Do you have a favorite atheist?

Forget that beautiful godless girlfriend in college! Is there an atheist philosopher who has commanded your attention and influenced your thinking?

If you are not an atheist, have you read the works of any atheist philosophers? Do you recall why you may have rejected them?

Richard Dawkins, whose programme on Darwin is on TV here in a few minutes. I hope it gets sold to the US

Further to the above: Dawkin's programme was excellent if a bit disturbing.He took a class of 15 and 16 year old science students and asked them about evolution and their religion. Several told him that they believed their own holy book.He was a little mischievous, pointing out that 'holy books' e.g Hindu and Christian differed and asking whether they'd ever thought whether and why their one was right. Then he asked what they'd do if they read an old book and then found a later one that differed from it. Would they say that the first must be right,just because it was right before, or would they think the later one might clarify or qualify the first?

It was patently obvious that they had no real knowledge of evolution at all saying that they'd 'need proof'.So he took them to a beach famous for fossils and had them hunt for some, gently explaining about sedimentary rocks they could see and how different fossils were found at different levels.( They did find some ammonites). His method was to say to them that what they asked were the very same questions that Darwin himself, and clever religious people too, had asked in Darwin's day, with the very same doubts.So, the atheist was persuading them not to lose some faith so much as to put that faith into context.

By the end, only one girl said that she'd stick with her parents' (note!) holy book and what they said. The others were swayed to his line of enquiry, to put the science into context with the faith.

The one fault of the programme was that, addressing us, he made one or two very sweeping statements e.g.that Darwin's book removed all need for the supernatural."To a point, Lord Copper" !

The one surprising find was that some prostitutes in Nigeria, who often are familially related,appear to have a gene which protects them against the H I V virus.This, he speculated, is an example of 'survival of the fittest' in action.He said that this would not be unprecedented. We Europeans are the descendants of people who survived the great plagues of the past.

Dawkins, Harris, Dennett and Hitchins kind of seem to be the four horsemen of the ‘new atheism’ apocalypse, but I lean more toward the works of Paul Kurtz and Michael Shermer (not as rabidly angry, much more applicable to my life, I find). My favorite apparent (I say apparent, as "skeptic" or "non-religious" may be a better term for him) atheist, though, by far, is Neil deGrasse Tyson.

To Elexina's list I would add Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Massimo Pigliucci, Penn Gillette and Eugenie Scott, among others.

XaurreauX posted???

Nice to see you again.

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
XaurreauX posted???

Nice to see you again.

Thanks! You're probably wondering who opened the crypt. ;^]

Myself #1, Babthrower, Dawkins, Hitchens, JuanRuiz, nnn, and anyone still in the closet or partway out. Agnostics and secular humanists are also welcome. I'm an equal opportunity atheist.

Frankvan , Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, Billy Connolly, Robin Cook (“a Presbyterian atheist”).

Does the Dalai Lama count?

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
XaurreauX posted???

I take full responsibility for that, having posting something so evidently brilliant and witty as to require his response. Woo-hoo!

In that case, thanks to you, too. It's always nice to see old friends stop by the neighborhood.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote in his God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, “I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead.”
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From Wikipedia -

In his last autobiography, Isaac Asimov wrote, "If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul." The same memoir states his belief that Hell is "the drooling dream of a sadist" crudely affixed to an all-merciful God; if even human governments were willing to curtail cruel and unusual punishments, wondered Asimov, why would punishment in the afterlife not be restricted to a limited term? Asimov rejected the idea that a human belief or action could merit infinite punishment. If an afterlife of just deserts existed, he claimed, the longest and most severe punishment would be reserved for those who "slandered God by inventing Hell".

In addition to those who toil or toiled here and at Jeeves, probably Carl Sagan.

Besides the ones already mentioned, I like Graham Robert Oppy," Arguing about Gods,", Robert LePodevin, " Arguing for Atheism," Jonathon Harrison," God, Freedom, and Immortality," Michael Martin ," Atheism: a Philosophical Justifiation" and "The Case against Christianity," George Smith, "Atheism: the Case against God," Quentin Smith, various. Kai Nielsen, various,esp.,"Naturalism and Religion," David Ramsay Steele, " Atheism Explained: from Folly to Philosophy," Jordan Howard Sobel,"Logic and Theism," John L. Schelenberg, varous and John L, Mackie,'The Miracle of Theism."
Miklos Jako, deist, in "Confronting Believers," maintains that Yeshua is no one to emulate, but he doesn't fathom atheism so well. He makes the inane argument that God is above logic so that one can be illogical about Him, in effect.