Muad'Dib

Weird Al is Church of Christ, actually, for the record. One of my old professors attends the same church (either Hollywood or Camarillo CoC, IIRC, down here in southern California).

And I'd want better evidence that some of the quotes were actually spoken by non-religious people. The Susan B. Anthony quote, for example--

--is quite similar to what my very Christian mother says from time to time in response to excessively fundamentalist people.

I think that if we accuse people (e.g. creationists) of quote-mining, it behooves us to be extremely cautious of the contexts and intentions behind the quotes that we use. IMHO.

Goliath

Muad'Dib,

Really? That's a damn shame.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Hubble head

Wierd Al and the COC? I'm going to ask him now, or his people just to be sure. Seems odd.

I mean, if wierd Al isn't on board, the whole list is moot.

Born Free

The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstitions of the Christian religion.

Elizabeth Cady-Stanton

:notworthy

trillian

Of course I like Douglas Adams- his stance is unquestionable.

"I really do mean Atheist. I really do not believe that there is a god - in fact I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one. It’s easier to say that I am a radical Atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously."

trillian

Hubble head

Well as this turns into a who actually said what I found that on Wierd Al's website he does claim to be xian so he'll be removed to. No details on what sect or depth of belief.

Grad Student Humanist

I thought the Adams' quote was too good to be true.

NonHomogenized

Franklin was a deist, or so I've oft read.
Anyone who challenged Samuel Clemens' status as an atheist is clearly off their rocker.
I keep seeing christians debating the issue of whether Einstein was an atheist or not. I'll let him speak for himself:

(The following excerpts are taken from Albert Einstein - The Human Side,Selected and Edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press, 1979.)

"I get hundreds and hundreds of letters but seldom one so interesting as yours. I believe that your opinions about our society are quite reasonable. It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. 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 religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
"I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation."

(This quote from Einstein appears in "Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A Symposium",published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to theDemocratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941.)

" In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests."

(The following is an excerpt Albert Einstein's Autobiographical Notes, Open Court Publishing Company, LaSalle and Chicago, Illinois, 1979. These paragraphs appear on pp 3 & 5.)

"As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came - though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents - to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment-an attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a better insight into the causal connections. It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the "merely personal," from an existence dominated by wishes, hopes, and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned as a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in its pursuit. The mental grasp of this extra-personal world within the frame of our capabilities presented itself to my mind, half consciously, half unconsciously, as a supreme goal. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights they had achieved, were the friends who could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it. "



So, I don't have a definite answer about Franklin, but, well, Clemens and Einstein were about atheist as one gets, and anyone who says differently has about as firm a grasp on reality as the ever-esteemed Jack Chick.

Pyrrho

You might want to change your introduction, if you want it to be exclusively those who are against religion. You say, as the heading of your list, "Famous Atheists, Freethinkers, and Others Against Religion". The trouble is, a "Freethinker" is simply one who thinks for themselves, which does not mean that they are not religious. Look at:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=freethinker

And scroll down the page, making sure you read the definitions from all of the sources, not simply the first one. "Freethinker" is a term of sufficient vagueness to include devoutly religious people, just like the term "infidel":

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=infidel

See in particular the third definition from the first source, as well as the sources after the first.


You could, with your current list, add David Hume. He never publicly stated that he was an atheist, but he did say things like:

"So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one."

He is generally taken to mean just what you would think, but if you wish, by all means read the entire book, or just Section X, to get enough of the context:

http://www.etext.leeds.ac.uk/hume/ehu/ehupbsb.htm

But he was cautious enough to never actually publicly deny that Christianity was true. After all, it was illegal to do so in his day, and it was not that many years before that the last person was burned at the stake for heresy for any prudent person in England at that time to be too careless in their public pronouncements. And, according to
this web site, the last person to be burned at the stake in England for any crime was in 1786, after David Hume died.

Bane

Might want to add Bob Geldof to that list. He did a lot to help people in Africa with Live Aid.