Famous atheists: 101-200

In existographies, famous atheists refers to historical thinkers, past or present, who have gained a certain notoriety, fame or infamy, depending, for either being labeled an atheist, declared non-believer in the existence of god, and or contribute explicitly to atheism, anti-theism, and dissolution of religio-mythology based ideologies; below is chronological listing of famous atheists, past and present.

Atheists | 101-200

See also: Top 100 atheists (ranked)

The following are noted atheists “101 to 200” — assumed, attributed, categorical, labeled, famous, extreme, and or legendary — chronological ordered, by either birth (reaction start) or event significance (previous: 1-100, next: 201-300):

Atheists 101 to 200
#	Person	Date	Significance

101	Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)		Listed (Ѻ) as “atheist philosopher”. “Meslier, d’Holbach, Diderot, Hume, and Bentham can, with fair certainly, be called atheists.” — Sunand Joshi (2014), The Original Atheists
102	Pierre Laplace (1749-1827)	1802	“I had no need of that [god] hypothesis.” — Pierre Laplace (1802), response to Napoleon why the divine was not found in his new celestial mechanics book (see: Napoleon Laplace anecdote)
103	Johann Goethe (1749-1832)		“Crebillon … treats the passions like playing cards, that one can shuffle, play, reshuffle, and play again, without their changing at all. There is no trace of the delicate, chemical affinity, through which they attract and repel each other, reunite, neutralize [each other], separate again and recover.” — Johann Goethe (1799), comment to Friedrich Schiller on the lack of realism in the works of Prosper Crebillon, Oct 23 “The moral symbols of nature are the elective affinities discovered and employed by the great Bergman.” — Johann Goethe (1809), comment to Friedrich Riemer, Jul 24 [HD:19] His Elective Affinities, showed that physical chemistry invalidates the logic of the sixth commandment; the "trainer of assassins of god", namely: Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Libb Thims; among which, Nietzsche, who went beyond good (right) and evil (wrong) declaring "God is dead!" (1882) and venturing into thermodynamics (1888) in his last penned notes, before going insane, according to Albert Camus (1942), is “the most famous of God's assassins.” See: Goethe on religion; Goethe on the soul.
104.	Honore Mirabeau (1749-1791)
105.	James Madison (1751-1836)		[HD:18]
106.	Johann Fichte (1762-1814)		Semi-labeled as the “first true atheist”. (Ѻ)
107.	Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)	1802	[HD:20] Noted for Napoleon Laplace anecdote (1802), wherein Laplace declared he no longer had need for the “hypothesis of god” in celestial mechanics; noted for his famous French scientific elite atheism queries (see: Napoleon on the soul) .
108.	Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)	1806	[HD:21] Trained by Goethe, at age 18, to become the first "god assassin"; himself later training Friedrich Nietzsche in the art of god assassination. “Schopenhauer was the first admitted and inexorable atheist among us Germans.” — Friedrich Nietzsche (1882), The Gay Science (Ѻ) “Schopenhauer prided himself on being the first true atheist in German philosophy, and scorned his contemporaries’ attempts to substitute a world spirit for a bankrupt deity. Yet he never abandoned a notion of cosmic justice.” — Susan Neiman (2004), Evil in Modern Thought: an Alternative History of Philosophy (Ѻ)
109.	Percy Shelley (1792-1822)	1811	“If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, knowledge of nature is made for their destruction.” — Percy Shelley (1811), The Necessity of Atheism (inspired by Spinoza) “Every time we say that god is the author of some phenomenon, that signifies that we are ignorant of how such a phenomenon was able to operate by the aid of forces or causes that we know in nature.” — Percy Shelley (1811), The Necessity of Atheism (inspired by Spinoza) Described as the “most famous of all British atheists”; his: The Necessity of Atheism, got him expelled from Oxford.
110.	Stendhal (1783-1842)	c.1820	“Gods only excuse is that he does not exist.” — Stendhal (c.1820), cited by Nietzsche, in Ecce Homo, as “best atheist joke”, saying he was jealous of for not having said it first
111.	Robert Taylor (1784-1844)	c.1827
112.	Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)		“The names of individuals who surrendered their belief in a universe governed by a supernatural being include: Percy Shelley, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Virginia Woolf, Albert Camus, Simone Beauvoir, Salmon Rushdie, and Marquis Sade. Others who choose to live without religion—Ernestine Rose and Charles Bradlaugh are examples—should be better known, given their historical import and former notoriety.” — Mitchell Stephens (2014), Imagine There’s No Heaven
11#.	Anne Newport Royall (1769-1854)	1828	She knew Thomas Jefferson and George Washington; admired Voltaire and Thomas Paine (Ѻ); she was characterized cross between Voltaire, Carry Nation, Joan of Arc, and Henry Mencken; noted for the irreligion book Black Book (1828) (Ѻ), e.g. “all priests are dangerous when clothed with power” (Hecht, 2003).
113.	Robert Owen (1771-1858)	1829	Characterized a "practical atheist" (Wright, 1850).
114.	Richard Carlile (1790-1843)	1829
115.	Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)	c.1830
11#.	Ralph Emerson (1803-1882)	1836	In 1836, he proclaimed “make your own Bible” (Ѻ); in 1841, in his Essays, his second book, is found his essay “Self-Reliance”, described by his aunt as “strange medley of atheism and false independence” (Ѻ); listed in CelebAtheists.com (Ѻ); one of the promulgators of the godless Goethean calendar.
116.	Bruno Bauer (1809-1882)	1837	A “fiery atheist” (Hecht, 2003) who argued that Jesus was a myth (see: Christ myth theory) per silent historians problem reasons; founded the Doctor's Club (aka the Free Society) (1837) a group of intellectuals who wrote (Ѻ) the most anti-Christian pamphlets in Germany at the time; met and influenced a young Karl Marx.
117.	Auguste Comte (1798-1857)	c.1840	Was “avowedly atheistic” (Ѻ); stated: “while the Protestants and deists have always attacked religion in the name of god, we must discard god, once and for all, in the name of religion” (Ѻ); ran one of the first "atheist churches", namely a movement of unbelieving congregations, which lasted for one generation .
118.	Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)	c.1840	“There is no god, and Harriet Martineau is her prophet.” — Douglass Jerrold (c.1852), see: Paul Dirac and The Strangest Man (pg. 456) Publicly declared her atheism with the publication of her The Atkinson Letters (Ѻ); thereafter embracing atheism, as a philosophy. (Ѻ)
119.	Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) \|→ Extreme atheist	1840	Known for this Essence of Christianity; known as a "legendary atheist" (Ѻ) (Ѻ), whose “extreme atheism” (Ѻ) was sometimes tempered with “divine humanism”, whose work is a forerunner to Marx-based Soviet atheism, who was said to have become more of an extreme atheist in later years. “Someday the scientific revolution, chemistry in particular, will dissolve Christianity in vat of nitric acid.” — Ludwig Feuerbach (1850), The Natural Sciences and the Revolution “Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever the right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established. Morality is then surrendered to the groundless arbitrariness of religion.” — Ludwig Feuerbach (c.1860) (Ѻ)
120.	Karl Marx (1818-1883)	1841	After meeting “fiery atheist” Bruno Bauer (1837), in 1841, the pair began to edit a journal called Atheist Archives, that didn’t pan out; they then wrote an atheist pamphlet, that got Bauer fired and made it impossible for Marx to find employment in academia; later became the eponym of “Marxian atheism”, a derivative of Epicurean atheism, Ludwig Feuerbach, and new scientific ideas, the result of which was dialectical materialism.
121.	Charles Southwell (1814-1860)	1841	Together with George Holyoake, they dissented from the official policy of Owenism, that lecturers should take a religious oath, to enable them to take collections on Sunday; founded the atheist publication Oracle of Reason, because of which he was soon imprisoned because of its content; Holyoake took over as editor, and was moved to an atheist position as a result of his experiences.
122.	Karl Heinzen (1809-1880)	1846	His Six Letters to a Pious Man, presented a series of letters, in the form of a pamphlet, which contain the confession of the belief of an ‘atheist’ in concise form; involved in an atheism dispute in Zurich of some sort.
123.	Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)	1848	Came to his own atheism via Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, the “Young Hegelians”, and the works of Robert Owen (Hecht, 2003); he co-authored, with Karl Marx, the Communist Manifesto (1848), and later supported Marx financially to write On Capital.
123.	Elizabeth Stanton (1815-1902)	1848	[HD:28] In 1848, she began to engage in the conflicts between the Bible and women’s rights (Ѻ); in 1895, she penned The Women’s Bible; therein becoming one of the pioneers of “atheist feminism”. (Ѻ)
124.	Jacob Moleschott (1822-1893)	1850	“Force is no impelling god, no entity separate from the material substratum; it is inseparable from matter, is one of its eternal indwelling properties. A force unconnected with matter, hovering loose over matter, is an utterly empty conception. In nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, in sulphur and phosphorus, their several properties have dwelt from all eternity.” [3]
125.	Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891)	1850	As a youth, was kicked out of his family for questioning things in Sunday school, such as discrepancies between the 39 articles of the Anglican Church and the Bible; at 17, gave his first public lecture on atheism and published A Few Words on the Christian Creed (1850), Who Was Jesus Christ, and What Did He Teach (1860), A Plea for Atheism (1864), and in 1880 after being elected to a seat in Parliament, was kicked out for refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance, which invoked God: [2] “I, (Insert full name), do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, her heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God.” Legal battle ensued over the next five years, culminating in the Oaths Act of 1888. (Ѻ)
126.	George Holyoake (1871-1906)	1851	A disbeliever who in 1851 coined the term “secularism” because he regarded “atheism” as a negative word (Ѻ)(Ѻ); his The Principles of Secularism Illustrated (1871) discusses Thomas Jefferson’s god questionings. (Ѻ)
127.	E.B. (c.1810-c.1880)	1851	Defended George Holyoake from the attacks by John Mackintosh, in his pamphlet The Logic of Atheism: With Especial Reference to Mr. Holyoake's Pretended Refutation of Paley, during which he coined the term "human chemistry."
128.	Thomas Huxley (1825-1895)	1854	A freethinking “agnostic” (term he coined); in 1854, began attacking the Bible, because Moses was getting in the way of science; portrayed theology and science as “mortal enemies” (1859); etc., etc. (Ѻ)
129.	George Eliot (1819-1880)	1854	[HD:30] In 1854, in the house of Adolf Stahr (1805-1876) she defended Goethe’s “everything holy overturning” (Heinrich Heine, 1810) physicochemical morality based Elective Affinities, the “sixth commandment” overthrowing end chapter (P2:C18) dénouement, which Stahr faulted; her nonbeliever efforts comprise chapter 10 of Christopher Hitchens’ The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (2007).
130.	Ludwig Buchner (1824-1899) \|→ Extreme atheist	1855	Modern Christian apologists consider Büchner the father of atheistic evangelism, or antitheism, in Germany, a counterpart to Thomas Huxley, who some consider to be the first atheistic evangelist—though Huxley himself denied, supposedly, that he was an atheist, preferring the term agnostic, which he coined in 1868—the ‘atheistic evangelism’ standard, as some have categorized, since then has been carried by Bertrand Russell, Henry Mencken, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris.
131.	Karl Vogt (1817-1895)	c.1860	Was an "atheist preacher" of sorts for Darwinism, materialism based.
132.	Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919)	1868	An "unabashed atheist" (James Birx, 1992); after reading Darwin in 1860 he ventured into a bold consideration of the philosophical implications and theological consequences of taking organic evolution seriously, and through about eight main published works, e.g. The Natural History of Creation (1868), to The Riddle of the Universe (1999), to Eternity (1916), engaged in a "scathing attack on religious dogma", referring to Judaeo-Christian traditions as "those dogmatic doctrines of anthropism", and produced philosophical work beyond "crude materialism" and "crude mechanism". [6]
133.	Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927)	1871	“All that is good and commendable now existing would continue to exist if all marriage laws were repealed tomorrow.” — Victoria Woodhull (c.1872) (Ѻ) In 1871, at age 33, after arising from sexually-abuse and financially exploited by her father, as a child, and, at age 15, forced via escape method into an 11-year “nightmare” marriage, prior to obtaining of very-difficult to obtain "divorce", penned the Introduction to the first English translation—done by "anonymously" by James Froude (whose Nemesis of Faith was publicly burned in 1849, during reverend William Sewells’ moral philosophy class at Oxford)—of Goethe’s “everything holy overturning” (Heinrich Heine, 1810), sixth commandment usurping, physicochemical morality based Elective Affinities, during which he outlined the Goethe revolution; in 1871, she became the first female presidential candidate; in 1872, she was derisively characterized by Thomas Nast as “Mrs Satan” (Ѻ) for her "divorce rights" advocation; in 1885, William Patton (1821-1889), a minister turned (1877) Howard University president, in his “Women and Skepticism” sermon, named Woodhull as “representative of the movement in America that gave evidence of atheism and immorality.” (Ѻ)
134.	John Blackie (1809-1895)	1871	Authored: Four Phases of Morals: Socrates, Aristotle, Christianity, Utilitarianism (1871) and The Natural History of Atheism (1877).
135	William Reade (1838-1875)	1872	His The Martyrdom of Man: From Nebula to Nation (1872), in the 19th century, was conceptualized as an “atheist’s bible”. (Ѻ)
136.	John Mill (1806-1873)	1873	[HD:24]; declared his atheism, and that of his father, in a famous essay published posthumously. [6]
137.	DeRobigne Bennett (1818-1882)	1873
138.	John Tyndall (1820-1893)	1874	In the famous four-year Tyndall-Stewart-Tait debate, Tyndall stood on the side of science and god-free education, whereas John Stewart and Peter Tait stood on the side of a god and possible afterlife; in the wake of the debate, both Tyndall and Thomas Huxley were charged with “material atheism”.
13#.	Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)	1880	[HD:34] Nicknamed the “great agnostic”; image shown is the frontispiece from his 1879 The Gods and Other Lectures (Ѻ); by 1888, known as a “great American atheist” (Ѻ); his Some Mistakes of Moses (1880), is one of the books cited in the Redford deconversion model; is one of the most-prolific atheism quotesmiths; one of the rocks to avoid in the Christian captain anecdote;
138.	Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)	1882	[HD:40] Quote: “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” Left: the 23 Dec 2010 pro-Christian “God is” billboard (Ѻ), on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel , which replaced the American Atheists 26 Nov 2010 “Christmas is a myth” billboard (Ѻ) , graffiti bombed with the word “Dead” (Ѻ), in reference to Nietzsche’s famous proclamation.
139.	Annie Besant (1847-1933)	1883
13#.	Johannes Wislicenus (1935-1902)	1885	“That must disappear!” — Johannes Wislicenus (1885), order to his guide, during his orientation tour of the University of Leipzig, as the new chemistry professor successor to Hermann Kolbe, in reference to Kolbe’s Biblical quotation "God has arranged all things by measure and number and weight" (Wisdom of Solomon 11:20) in large letters, such as depicted adjacent, above the periodic table chart of the chemical elements at the front of his lecture theater (Ѻ)
140.	John Burroughs (1837-1921)	1885
14#.	Watson Heston (1846-1905)	1890	After making illustrations in the free thinker journal Truth Seeker (Ѻ), he went on to published The Old Testament Comically Illustrated (1890), The New Testament Comically Illustrated (1898), and The Bible Comically Illustrated (1900), the latter of which being 800 pages in length containing 400 pictures. (Ѻ)
141.	Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)	1895	[HD:51] [L50:15] (Ѻ) In his “A Project for Scientific Psychology”, he sought to base all of mental phenomena on the logic of free energy (Gibbs energy) and bound energy (entropy), an atheism-implicit (implicit atheism) program; eponym of Freudian atheism, a synthesis of Feuerbach, Epicurean atheism (Epicureanism), and German atheism; noted Moses religio-mythology debunker (Moses and Monotheism, 1939).
142.	Jack London (1876-1916)	1895
14#.	Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932)	1901	“Everything we sensually experience can be reduced to energy relationships between our sense organs and the world around us.” — Wilhelm Ostwald (1809), autobiographical reflection of his spring “pentecostal inspiration”; as recounted in his Lifelines: an Autobiography, 1926 “Research workers were, at one time, obliged to endeavor to ensure that their theories did not contradict those of the church; nowadays, in contrast the church is at pains to prove that its teachings are compatible with those of science. In other words, the church acknowledges science as the higher authority.” — Wilhelm Ostwald (1909). “On Catalysis”, Nobel Lectures “I am made from the C-H-N-O-S-P combination from which a Bunsen, Helmholtz, Kirchhoff came.” — Wilhelm Ostwald (1926), Lifelines: an Autobiography “Ostwald, who was the most ‘radical atheist’ among these scholars [Marx, Buchner, Fourier, Weber, Riehl], used the instrument of the ‘Monistic Sunday Sermons’ to spread his ideas on rationality.” — Gird Spittler (2010), “Beginnings of Anthropology” [10] In 1901, gave a seven part lecture series on "natural philosophy", wherein he sought to upgrade, in his own words, the classical atheistic “matter-and-motion theory (or scientific materialism)” with the new replacement theory named of energetics; in 1905, he was relieved of his lecture duties owing to “religious questions” issues, as biographer Eduard Farber puts it, at the time of the official obsequies for freethinker Johannes Wislicenus (1935-1902); after retiring in 1906, with Ernst Haeckel, he founded the “Monisten Bund” or German Monist League (Ѻ), in Jena, a free-thinking organization; in 1910, Haeckel elected Ostwald as the president of the Monist League, after which he began giving his famous “Monistic Sunday Sermons”, at the center of which was his energy or energetics based universal belief, which usurped god and religion; in 1912, his The Energetic Imperative, outlined a thermodynamic imperative to Kant’s “categorical imperative”.
143.	Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)	1906	[HD:43] Author of the hilarious The Devils Dictionary.
14#.	Mangasar Mangasarian (1859-1943)	1909
144.	Thomas Edison (1847-1931)	1910	[HD:41] His 1910 New York Times interview (see: the Edison on the soul) on whereabouts of William James [HD:38], following is passing, is a fairly cogent and frank religion-ripping piece of work.
145.	George Shaw (1856-1950)	1912	[HD:45]; Jabari (Ѻ) 2016 top 20 smartest atheist
146.	Emma Goldman (1869-1940)	1916	“I am not interested in the theological Christ. Brilliant minds like Bauer, Strauss, Renan, Thomas Paine, and others, refuted that myth long ago. The theological Christ, however, is less dangerous than the ethical and social one. But the ethical and poetical Christ myth has so thoroughly saturated our lives that even some of the most advanced minds find it difficult to emancipate themselves from its yoke.” — Emma Goldman (1916), “The Philosophy of Atheism”; cited by Jennifer Hecht (2003) in Doubt: a History (pg. 440)
147.	Howard Lovecraft (1890-1937)
148.	Chapman Cohen (1868-1954)	c.1920	“Gods are fragile things; they can be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.” — Chapman Cohen (c.1920), The Devil (Ѻ); in FSM atheism app
149.	Hubert Harrison (1883-1927)	c.1920	Known as the "black atheist" or "black Socrates".
150.	Charles Steinmetz (1865-1923)	1922
15#.	Fritz Mauthner (1849-1923)	c.1923	Penned a four-volume history of atheism in the early 1920s. (Ѻ)
151..	Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)	1925	[HD:46] Son of an atheist father who famously defended high school biology teacher John Scopes, in the Scopes Monkey Trail, accused of teaching evolution to high school students.
152.	Henry Mencken (1880-1956)	1925	[HD:53] The witty reporter, on the atheist's side, of the "Scopes Monkey trial"; a self-classified agnostic, technically.
153.	Luther Burbank (1849-1926)	1926
15#.	George Santayana (1863-1952)		[HD:49] “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 (1922), “On My Friendly Critics”, Soliloquies in England (Ѻ)(Ѻ) “Faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes.” (Ѻ)
154.	Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)	1927	[HD:51] Oft-ranked as the greatest atheist of the 20th century, for his Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)—itself sometimes referred to as an “atheist’s bible”—among later television appearances; quote: “I see no reason, [owing to the universal nature of] the second law of thermodynamics, to believe in any sort of god, however vague and however attenuated.”
155.	Margaret Sanger (1879-1966)		[HD:54] Leading birth control activist; founder of Planned Parenthood; declared “no god; no masters”; braved the opposition of the Roman Catholic church. (Ѻ)
156.	Bhagat Singh (1907-1931)	1930	While in prison, in 1930, he penned the resonating essay “Why I Am an Atheist” (Ѻ), response to a deeply religious inmate who thought he became an atheist because of his vanity. (Ѻ)
157.	Abdullah al-Qasemi (1907-1996)	c.1930	A so-labeled “godfather of Arab atheism” (Ѻ); his The Lie In Order to See God (يكذبون كي يروا الله جميلا) (c.1930), supposedly, is a good ex-Muslim book (Ѻ); another is The Universe Judges the God (c.1940) (Ѻ)
158.	John Jackson (1907-1993)		(RMS:91)
159.	Max Otto (1876-1968)	1932	Author of author of Is There a God? (1932); associate of John Dewey.
160.	David Brooks (1902-1994)	1933
161.	Albert Einstein (1879-1955)		[HD:52] A self-defined atheism-leaning agnostic of the Spinozan atheism variety, who repeatedly denied the existence of a "personal god", but not explicitly god, per se. See: Einstein on religion; Einstein on the soul; Einstein on free will
162.	Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)		“Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the cunning to spread the truth among such persons.” — Bertolt Brecht (1935) “Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties” (Ѻ) Quote: “Brecht was an atheist who believed not in the truth, but in probability. In contrast to the agnostic, he did not doubt for the sake of doubting; he weighed alternative courses of action for the sake of choosing one, and he chose Communism not because it struck him as infallible, but because he saw it as the most likely instrument of anti-Fascism and social justice” (Ѻ); listed in PositiveAtheism.org (Ѻ); quoted in AtheistNexus.org (Ѻ)
163.	Paul Dirac (1902-1984)	1927	“Any further assumption implied by belief in a god which one may have in one’s faith is inadmissible from the point of view of modern science, and should not be needed in a well-organized society.” — Paul Dirac (1933), hand-written note to self In 1927, during the fifth Solvay Conference, famously, during smoky hotel lounge conversation, began to rip on Einstein, and his “god talk”, to Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli.
164.	Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)	1929
16#.	Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)	1929	“All thinking men are atheists.” — Ernest Hemingway (1929), A Farewell to Arms
166.	Richard Feynman (1918-1988)	1930
165.	John Dewey (1859-1952)	1935	“I feel the gods are pretty dead, though 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. It has come to signify it seems to me a denial of all ideal values as having the right to control material ones. An in that sense I’m not an atheist and don’t want to be labelled as one.” — John Dewey (1935), letter to atheist friend Max Otto
166.	Albert Camus (1913-1960)	1942	Oft-cited as someone "born Christian; died atheist"; noted for Camus model; quote (1942): “Nietzsche was the most famous of God’s assassins.”
167.	Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)	1943	French atheist existentialist philosopher, predominately noted for his 1943 Being and Nothingness, who promoted an anti-deterministic variety, i.e. science not based on causality, of individual “freedom as the foundation of all values” type of existentialism, according to the logic of “existence precedes essence”, meaning that man first materializes into the world, encounters himself, and only afterwards defines himself.
168.	Richard Feynman (1918-1988)	1946	In 1946, at his father’s funeral, know that his father was atheist, and that he was, refused to take part in a mourner’s prayer in praise of God. In his 1963 Danz lecture turned book The Meaning of It All, was self-classifying himself as an atheist, in a beat around the bush manner (see: Feynman on religion).
169.	Antony Flew (1923-2010)	1949	Concluded, at age 15, that there was no god (Ѻ); in the 1949, engaged with C.S. Lewis, in his Socratic Club, in debates about god; thereafter spent the next 70 years engaging in atheist philosophy; in 1998, debated William Craig; described by Ravi Zacharias (2013) as, in the 1980s, the “best known atheist in the western world” (Ѻ); in his last years, famously recanted (Ѻ) his atheism and came out as a believer, per reasons he calls "integrated complexity", i.e. new discoveries in biology and chemistry, as he put it.
170.	Ayn Rand (1905-1982) \|→ Extreme atheist	1957
171.	Harlow Shapley (1885-1972)	1958
17#.	Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)		“Philosophy will not be able to bring about a direct change of the present state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all merely human meditations and endeavors. Only a god can still save us. I think the only possibility of salvation left to us is to prepare readiness, through thinking and poetry, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god during the decline; so that we do not, simply put, die meaningless deaths, but that when we decline, we decline in the face of the absent god.” — Martin Heidegger (1966), interview with Spiegel (Ѻ) See also: “The Basis of Heidegger’s Atheism” (Ѻ)
172.	Barack Obama, Sr. (1936-)	1961	“My father was almost entirely absent from my childhood, having been divorced from my mother when I was 2 years old; in any event, although my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time he met my mother [1960] he was a confirmed atheist, thinking religion to be so much superstition.” — Barack Obama (2006), “My Spiritual Journey” (Ѻ), Time, Oct 16 Born Muslim, turned Christian (age 6), turned atheist (age 24); AskMen.com Top 10 Unknown Atheist (Ѻ) (#4)
173.	Joseph Lewis (1889-1968)	1960	Characterized as an “American freethinker and atheist activist” (Ѻ); gave a 1960 address, delivered over Radio Station WIME, Miami, Florida, on “The Philosophy of Atheism” (Ѻ); noted for his 1954 An Atheist Manifesto (Ѻ), the first (Ѻ) of a series of books titled as such, namely: Herman Philipse (1995), Michel Onfray (2005), and Sam Harris (2005).
174.	Madalyn O’Hair (1919-1995)	1963	Her Murray vs Curlett (1963) landmark Supreme Court ruling ended official Bible-reading in American public schools; that year she founded American Atheists; she published: Why I’m an Atheist; Including a History of Materialism (1980). Right: O’Hair (1983) in front of the Robert Ingersoll statue in Glen Oak Park, Peoria, Illinois.
175.	Richard Robinson (1902-1996)	1964
17#.	Francis Crick (1916-2004)	1966
176.	Reginald Hollingdale (1930-2001),	1971	“I admit that the generation which produced Stalin, Auschwitz and Hiroshima will take some beating, but the radical and universal consciousness of the death of god is still ahead of us. Perhaps we shall have to colonize the stars before it is finally borne in upon us that god is not out there.” — Reginald Hollingdale (c.1980) Characterized as: “Grimly atheist, he appreciated Nietzsche's attempt to establish a philosophy that was simultaneously nihilist and life-affirming”; a self-educated scholar; paid to have German tutoring so that he could rehabilitate the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, in terms of English translation promotion; whom he had been led to via Richard Wagner and Arthur Schopenhauer.
177.	George Smith (1949-)	1974	In 1972, at age 23, building on Ayn Rand and her objectivism (Randianism), drafted an atheism book (Ѻ); published in 1974 as Atheism: the Case against God; later published two other atheism books.
178.	John Patterson (1936-)	1975	Beginning in 1975, up to the present, e.g. Bill Nye vs Ken Ham (2014) commentary, began to publicly counter, in debates, radio, newspaper, lectures, etc., all creationism, religion-pushing views, in the area of science; in his engineering clashes, he famously have out creationism publications as homework assignments to check for errors and incorrectness.
180.	Steven Weinberg (1933-)	1977	Brainz.org top 50 brilliant atheist (#24) (Ѻ); an “avowed atheist” (Lee Strobel, 2004); in his 1977 The First Three Minutes, he argues that according to the second law the universe is godless, albeit questionably pointless; his 1992 Dreams of a Final Theory, gives a number of noted atheism positions are stated.
181.	Annie Laurie Gaylor (1955-)	1978	A third-generation free thinker (on her mother’s side); debating believers as an atheist in 6th grade (Ѻ); together with her mother Annie Nicole Gaylor (1926-2015) and John Sontarck (Ѻ), in their kitchen (1976) started the Freedom From Religion Foundation (incorporated in 1978), after deducing that deduced that the root cause of much of the opposition to her pro-abortion and women's rights efforts came from organized religion; did battle on national television with Oprah (1984); author: Women Without Superstition (1984); wife of noted preacher turned atheist Dan Barker. [1]
182.	Carl Sagan (1934-1996)	1980	In 1980, Sagan, became famous for his PBS series Cosmos, co-written with his wife Ann Duryan, wherein he defines a human as “star-stuff” (Ѻ); used the term "cosmic perspective" for the advanced perspective; and seemed to conjecture for a universe that is god-free, though, it seems, not stated so explicitly. “I am not an atheist. An atheist is someone who has compelling evidence that there is no Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. I am not that wise, but neither do I consider there to be anything approaching adequate evidence for such a god. Why are you in such a hurry to make up your mind? Why not simply wait until there is compelling evidence?” — Carl Sagan (1996), “To Robert Pope”, Oct 2 “Raised Muslim, wore a head scarf, prayed 5-times a day. Thanks to Bertrand Russell and Carl Sagan, am now an atheist.” — Annisa Ihsani (2012), “I’m an atheist because …” tweet (Ѻ), Nov 22 “Regarding myself, atheist at 11, thanks to Carl Sagan's Cosmos, who showed how marvelous is the universe without a god!” — Alexandre Costa (2012), “I’m an atheist because …” tweet (Ѻ), Nov 24 Technically, was a “near-atheist”, “agnostoatheist”, or “DN: 6” or “DN:6-” on the Dawkins scale. The adjacent image shows him as the poster-boy for the most-viewed “atheist” video, by term search on YouTube.
183.	Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
184.	Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
185.	Dave Allen (1936-2005)	1971	His Dave Allen at Large BBC comedy skit show (1971-1979) ridiculed Catholic ritual via humor (Ѻ); known for his atheist vs theist black cat analogy, aka his “The Leap of Faith” joke (Ѻ)(Ѻ); raised Catholic by nuns; later came to describe himself a “practicing atheist”. (Ѻ)
186.	Peter Atkins (1940-)	1981	An “implicit atheist” (of the chemical atheist variety); his 1981, his Creation, outlined a Darwinism + physical chemistry view that humans are emergent types of unimportant "molecules equipped for competition, survival, and reproduction" amid a purposeless universe; has debated William Craig (1998), John Lennox, among others, up the present; ranked by Bo Jinn (2013) as one of the “lower and more moderate figures in this new atheist priesthood”, along with “Krauss, Stenger, Shermer [and all the rest] e bella compagnia.”
187.	Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)	1982	“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that god doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.” — Isaac Asimov (1882), Free Inquiry (Ѻ), Spring
188.	Dan Barker (1949-)	1984	A preacher of 19-years, who, in 1984, came out as an atheist, going on a number of talk shows, e.g. Oprah (Ѻ); publications: Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (1992), Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists (2008), and The Good Atheist: Living a Purpose-Filled Life Without God (2011). (Ѻ)
189.	Richard Dawkins (1941-) DN:6.5	1986	In 1986, in his The Blind Watchmaker, he argued for the view that humans were not created by god, but by blind random purposeless chance; his 2006 The God Delusion, takes aim at the theory of god, arguing that god does not exist, that religion is a delusion, and in which he introduced the 1-7 Dawkins scale of belief in the existence of God, on which he says he is about a 6.5 or "6 leaning towards 7" whatever that means; a 2015 dubbed “king of atheism” (Ѻ)(Ѻ).
190.	Salman Rushdie (1947-)	1988	“I’m a hardline atheist, I have to say.” — Salman Rushdie (2006), “Interview with Bill Moyers” (Ѻ) AskMen.com Top 10 Unknown Atheist (Ѻ) (#10; Note: as a teenager, he demonstrated his rejection of religion by eating a ham sandwich, and waited in vain for the thunderbolt from heaven; his The Satanic Verses (1988), in the Muslim world, drew accusations of blasphemy and unbelief; the Ayatollah of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill him, which was backed by the Iranian government until 1998. (Ѻ)
191.	Douglas Adams (1952-2001)	1990	Brainz.org top 50 brilliant atheist (#43) (Ѻ); a self-described “radical atheist”; Richard Dawkins dedicated his The God Delusion to Adams.
192.	Taslima Nasrin (1962-)	1992
193.	Michael Shermer (1954-)	1992	An former fundamentalist evangelistic Christian turned circa 1991 “agnostic-nontheist atheist” scientific skeptic, who in 1992 found the Skeptic Society (Ѻ), which began as a hobby in his garage; came into notoriety with his Why People Believe Weird Things (1997); in the 2000s, began to engage in many atheism vs theism debates, on the atheism side (e.g. with Sam Harris).
194.	Leon Lederman (1922-)	1993	a “confirmed atheist of Jewish descent” (Ѻ); in his The God Particle (1993), coined the term “god particle” for the then-hypothetical Higgs boson, per the reasoning that: “This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle. Why God Particle? Two reasons. One, the publisher wouldn't let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. And two, there is a connection, of sorts, to another book, a much older [Genesis] one...” — Leon Lederman (1993), The God Particle (pg. 22) In other words: (a) the publishers wouldn’t let him call it the “goddamn particle”, being that it was costing $2 billion particle accelerator funding to find, and (b) confusion of language and understanding in particle physics is comparable to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel and the quest for on language of nature to uniform physics; which he explains as follows:
195.	Ibn Warraq (1946-)
196.	James Haught (1932-)	1996	Eponym of the Haught disbeliever, the top 64 atheists or disbelieving near-atheists, of the last two-millennia, as found in his 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt; technically, he self-classifies as a “skeptic” (2012), when confronted with god-talking Unitarian preachers. (Ѻ)
197.	Stephen Gould (1941-2002)	1997	A conceptualized “atheist”, e.g. a Brainz.org top 50 brilliant atheist (#33) (Ѻ); technically, was a Clarence Darrow fan agnostic who “if forced” would bet on atheism (Ѻ), but an agnostic, nonetheless; noted for his “Non-Overlapping Magisteria” (1997) dualism ideology often bandied about in atheism/religion discussions.
198.	Harlan Ellison (1934-)
199.	George Carlin (1937-2008)	1999	“I’m an atheist because George Carlin explained it all.” — Mark Law (2012), “I’m an atheist because …” tweet (Ѻ), Nov 25 Carlin, notably, did a Mad TV “Touched by an Atheist” (Ѻ) skit on Pascal’s wager
200	Dorothy Murdock (1960-2015)	1999	Her first book The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, argued that the concept of Jesus Christ is myth and that the Christ story is a fabrication; “An atheist by the name of Dorothy Murdock (who often calls herself Acharya S.) has claimed to be able to demonstrate that the pagan gods Horus, Dionysius, Mithra and even Buddha were said to have been born of a virgin on December 25th (which she mistakenly presumes to be the Biblical position on Jesus' birth), laid in a manger, visited by shepherds and angels, a prodigy at age 12, to have walked on water, been crucified and risen.” — Howie Gardner (2014), The Middle East Crisis Can be Solved (pg. 259) (add)
20#.	Neil Tyson (1958-)	1999	His “Holy Wars” (1999) article gives frank commentary on how if his lectures on the universe are “in America” the end questions “eventually reaches god”; oft-perceived atheist, albeit self-aligned (2012) agnostic, who frequently has to correct his Wikipedia page to clarify this (Ѻ), known for being outspoken against intelligent design (Ѻ), how faith and reason are irreconcilable, how the Bible is bunk, etc.; his 2014 interview with Bill Moyer (Ѻ)(Ѻ)(Ѻ) seems to give the impression that he is a "hard core atheist, but reluctant to commit to such a label.

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● Famous atheists: 1-100 | 600BC to 1840
● Famous atheists: 201-300 | 2009 to present

Quotes
The following are related quotes:

“After Harris came high pope Dawkins, then cardinal Hitchens, the bishop Dennett, and then the lower and more moderate figures in this new atheist priesthood: Krauss, Stenger, Atkins, Shermer [and all the rest] e bella compagnia.”
— Bo Jinn (2013), Illogical Atheism (loc. 286)

See also
● Atheism timeline
● Famous publications
● Famous publications by age

References
1. (a) Atheist Annie Gaylor vs. Oprah | Religion as addition (1984) (Ѻ) | IJ1(1:40): opium of the masses
(b) Gaylor, Annie L. (1997). Women Without Superstition: No Gods—No Masters: The Collected Writings of Women Freethinkers of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Freedom From Religion Foundation.
2. Thims, Libb. (2011). Purpose? (in a Godless universe). (94-pg manuscript) (unfinished); Online as 105-page unfinished manuscript (14 Apr 2013). IoHT publications.
3. Thims, Libb. (2014-15/16). Chemical Thermodynamics: with Applications in the Humanities (97-page version: pdf of 800-pages estimated total). Publisher.
4. (a) McGrath, Alister, Dennett, Daniel. (2008). The Future of Atheism: Alister McGrath & Daniel Dennett in Dialogue (editor: Robert Stewart). Fortress Press.
(b) Alister McGrath – Wikipedia.
(c) Alister McGrath – AZQuotes.com.
5. Staff. (2013). “Fórmula química del ser humano” (Chemical Formula of Human), Triplenlace Quimica, i.e. Triple≡Bond Chemistry (triplenlace.com), Sep 4.
6. (a) Birx, H. James. (1992). “Introduction”, in: The Riddle of the Universe (by: Ernst Haeckel, translator: Joseph McCabe) (pgs. ix-xiv). Prometheus Books, 1992.
(b) H. James Birx – Wikipedia.

External links
● The 50 Most Brilliant Atheists of All Time – Brainz.org.
● Category:Atheists (127+) – RationalWiki.org.
● List of atheist authors – Wikipedia.

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