Saturday, April 18, 2009

The 50 Most Brilliant Atheists of All Time

 
The 50 Most Brilliant Atheists of All Time

Congratulations to Jodie Foster (#46) who's a lot more attractive than atheist #45 who, in turn, is a heck of a lot prettier than #37.

1. Democritus
2. Diagoras of Melos
3. Epicurus
4. Theodorus the Atheist
5. Andrew Carnegie
6. Ivan Pavlov
7. Sigmund Freud
8. Clarence Darrow
9. Richard Strauss
10. Bertrand Russell
11. Jawaharlal Nehru
12. Linus Pauling
13. Paul Dirac
14. Ayn Rand
15. Katherine Hepburn
16. Jacques Monod
17. Subrahmanyan Chandresekhar
18. Alan Turing
19. Francis Crick
20. Claude Shannon
21. Richard Feynman
22. Noam Chomsky
23. James D. Watson
24. Peter Higgs
25. Warren Buffet
26. John Searle
27. Steven Weinberg
28. Carl Sagan
29. David Suzuki
30. George Carlin
31. Bruce Lee
32. Leonard Susskind
33. Stephen Jay Gould
34. Richard Dawkins
35. Daniel Dennett
36. Stephen Hawking
37. Mick Jagger
38. Richard Leakey
39. David Gilmour
40. Brian Eno
41. David Sloan Wilson
42. Steve Wozniak
43. Douglas Adams
44. Steven Pinker
45. PZ Myers
46. Jodie Foster
47. Russell T Davies
48. David Chalmers
49. Sean Carroll
50. Mark Zuckerberg
at

15 comments:

  1. AnonymousSaturday, April 18, 2009 8:14:00 AM

    51. Herbert A. Hauptman


    http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1985/hauptman-autobio.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. SLCSaturday, April 18, 2009 8:31:00 AM

    How about Physicist Murray GellMann?

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousSaturday, April 18, 2009 9:11:00 AM

    And why is Ayn Ryand ahead of Chandrasekhar?

    Silly list.

    ReplyDelete
  4. paul01Saturday, April 18, 2009 9:16:00 AM

    Thomas Edison?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Brett W. McCoySaturday, April 18, 2009 9:53:00 AM

    And no Isaac Asimov?

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownSaturday, April 18, 2009 2:33:00 PM

    "Anonymous said...

    And why is Ayn Ryand ahead of Chandrasekhar?"

    It's supposed to be a roughly chronological list, so it's just a straight-up list, not a ranking order. I think they were also trying to expose some of the lesser-known atheists (especially those who aren't the obvious scientists), and probably intentionally had to skip a few of them.

    ReplyDelete
  7. chris ySunday, April 19, 2009 9:01:00 AM

    What everybody else has said. Dumbest list I ever saw. What's with the 1000 year gap between 300 b.c.e and 1835? Christopher Marlow not good enough for you? David Hume? Pierre-Simon LaPlace? Karl Marx? (So you don't like Marx, well I don't like Ayn Rand.)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Stephen MathesonSunday, April 19, 2009 1:41:00 PM

    Any list of intelligent atheists that includes James Watson, or excludes David Hume, has been written by someone so thoroughly ignorant that she/he should immediately seek employment in retail sales.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Rafael CarvalhoSunday, April 19, 2009 9:51:00 PM

    This top list looks more like a list of atheist celebrities. I really want to know the reason for Bruce Lee and Mick Jagger, among others, appear in it. I could think about many people that could be in this list. Greg Graffin, PH.D in evolutionary biology and lead singer of punk rock band Bad Religion, for example, should be remembered. Atheism is often a theme discussed in his brilliant songs, sometimes with a philosophical connotation, once with a rational approach. Moreover, Greg has many interviews and texts in which discusses atheism. Please review this top list. Greg is the only one to bring atheism to the music in such a fantastic way...

    ReplyDelete
  10. WavefunctionMonday, April 20, 2009 9:36:00 AM

    Including Jim Watson is fine. Excluding Isaac Asimov is ridiculous.

    ReplyDelete
  11. PZ MyersMonday, April 20, 2009 11:34:00 AM

    The competition is grossly unfair. Jody is wearing makeup, a nice outfit, and had her hair professionally done. Give me an hour or a few weeks to primp, maybe I can catch up.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Larry MoranMonday, April 20, 2009 1:39:00 PM

    PZ Myers says,

    The competition is grossly unfair. Jody is wearing makeup, a nice outfit, and had her hair professionally done. Give me an hour or a few weeks to primp, maybe I can catch up.Fair enough. How about competing with this picture of Jodie Foster? Her outfit is much nicer.

    ReplyDelete
  13. John S. WilkinsFriday, January 14, 2011 4:12:00 PM

    You must have a rather different notion of brilliant than I do, since many of these people are here simply because they are celebrities. I prefer my celebrity brilliance to be actual, you know, thinking.

    ReplyDelete
  14. shonnyTuesday, January 18, 2011 1:54:00 AM

    Leaving out Robert G. Ingersoll, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels makes the list just silly, as these eclipse most of the atheists listed.

    ReplyDelete
  15. AnonymousSunday, November 13, 2011 12:11:00 PM

    Any list of atheists that completely ignores the Marxist tradition is a worthless "politically correct" list.

    Quite obviously the list ought to include Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Antonio Gramsci, and Rosa Luxemburg. They were all certainly brilliant thinkers, even if you detest their politics.

    Paul Fauvet

    ReplyDelete