There have been many atheists who have been active in advocacy or education. This is a list of atheist activists and educators. Living persons in this list are people whose atheism is relevant to their notable activities or public life, and who have publicly identified themselves as atheists.
People who are/were activists or educators in other areas (social reform, feminism etc), but who were also atheists.
^ a: A person permanently dependent upon a mechanical ventilator to maintain breathing. [102]
Secular humanism is a philosophy, belief system, or life stance that embraces human reason, logic, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism, while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality and decision-making.
Freethought is an epistemological viewpoint which holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and should instead be reached by other methods such as logic, reason, and empirical observation.
Abraham Thomas Kovoor was an Indian professor and rationalist who gained prominence after retirement for his campaign to expose as frauds various Indian and Sri Lankan "god-men" and so-called paranormal phenomena. His direct, trenchant criticism of spiritual frauds and organized religions was enthusiastically received by audiences, initiating a new dynamism in the Rationalist movement, especially in Sri Lanka and India.
Barbara Smoker was a British humanist activist and freethought advocate. She was also President of the National Secular Society (1972–1996), Chair of the British Voluntary Euthanasia Society (1981–1985) and an Honorary Vice President of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association in the United Kingdom.
Humanists International is an international non-governmental organisation championing secularism and human rights, motivated by secular humanist values. Founded in Amsterdam in 1952, it is an umbrella organisation made up of more than 160 secular humanist, atheist, rationalist, agnostic, skeptic, freethought and Ethical Culture organisations from over 80 countries.
Sanal Edamaruku is an Indian author and rationalist. He is the founder-president and editor of Rationalist International, the president of the Indian Rationalist Association and the author of 25 books and other articles. In 2012, after examining an alleged miracle at a local church in Mumbai, he was charged under India's blasphemy law, causing him to voluntarily exile to Finland.
The Godless Americans March on Washington (GAMOW) occurred on the National Mall in Washington, DC, on November 2, 2002, with the participation of many atheists, freethinkers, agnostics and humanists. The public cable network C-SPAN documented the event on video.
Edwin Frederick Kagin was an attorney at law in Union, Kentucky, and a founder of Camp Quest, the first secular summer camp in the United States for the children of secularists, atheists, agnostics, brights, skeptics, naturalists and freethinkers. He served as the National Legal Director of American Atheists from 2006 until his death in 2014.
The Rationalist Society of Australia (RSA) promotes the interests of rationalists nationally in Australia. Originally formed as the Victorian Rationalist Association, the society originated in a meeting of freethinkers in the University of Melbourne in 1906. It is the operational arm of the rationalist movement in Australia.
Chapman Cohen was an English freethinker, atheist, and secularist writer and lecturer.
Discrimination against atheists, sometimes called atheophobia, atheistophobia, or anti-atheism, both at present and historically, includes persecution of and discrimination against people who are identified as atheists. Discrimination against atheists may be manifested by negative attitudes, prejudice, hostility, hatred, fear, or intolerance towards atheists and atheism or even the complete denial of atheists existence. It is often expressed in distrust regardless of its manifestation. Perceived atheist prevalence seems to be correlated with reduction in prejudice. There is global prevalence of mistrust in moral perceptions of atheists found in even secular countries and among atheists.
Clark Davis Adams was a prominent American freethought leader and activist.
Matthew Wade Dillahunty is an American atheist activist and former president of the Atheist Community of Austin, a position he held from 2006 to 2013. Between 2005 and October 2022, Dillahunty was host of the televised webcast The Atheist Experience.
Around 0.7 million people in India did not state their religion in the 2001 census and were counted in the "religion not stated" category. They were 0.06% of India's population. Their number has significantly increased four times, from 0.7 million in the 2001 census to 2.9 million in the 2011 census at an average annual rate of 15%. According to the 2012 WIN-Gallup Global Index of Religion and Atheism report, 81% of Indians were religious, 13% were non-religious, 3% were convinced atheists, and 3% were unsure or did not respond, while a demographic study by Cambridge University Press in 2004 found that around 2-6% of Indians identified as atheists or irreligious.
Apostacon, before 2013 known as Midwest Humanist Conference, Midwest Humanist and Freethought Conference and Midwest Freethought Conference, is an annual event about atheism, freethought, humanism, secularism and skepticism in the (Midwestern) United States. The conference, which embraces the parody religion of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is aimed at "atheists, humanists, agnostics, skeptics, apostates, freethinkers, rationalists and pastafarians."
Debbie Goddard is an American atheist activist and speaker, and the director of African Americans for Humanism (AAH). In 2019 she took on the role of vice president of programs at American Atheists. Since 2020, she has been on the board of directors of Humanists International.
The secular movement refers to a social and political trend in the United States, beginning in the early years of the 20th century, with the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism in 1925 and the American Humanist Association in 1941, in which atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, and other nonreligious and nontheistic Americans have grown in both numbers and visibility. There has been a sharp increase in the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated, from under 10 percent in the 1990s to 20 percent in 2013. The trend is especially pronounced among young people, with about one in three Americans younger than 30 identifying as religiously unaffiliated, a figure that has nearly tripled since the 1990s.
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: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)The issue was baldly expressed by the nineteenth-century atheist Richard Carlile in a critique of natural theology...
Even an old atheist like me sees no good in this ignorance of basic Christian myths.
Alexander Berkman was a self-declared atheist attempting to lift the stultifying fog of the gods from the mind of humankind.
Berkman, an atheist, refused to be sworn in.
According to Abbie, the teacher took issue with his defense of atheism.
Even religious Zionist settlers in the West Bank have adopted Jabotinsky as a symbol – although he was an atheist who believed that the Arab minority would share equal rights with Jews in a future Jewish state, famously declaring: "In every cabinet where the prime minister is a Jew, the vice-premiership shall be offered to an Arab, and vice versa."
In sum, just as his turn to Symbolism and Decadence in the late 1890s was typical rather than idiosyncratic, Jabotinsky's abandonment of Symbolism and Decadence was also typical rather than idiosyncratic. A thoroughgoing atheist and rationalist, he could not, to the end of his days, comprehend any mystical or religious sensibility or even any metaphysical philosophical stance, idealist or not.
Apparently Sakharov did not need to delve any deeper into it for a long time, remaining a totally nonmilitant atheist with an open heart.
Sakharov was not invited to this seminar. Like most of the physicists of his generation, he was an atheist.
The Soviet dissident most responsible for defeating communism, Andrei Sakharov, was an atheist.
I had become a pronounced atheist.
As a life-long atheist, I have dreaded, not the process of dying, but the terrible consequence of not being forever after.
And although the young technologist and activist grew up to call himself an atheist, the values he grew up with appeared foundational.