611-17
  106. Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Voltaire, 1965, pp. 617-22
  107. Darrell Berg (2009). Darrell Berg (ed.). The Correspondence of Christian Gottfried Krause: A Music Lover in the Age of Sensibility. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 106. ISBN   9780754664291. Yet Friedrich, after he had ascertained that La Mettrie had not renounced his atheism on his deathbed,...
  108. Harmke Kamminga (1995). The Science and Culture of Nutrition, 1840-1940. Rodopi. p. 31. ISBN   978-90-5183-818-3. Moleschott's atheism is much more prominent, for example, and he declares absurd Liebig's opinion that insights into the laws of nature inevitably lead us to the notion of a Being knowable only through revelation.
  109. "Susan Neiman: Religion and Science".
  110. "Since my mid-undergraduate days, I have been an atheist. By now I suppose there are some who would call me a professional atheist troikaing me with Antony Flew and Michael Scriven." Kai Nielsen, God and the Grounding of Morality, p.155
  111. Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, aphorisms 108 and 125 )
  112. Remhof, Justin (2018-02-13). ""God is dead": Nietzsche and the Death of God". 1000-Word Philosophy.
  113. Bullivant, Stephen; Ruse, Michael, eds. (2013-11-21). "The Oxford Handbook of Atheism". doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199644650.001.0001. ISBN   978-0-19-964465-0.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  114. The Sydney Morning Herald (March 21, 2008). "Facts and friction of Easter" . Retrieved 2008-03-23.
  115. Amazon listing for Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, by Michel Onfray. (Accessed March 23, 2008)
  116. In 'Is God Good By Definition?' (1992), Oppy presented a logical argument for God's nonexistence based upon an alleged fact of metaethics: the falsity of moral realism. If moral realism is false, then that is a fact that is incompatible with God's existence.
  117. El legado invisible de Ortega y Gasset. El Periódico de Catalunya, 28/05/2014.
  118. "...I'm an atheist..." Enough blasting Dennett and Dawkins, all right?, from Rationally Speaking, the blog of Massimo Pigliucci, October 30, 2006 (Accessed April 15, 2008)
  119. Pankhurst, Jerry G. (1982-12-01). "Soviet sociology of religion". Religion in Communist Lands. 10 (3): 292–297. doi:10.1080/09637498208431036. ISSN   0307-5974.
  120. Thrower, James (20 April 2011). Marxist-Leninist 'Scientific Atheism' and the Study of Religion and Atheism in the USSR. ISBN   978-3-11-083858-9. OCLC   979912966.
  121. Copeland, B. Jack (2020), "Arthur Prior", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2021-03-10, He was, at this stage of his life, obsessed with religion. He believed in the virgin birth and the voice of the devil, and was a devout Presbyterian (Prior 1940)...In later life, however, he described himself as having 'no religious beliefs' (Prior c.1967). In 1961, when Max Cresswell—then a logic student aged 21—met him for the first time, in Manchester, Prior announced: 'Mr Cresswell, isn't it a pity that God does not exist'.
  122. Cohen, L.J. (2006). Encyclopedia of philosophy. Donald M. Borchert (2nd ed.). Detroit: Thomson Gale/Macmillan Reference USA. ISBN   0-02-865780-2. OCLC   61151356. He was influenced for several years by the theologian Arthur Miller, who combined a strict adherence to Presbyterian doctrine with an equally strong support for socialism and opposition to nationalism. But Prior's pacifism weakened, and he served from 1942 to 1945 in the New Zealand air force. And the central focus of his interests gradually shifted - helped by an occasional bout of atheism - from theology to ethics and logic.
  123. "Hilary Putnam, prolific Jewish-American thinker who revolutionized contemporary philosophy, dies". Haaretz.
  124. "Wrestling With an Angel | Benjamin Balint". First Things. October 2008.
  125. "In my third year of high school I walked often with my new Jamaican friends, Fred and Harold Cassidy, trying to convert them from their Episcopalian faith to atheism." Willard Van Orman Quine, Lewis Edwin Hahn, Paul Arthur Schilpp, The Philosophy of W.V. Quine (1986).
  126. Elisheva Carlebach; Jacob J. Schacter, eds. (2011). New Perspectives on Jewish-Christian Relations . BRILL. p.  506. ISBN   9789004221178.
  127. In God and Moral Autonomy (1997), Rachels argued for the nonexistence of God based on the impossibility of a being worthy of worship.
  128. "His tolerance and good humour enabled him to disagree strongly without giving or taking offence, for example with his brother Michael Ramsey whose ordination (he went on to become archbishop of Canterbury) Ramsey, as a militant atheist, naturally regretted." D. H. Mellor, 'Ramsey, Frank Plumpton (1903–1930)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, October 2005 (accessed May 2, 2008).
  129. " Asked if Rand was an atheist, [Yaron] Brook said, "Yes, she was - and I have been since the age of 6, before I read Ayn Rand. But more than anti-religion, she was for reason. She spends time on the positive. She believed the way to evaluate things in life and reality is through reason, rational thought. That's what we try to emphasize." " George Hohmann, 'Ayn Rand relevant today, speaker says Archived 2015-04-02 at the Wayback Machine ', Charleston Daily Mail (West Virginia), June 1, 2009, Pg. P5A (accessed 5 June 2009).
  130. Johannes Quack (2011). Disenchanting India: Organized Rationalism and Criticism of Religion in India. Oxford University Press. p. 89, 338. ISBN   978-0-19-981260-8. Gora stated that "Atheism is the opposite of theism. What then is theism? Theism means belief in the existence of god. But what is god? The form of god has changed considerably from the primitives, solid flesh to a metaphysical concept of the ultimate reality. Though the forms of god have varied widely, all the types have one common, namely that god is superior to man. So, in relation to the god of his belief, the believer places himself in a position of inferiority. The prayer, 'Thy will be done' expresses the believer's feeling of surrender and subordination to god. Because free will exists, god does not exist and the concept of an almighty god is clearly an absurdity. Belief in the existence of god is an expression of mans slave mind. Slave mind seeks a prop and an easy prop on which the slave-mind rested was a concept of god."
  131. Ronald J. Sider; Paul Charles Kemeny; Derek H. Davis; Clarke E. Cochran; Corwin Smidt (2009). Church, State and Public Justice: Five Views. InterVarsity Press. p. 34. ISBN   9780830874743. Religious beliefs, argues John Rawls—a Harvard philosopher and self- identifying atheist—can be so divisive in a pluralistic culture that they subvert the stability of a society.
  132. "Despite asserting that he had always loathed the family, both the one he was born into and the ones he had created, in the same year he published Le Moine et le philosophe (1997, "The Monk and the Philosopher", 1998), a book-length dialogue between Revel, the convinced atheist, and his son Mathieu Ricard, who had abandoned a career in molecular biology research to go to live in Asia, to study Buddhism, and who subsequently became a Buddhist monk." David Drake, Obituary: Jean-François Revel, The Independent (London), May 10, 2006, Pg. 44.
  133. Christopher J. Voparil; Richard J. Bernstein, eds. (2010). "Trotsky and the Wild Orchids". The Rorty Reader. John Wiley & Sons. p. 509. ISBN   9781405198318. The orthodox tend to think that people who, like the postmodernists and me, believe neither in God nor in some suitable substitute, should think that everything is permitted, that everybody can do what they like.
  134. Alexander Rosenberg (September 17, 2011). "Why I Am a Naturalist". The New York Times .
  135. Alexander Rosenberg (November 6, 2011). "Bodies in Motion: An Exchange". The New York Times .
  136. "Philosopher Michael Ruse has written: ' The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist.' But in all the hype and embarrassment over geneticist Professor Richard Dawkins's anti-religious arguments, there is an important strand in his argument that has been overlooked: his views on morality." Richard Harries, 'It is possible to be moral without God', The Observer (England), December 30, 2007, Comment Pages, Pg. 25.
  137. Russell said: "As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist... None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of Homer really exist, and yet if you were to set to work to give a logical demonstration that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and the rest of them did not exist you would find it an awful job. You could not get such proof. Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line." Am I an Agnostic or an Atheist?, from Last Philosophical Testament 1943–1968, (1997) Routledge ISBN   0-415-09409-7. Russell was chosen by LOOK magazine to speak for agnostics in their well-known series explaining the religions of the U.S., and authored the essay "What Is An Agnostic?" which appeared 3 November 1953 in that magazine
  138. "Bertrand Russell Society Archives: Was Bertrand Russell An Atheist or Was He Really an Agnostic?". Archived from the original on 2015-07-26. Retrieved 2015-08-06.
  139. "Bertrand Russell - Celebrity Atheist List". www.celebatheists.com.
  140. Sade, Marquis de (1782). Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man . Retrieved 17 June 2016.
  141. "Positive Atheism's Big List of Quotations". Archived from the original on 8 April 2016. Retrieved 17 June 2016.
  142. "Santayana playfully called himself 'a Catholic atheist,' but in spite of the fact that he deliberately immersed himself in the stream of Catholic religious life, he never took the sacraments. He neither literally regarded himself as a Catholic nor did Catholics regard him as a Catholic." Empiricism, Theoretical Constructs, and God, by Kai Nielsen, The Journal of Religion, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Jul., 1974), pp. 199-217 (p. 205), published by The University of Chicago Press
  143. "My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe, and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests." George Santayana, 'On My Friendly Critics', in Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies, 1922 (from Rawson's Dictionary of American Quotations via credoreference.com (accessed August 1, 2008).
  144. "He was so thoroughly an atheist that he rarely mentioned it, considering the topic of God to be beneath discussion. In his autobiography, The Words, Sartre recalled deciding at about age twelve that God does not exist, and hardly thinking about it thereafter." 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt, James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996.
  145. Kimball, Roger (2000). "The World According to Sartre". The New Criterion. Archived from the original on 2006-11-14. Retrieved 2006-11-12.
  146. Kemerling, Garth (October 27, 2001). "Sartre: Existential Life". Philosophy Pages. Britannica Internet Guide Selection. Retrieved 2006-11-12.
  147. William J. Deangelis (172). Ludwig Wittgenstein - a Cultural Point of View: Philosophy in the Darkness of This Time. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN   9781409485377. Positivists did not merely reject religious discourse as meaningless, they rejected religion. They thought of religious belief as confused and nonsensical. ...their unofficial leader, Moritz Schlick, thought of religion as a kind of childhood phase in the intellectual development of humankind, a phase that will wither and become obsolete as scientific ways of knowing become the accepted paradigm. To this extent, one can say that Schlick's attitude and that of most of his fellow Positivists was atheistic.
  148. "...sagte Michael Schmidt-Salomon, Vorstand der Giordano-Bruno-Stiftung und damit so etwas wie Deutschlands Chef-Atheist." ("...said Michael Schmidt-Salomon, [who is] chairman of the Giordano Bruno Foundation, and therefore something of a 'chief atheist' for Germany.") Chef-Atheist im Chat: "Gynäkologen, die an die Jungfrauengeburt glauben", Spiegel Online, 29 May 2007 (Accessed 6 April 2008)
  149. David A. Leeming; Kathryn Madden; Stanton Marlan, eds. (2009). Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, Volume 2. Springer. p. 824. ISBN   9780387718019. A more accurate statement might be that for a German – rather than a French or British writer of that time – Schopenhauer was an honest and open atheist.
  150. Raymond B. Marcin (2006). In Search of Schopenhauer's Cat: Arthur Schopenhauer's Quantum-Mystical Theory of Justice. CUA Press. p.  122. ISBN   9780813214306. It is easy to find many of the underpinnings of Schopenhauer's doctrine of the denial of the will to live in the Theologia Germanica, but only if one is willing to gainsay the anonymous author's theism and Schopenhauer's atheism.
  151. Dale Jacquette, ed. (2007). Schopenhauer, Philosophy and the Arts. Cambridge University Press. p. 22. ISBN   9780521044066. For Kant, the mathematical sublime, as seen for example in the starry heavens, suggests to imagination the infinite, which in turn leads by subtle turns of contemplation to the concept of God. Schopenhauer's atheism will have none of this, and he rightly observes that despite adopting Kant's distinction between the dynamical and mathematical sublime, his theory of the sublime, making reference to the struggles and sufferings of struggles and sufferings of Will, is unlike Kant's.
  152. B. R. Hergenhahn (2008). An Introduction to the History of Psychology. Cengage Learning. p. 216. ISBN   9780495506218. Although Schopenhauer was an atheist, he re- alized that his philosophy of denial had been part of several great religions; for example, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism.
  153. "Within Schopenhauer's vision of the world as Will, there is no God to be comprehended, and the world is conceived of as being meaningless."
  154. Reviewing an episode of the Channel 4 series Voices: "On the one hand, Sir John Eccles, a quiet-spoken theist with the most devastating way of answering questions with a single "yes", on the other, Professor Searle, a flamboyant atheist using words I've never heard of or likely to again "now we know that renal secretions synthesize a substance called angiotensin and that angiotensin gets into the hypothalamus and causes a series of neuron firings". " Peter Dear, 'Today's television and radio programmes', The Times, February 22, 1984; pg. 31; Issue 61764; col A.
  155. Doug Renselle. "A Review of Amy Wallace's The Prodigy". Quantonics, Inc. Retrieved 20 June 2012. Rabid atheist by age six. (His father, Boris, was too, but intensely studied great religious works.)
  156. Price, Joyce Howard (July 4, 2002). "Princeton bioethicist argues Christianity hurts animals". The Washington Times. Archived from the original on December 16, 2015. I am an atheist.
  157. "Craig Sinnott Armstrong, God: A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist" (PDF). commonsenseatheism.com. 2009.
  158. "Within a year I had gone to Miss Graves to tell her that I no longer believed in God. 'I know,' she said, 'I have been through that myself.' But her strategy misfired: I never went through it." B.F. Skinner, pp. 387-413, E.G. Boring and G. Lindzey's A History of Psychology in Autobiography (Vol. 5), New York: Appleton Century-Crofts, 1967.
  159. Ed Hindson, Ergun Caner (2008). The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics: Surveying the Evidence for the Truth of Christianity. Harvest House Publishers. p.  82. ISBN   9780736920841. As such, one could speak of existential atheists (Sartre), Marxist atheists (Marx), psychological atheists (Freud), capitalistic atheists (Ayn Rand), and behavioristic atheists (BF Skinner).
  160. "This book is a presentation and defense of atheism." Atheism: The Case Against God, by George H. Smith, Prometheus Books, 1989, ISBN   0-87975-124-X
  161. Smith has written numerous papers arguing for the nonexistence of God.
  162. Naomi Zack (2010). "Herbert Spencer". Philosophy . Visible Ink Press. p.  250. ISBN   9781578592265. Herbert Spencer was an atheist who believed science was the only way to uncover true knowledge.
  163. "As he wrote: "Stirner's egoism springs from a conscious and total atheism, with this playful indifference and apathy to any higher essence being the prerequisite for encountering one's own being, one's uniqueness, Einzigkeit." Laurel Jean Fredrickson, Duke University, Kate Millett and Jean-Jacques Lebel: Sexual outlaws in the intermedia borderlands of art and politics, page 136.
  164. "Theodorus, the atheistic philosopher of Cyrene, appears in Athens during the Phalerean regime." Athenian Impiety Trials in the Late Fourth Century B. C., L. L. O'Sullivan, The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 47, No. 1 (1997), pp. 136-152 (p. 142), published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
  165. "The Craig-Tooley Debate: Introduction". www.leaderu.com.
  166. "Is God Real? Dr. William Lane Craig vs Dr. Michael Tooley" via www.youtube.com.
  167. Trakakis, N. N. (December 7, 2015). "Why I Am Not Orthodox". ABC Religion & Ethics.
  168. Ann Thomson (1981). Discours Préliminaire. Librairie Droz. p. 130. ISBN   9782600035859. Another example of the virtuous atheist given by La Mettrie is Lucilio Vanini, burned for atheism in Toulouse in 1619.
  169. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; Austin M. Farrer; E. M. Huggard (2010). Austin M. Farrer (ed.). Theodicy. Cosimo, Inc. p. 434. ISBN   9781616402952. Here is another example cited by the author: an atheist, a man like Lucilio Vanini (that is what many people call him, whereas he himself adopts the magnificent name of Giulio Cesare Vanini in his works), will suffer a preposterous martyrdom for his chimera rather than renounce his impiety.
  170. Vasubandhu. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2021.{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  171. "Vermeersch, Etienne (1934-2019)". UGentMemorie. March 14, 2019.
  172. "Vermeersch, Etienne 1934-2019 - UGentMemorialis". www.ugentmemorialis.be.
  173. "Atheisme (De Essentie) | Etienne Vermeersch". Atheisme (De Essentie) | Etienne Vermeersch.
  174. "While Shirley was (and is) a devout Catholic and so took the marriage as a commitment for eternity, Bernard, an atheist, had not done so when he made the wedding vows. Shirley says: "The Church and Bernard had a wonderful time debating all this. The theologians were so thrilled to be discussing it with a leading philosopher." " Stuart Jeffries, 'Profile: Bernard Williams', The Guardian, November 30, 2002, Saturday Review, Pg. 20.
  175. Wine said "I am an atheist." Time Magazine January 29, 1965
  176. "Czy Bóg jest potrzebny do wyjaśnienia świata? – debata między Janem Woleńskim i Jackiem Wojtysiakiem" [Is God Necessary to Explain the World?–a debate between Jan Woleński and Jacek Wojtysiak] via www.youtube.com.
  177. "Wyborcza.pl". wyborcza.pl.
  178. Atheism is a legacy worth fighting for, an editorial by Slavoj Zizek, The New York Times, Monday, March 13, 2006 (Accessed April 22, 2012).

Bibliography

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