Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "فهرست دانشمندان خداناباور" in Persian language version.
After the initial mathematical work on relativity the ory had been done, the Big Bang theory itself was invented by a Belgian priest, Georges lemaitre, im proved upon by an avowed atheist, George Gamow, and is now all but universally accepted by those who hold advanced degrees in astronomy and the physical sciences, despite its obvious absurdity.
Liberato Cardellini: A final and more personal question: You defined yourself as “an atheist who is moved by religion”. Looking at the tenor of your life and the many goals you have achieved, one wonders where your inner force comes from. Roald Hoffmann: The atheism and the respect for religion come form the same source. I observe that in every culture on Earth, absolutely every one, human beings have constructed religious systems. There is a need in us to try to understand,to see that there is something that unites us spiritually. So scientists who do not respect religion fail in their most basic task—observation. Human beings need the spiritual. The same observation reveals to me a multitude of religious constructions—gods of nature, spirits, the great monotheistic religions. It seems to me there can’t be a God or gods; there are just manifestations of a human-constructed spirituality.
No. In fact, I can characterize myself definitely as an atheist.
Smeenk: I wanted to ask you another I guess more personal question. I don't know if you hold any religious views, but if you do, how do those interact with your research work? Peebles: I don't. Actually, I guess the term I like to use is a convinced agnostic. I get offended by people who try to give me religious arguments. Why should I pay attention to these arguments? But I also get a little offended by people who tell me, "Of course, religion is bunk." How do you know? It's just an entirely different field of operation and actually I do like the words and music of some religions, so I have sat with pleasure through services - aside from the sermon. So no, I don't have any religious feelings at all.
William Bateson was a very militant atheist and a very bitter man, I fancy. Knowing that I was interested in biology, they invited me when I was still a school girl to go down and see the experimental garden. I remarked to him what I thought then, and still think, that doing research must be the most wonderful thing in the world and he snapped at me that it wasn’t wonderful at all, it was tedious, disheartening, annoying and anyhow you didn’t need an experimental garden to do research.
Napoleon replies: "How comes it, then, that Laplace was an atheist? At the Institute neither he nor Monge, nor Berthollet, nor Lagrange believed in God. But they did not like to say so.
Napoleon said to Pierre Simon Laplace: "You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe [God]." Laplace replied: "Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis." Quoted in Augustus De Morgan
The Catholic newspaper La Quotidienne [The Daily] announced that Laplace had died in the arms of two curés (priests), implying that he had a proper Catholic end, but this is not credible. To the end, he remained a skeptic, wedded to his deterministic creed and to an uncompromised ethos derived from his vast scientific experience.
In his last words (published as Last Thoughts, 1913) he entirely rejects Christianity and believes in God only in the sense that he is the moral ideal. In effect he was an atheist.
Les dogmes des religions révélées ne sont pas les seuls à craindre. L'empreinte que le catholicisme a imprimée sur l'âme occidentale a été si profonde que bien des esprits à peine affranchis ont eu la nostalgie de la servitude et se sont efforcés de reconstituer des Eglises ; c'est ainsi que certaines écoles positivistes ne sont qu'un catholicisme sans Dieu. Auguste Comte lui- même rêvait de discipliner les âmes et certains de ses disciples, exagérant la pensée du maître, deviendraient bien vite des ennemis de la science s'ils étaient les plus forts.
Shannon described himself as an atheist and was outwardly apolitical.
Karl Pearson...was a zealous atheist...
Yet, sailing to Egypt, he had lain on deck, asking his scientists whether the planets were inhabited, how old the Earth was, and whether it would perish by fire or by flood. Many, like his friend Gaspard Monge, the first man to liquefy a gas, were atheists.
Evolution moves toward greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. In every monotheistic tradition God is likewise described as all of these qualities, only without any limitation.... So evolution moves inexorably toward this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal.
When we reflect on anything for long enough, we're likely to end up with what we sometimes call "basic" questions – ones we can see no way at all to answer. For we have no perfect way to answer even this question: How can one tell when a question has been properly answered? What caused the universe, and why? What is the purpose of life? How can you tell which beliefs are true? How can you tell what is good? These questions seem different on the surface, but all of them share one quality that makes them impossible to answer: all of them are circular! You can never find a final cause, since you must always ask one question more: "What caused that cause?" You can never find any ultimate goal, since you're always obliged to ask, "Then what purpose does that serve?" Whenever you find out why something is good-or is true-you still have to ask what makes that reason good and true. No matter what you discover, at every step, these kinds of questions will always remain, because you have to challenge every answer with, "Why should I accept that answer?" Such circularities can only waste our time by forcing us to repeat, over and over and over again, "What good is Good?" and, "What god made God?
Biblical scholar Jacques Berlinerblau points out, in the book, that most contemporary atheists and agnostics — myself included, I must confess — are astoundingly ignorant of the details of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Qur'an (not to mention the Bhagavad Gita and the Tripitaka, one could add). … When all is said and done, I see no reason to amend my judgment that the existence of the Jewish, Christian, Islamic or Hindu gods is about as plausible, given the currently available evidence, as the existence of Zeus or Thor.
Most of the Socialist Party members were also in favor of assimilation, and Tarski's political allegiance was socialist at the time. So, along with its being a practical move, becoming more Polish than Jewish was an ideological statement and was approved by many, though not all, of his colleagues. As to why Tarski, a professed atheist, converted, that just came with the territory and was part of the package: if you were going to be Polish then you had to say you were Catholic.
Biographer describes him as "an evangelical atheist, an impassioned actuary, a liberal who advocated state regulation, an individualist who championed social cooperation, and a very private public crusader"
I explained carefully to Louis that I was a Jew and an atheist...
The same Arago who spent his time criticizing unfounded myths now peddled them. Arago the atheist now spoke of souls.
Werner Heisenberg recollects a friendly conversation among young participants at the 1927 Solvay conference about Einstein's and Planck's views on religion. Wolfgang Pauli, Heisenberg and Dirac took part in it. Among other things, Dirac said: "I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest — and as scientists honesty is our precise duty — we cannot help but admit that any religion is a pack of false statements, deprived of any real foundation. The very idea of God is a product of human imagination.[...] I do not recognize any religious myth, at least because they contradict one another.[...]" Pauli jokingly said: "Well, I'd say that also our friend Dirac has got a religion and the first commandment of this religion is: God does not exist and Paul Dirac is his prophet.
In the book Richard Dawkins identifies Steven Weinberg as an atheist
The question of the origin of the matter in the universe is no longer thought to be beyond the range of science — everything can be created from nothing...it is fair to say that the universe is the ultimate free lunch.
George Smoot, a committed atheist..
Paul became an atheist, revering intellectual honesty and the quest for truth.
Beadle's views on this occasion were somewhat more tempered than David's characterization of him as a vehement atheist," and from his earliest days intolerant of religion and other forms of superstition.
... I believe that a reasonable case can be made for saying, not that we believe in God because He exists but rather that He exists because we believe in Him. [...] Considered as an element of the world, God has the same degree and kind of objective reality as do other products of mind. [...] I regret my disbelief in God and religious answers generally, for I believe it would give satisfaction and comfort to many in need of it if it possible to discover and propound good scientific and philosophic reasons to believe in God. [...] To abdicate from the rule of reason and substitute for it an authentication of belief by the intentness and degree of conviction with which we hold it can be perilous and destructive. [...] I am a rationalist—something of a period piece nowadays, I admit [...]
There is no clear record that he was professionally restricted in Russia because of his lineage, but he sympathized with the problem his Jewish colleagues suffered owing to Russian anti-Semitism; his personal religious commitment was to atheism, although he received strict Christian religious training at home.
[Religion] is not an easy subject to deal with, but as zoologists we must do our best to observe what actually happens rather than listen to what is supposed to be happening. If we do this, we are forced to the conclusion that, in a behavioural sense, religious activities consist of the coming together of large groups of people to perform repeated and prolonged submissive displays to appease a dominant individual. The dominant individual takes many forms in different cultures, but always has the common factor of immense power. [...] If these submissive actions are successful, the dominant individual is appeased. [...] The dominant individual is usually, but not always, referred to as a god. Since none of these gods exist in a tangible form, why have they been invented? To find the answer to this we have to go right back to our ancestral origins.
My estimate is that Isaac received about 100,000 letters in his professional career. And with the compulsiveness that has to be a character trait of a writer of almost 500 books, he answered 90 percent of them. He answered more than half with postcards and didn't make carbons of them. But with the 100,000 letters he received, there are carbons of about 45,000 that he wrote.
The fact that Richter was devout only about his atheism...
Alfven dismissed in his address religion as a "myth," and passionately criticized the big-bang theory for being dogmatic and violating basic standards of science, to be no less mythical than religion.
At about the time I got to high school, I lost whatever faith I might have had, and I've been an atheist ever since.
"Festinger, a professed atheist, was an original thinker and a restless, highly motivated individual with (in his words) "little tolerance for boredom".
About the same time he stopped observing Jewish religious rituals and rejected a cause he had once embraced, Zionism. He "just didn't want to participate in any division of the human race, whether religious or political," he explained decades later (Wershba, p. 12), by which time he was a confirmed atheist.
Every time we attend a funeral service," Jane had once told her sister Betty, "we decide again that we want no such ceremony when we die." She and John agreed that the family could, if they wanted to, have a memorial service conducted by friends and family, "but not a sermon by a stranger, who, if a minister, is bound to dwell on life after death and other religious ideas in which we have no faith.
As is well known, Hilbert rejected Leopold Kronecker's God for the solution of the problem of the foundations of mathematics.
Nash, by then an atheist, balked at a Catholic ceremony. He would have been happy to get married in city hall.
D'Alembert, though privately an atheist and materialist, presented the respectable public face of 'la philosophie' in the French capital while remaining henceforth uninterruptedly aligned with Voltaire.
Markov (1856–1922), on the other hand, was an atheist and a strong critic of the Orthodox Church and the tsarist government (Nekrasov exaggeratedly called him a Marxist).
Another area where he "goes against the flow" is in his spiritual beliefs. As far as religion is concerned, he's a confirmed atheist. "I think it [religion] is a contagious mental disease. . . . The brain has a need to believe it knows a reason for things.
Maupertuis was an atheist friend of La Mettrie.
However, the dogmatic position of the Anglican Church against Darwin's theory of evolution induced him to reexamine his beliefs. He soon evolved into an agnostic and then an atheist.
He seems an unlikely convert considering that his atheistic views had debarred him from a position at Oxford or Cambridge but his involvement with spiritualism was partly due to his wife, Sophia.
There is a word in our language with which I shall not confuse this subject, both on account of the dishonourable use which is frequently made of it, as an imputation thrown by one sect upon another, and of the variety of significations attached to it. I shall use the world Anti-Deism to signify the opinion that there does not exist a Creator who made and sustains the Universe.
Steinhaus was an outspoken atheist.
and yet it did, even though since moving into the boarding house he had become an atheist and most of his friends, including his best friend, were Russians.
By now, he was also a 'Protestant Atheist', which he remained all his life.
Raymond Bridgman was extremely disappointed with his son's rejection of his religious views. Near the end of his life, however, he offered a conciliatory interpretation that allowed him to accept Percy's commitment to honesty and integrity as a moral equivalent to religion.
Curie, Pierre (1859—1906) A codiscoverer of radium, Pierre Curie was an atheist.
Kramers was certainly not a dogmatic atheist like, for instance, Dirac in his younger years, whose attitude was summed up by Pauli in one famous sentence: "Our friend Dirac has a religion; and the main tenet of that religion is: 'There is no God and Dirac was his prophet.
In one respect, however, he is not a romantic: he does not idealize the person of the beloved, his highest praise is to consider her his equal. "When you feel your own equal in the body of a beautiful woman, just as ready to forget the world for you as you for her - oh my good Lord - who can describe what happiness then. You can live it, now and again - you cannot speak of it." Of course, he does speak of it, and almost always with religious imagery. Yet at this time he also wrote, "By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a thing to be proud of. It went without saying as it were." And in another place at about this same time: "Our creed is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (and similar people), consider our ethics much inferior, indeed abominable. There is that little difference. We adhere to ours in practice, you don't." Whatever problems they may have had in their love affair, the pangs of conscience were not among them. Sheila was as much an unbeliever as Erwin, but in a less complex, more realistic way. She was never entirely convinced by his vedantic theology.
Schopenhauer often called himself an atheist, as did Schrodinger, and if Buddhism and Vedanta can be truly described as atheistic religions, both the philosopher and his scientific disciple were indeed atheists. They both rejected the idea of a "personal God, and Schopenhauer thought that pantheism is only a euphemism for atheism.
He rejected traditional religious beliefs (Jewish, Christian, and Islamic) not on the basis of any reasoned argument, nor even with an expression of emotional antipathy, for he loved to use religious expressions and metaphors, but simply by saying that they are naive.
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.
Asked to join Le Conseil de l'Union Catholique des Scientifiques Français, Louis declined because, he said, he had ceased the religious practices of his youth.
Gamow was, like Hoyle, an atheist, but he was familiar with organized religion: his grandfather was the Metropolitan, the senior bishop, of Odessa Cathedral.
There were no prayers: Irene was deeply atheist.
I present here two examples of notable atheists. The first is Lev Landau, the most brilliant Soviet physicist of the twentieth century.
Although an atheist, Neeman believes that traditions are important for a revolutionary movement, and he strongly defends the spiritual heritage of the Jewish people, preaches a retum to biblical sources, and is in constant dialogue with the ultra-nationalist-religious groupings.
Most of them are either atheists like Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, or agnostics like JBS Haldane.
He was a Jew and Groves was at least conventionally anti-Semitic; but perhaps worse, Oppenheimer practiced no religion at all and was almost certainly an atheist, whereas Groves was the sincerely believing son of an army chaplain.
Jean and Francis Perrin held similar political and philosophical ideas. Both were socialists and atheists.
{{cite book}}: نگهداری یادکرد:استفاده از پارامتر نویسندگان (link)a self-described atheist, saha loved swimming in the river and his devout wife loved the sanctity of the spot. swimming and walking were among the few things they could do together.
It can hardly have been due to any reluctance on Newton's part to becoming too closely involved with Halley, the well-known atheist.
{{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)According to Hoyle: "I am an atheist, but as far as blowing up the world in a nuclear war goes, I tell them not to worry."
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)I think that you know me well enough: I am an absolute atheist, and all days of the week are completely the same to me.
In 1902, Marcellin P. Berthelot, often called the founder of modern organic chemistry, was one of France's most celebrated scientists—if not the world's. He was permanent secretary of the French Academy, having succeeded the giant Louis Pasteur, the renowned microbiologist. Unlike Delage, an agnostic, Berthelot was an atheist—and militantly so.
Although Delage made it clear that he did not regard Jesus as the resurrected Son of God, his paper upset the atheist members of the Academy, including its secretary, Marcellin Berthelot, who prevented its full publication in the Academy's bulletin.
It was probably during this period that Golgi became agnostic (or even frankly atheistic), remaining for the rest of his life completely alien to the religious experience.
The biologist Francois Jacob (who shared the Nobel Prize with Jacques Monod) admits that he is an atheist, but he finds, parallel to the material nature of the universe, another aspect — in man — which is not reductible to the first.
Alexander Oparin (1894–1980), an atheist, suggested that natural chemical reactions produced biological molecules that came together to form the first living thing.
Du Bois-Reymond was a self-proclaimed atheist but more through intimate conviction than logical necessity.
Among celebrity atheists with much biographical data, we find leading psychologists and psychoanalysts. We could provide a long list, including...Jacques Lacan...
Wilhelm declared himself a "confirmed atheist" at the age of eight.
Tinbergen had never been a religious man. Wartime atrocities, however, had highlighted the absence of a deity for him while both sides invoked one aligned with themselves, and this turned him into a militant atheist.
Bethune was a communist and an atheist with a healthy contempt for his evangelical father.
Despite his strict upbringing in the Orthodox Church, Vavilov had been an atheist from an early age. If he worshipped anything, it was science.
Both the French paleontologist-priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Russian atheist Vladimir Vernadsky agreed that Earth is developing a global mind.
Also that year, a Montgolfier balloon sailed over Paris in the first manned free balloon flight. Montgolfier served the Revolution with zeal and was much honored. Lalande, who knew him well, wrote that Montgolfier was an atheist.
Among celebrity atheists with much biographical data, we find leading psychologists and psychoanalysts. We could provide a long list, including G. Stanley Hall, John B. Watson, Carl R. Rogers...
Among celebrity atheists with much biographical data, we find leading psychologists and psychoanalysts. We could provide a long list, including...Hans Jürgen Eysenck...
Among celebrity atheists with much biographical data, we find leading psychologists and psychoanalysts. We could provide a long list, including...Melanie Klein...
Among celebrity atheists with much biographical data, we find leading psychologists and psychoanalysts. We could provide a long list, including G. Stanley Hall, John B. Watson, Carl R. Rogers...Abraham Maslow...Maslow was a second-generation atheist, and his father was a militant freethinker.
Among celebrity atheists with much biographical data, we find leading psychologists and psychoanalysts. We could provide a long list, including G. Stanley Hall, John B. Watson, Carl R. Rogers...
His secular, scientific values came well before he was old enough to make such calculating career decisions. For example, while still in middle school, Simon wrote a letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal defending the civil liberties of atheists, and by high school he was "certain" that he was "religiously an atheist," a conviction that never wavered.
This was to be the last large-scale work of lifelong atheist Bateson, seeking to understand the meaning of the sacred.
What I don't like about Richard [Dawkins] is not so much what he knows or doesn't know as the dogmatic way in which he says things. I think that is a poor advertisement for science, because the whole thing about being a scientist is that you shouldn't be prejudiced, you should have an open mind. So, I don't believe in God but that is a belief, not some thing I know. I believe I love my husband, but I couldn't prove it to you one way or the other. How could I? I just know I do. My particular belief is that there is no Deity out there, but I can't prove it and therefore I would not have the temerity to tell other people they're wrong. The coinage of proof is not appropriate for belief and Dawkins thinks it is. But if you keep an open mind, that doesn't mean you swallow anything whole. As someone has said, 'Believing in anything is as bad as believing in nothing.
{{cite web}}: نگهداری یادکرد:ربات:وضعیت نامعلوم پیوند اصلی (link)He also talked about his experience growing up in a Muslim household in north London and why he became increasingly atheist from his teenage years (despite his name!).
He was an atheist...
I find it more comfortable to say I'm an atheist, and for that I probably have someone like Dawkins to thank.
The author is Emile Zuckerkandl of Stanford University. Prof. Zuckerkandl ferociously attacks ID and any belief in a designer, God, or other "superghost".
"Sometime after this, Hannes Alfvén was brought to the presence of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion. The latter was curious about this young Swedish scientist who was being much talked about. After a good chat, Ben Gurion came right to the point: "Do you believe in God?" Now, Hannes Alfvén was not quite prepared for this. So he considered his answer for a few brief seconds. But Ben-Gurion took his silence to be a "No." So he said: "Better scientist than you believes in God." As told by Hannes Alfvén to Asoka Mendis
Unusually at such an early age, she became what T.H. Huxley had just invented a word for: agnostic.
Pierre belonged to no religion and I did not practice any
Mathematics is a presuppositionless science. To found it I do not need God, as does Kronecker, or the assumption of a special faculty of our understanding attuned to the principle of mathematical induction, as does Poincaré, or the primal intuition of Brouwer, or, finally, as do Russell and Whitehead, axioms of infinity, reducibility, or completeness, which in fact are actual, contentual assumptions that cannot be compensated for by consistency proofs.
Even though he later came to be known as an atheist, Saha was well-versed in all religious texts— though his interest in them was purely academic.
Jack Steinberger: I'm now a bit anti-Jewish since my last visit to the synagogue, but my atheism does not necessarily reject religion.
Yet what is more awesome: to believe that God created everything in six days, or to believe that the biosphere came into being on its own, with no creator, and partially lawlessly? I find the latter proposition so stunning, so worthy of awe and respect, that I am happy to accept this natural creativity in the universe as a reinvention of God.
The Nobel Prize-winning geneticist and stringent atheist Thomas Hunt Morgan was developing the chromosome theory of heredity by examining his swarm of mutated Drosophila (fruit flies) through a jeweler's loupe.
Biologist George Wald dismissed anything besides physicalism with, "I will not believe that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible: spontaneous generation arising to evolution.
Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn't exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely
Montgolfier (Michel Joseph), aeronaut. b. Aug. 1740. He was the first to ascend in an air balloon, 5 June 1783. A friend of Delambre and La Lalande, he was on the testimony of this last an atheist. Died 26 June 1810.
He was a member of the firm of Vickers' Sons and Maxim. Maxim was an aggressive Atheist (personal knowledge) and the compiler (with the present writer) of the collection of strong criticisms of religion...
The theory that religion is a force for peace, often heard among the religious right and its allies today, does not fit the facts of history
Nelson's hatred of conventional structure made him difficult to educate. Bored and disgusted by school, he once plotted to stab his seventh-grade teacher with a sharpened screwdriver, but lost his nerve at the last minute and walked out of the classroom, never to return. On his long walk home, he came up with the four maxims that have guided his life: most people are fools, most authority is malignant, God does not exist, and everything is wrong.
In his final chapter de Duve turns to the meaning of life, and considers the ideas of two contrasting Frenchmen: a priest, Teilhard de Chardin, and an existentialist and atheist, Jacques Monod.
Scientists in Britain, where the film will premiere at next month's London Film Festival, with general release in December, dismissed the intelligent design lobby's expropriation of the film. Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London and an atheist, said: 'I find it sad that people with intrinsically foolish viewpoints don't recognise this as a naturally beautiful film, but have to attach their absurd social agendas to it.
So you called me an atheist vagabond, fancying that Voltaire was an atheist: he was, in fact, theistic to bigotry, and anti-revolutionist to the same extent.
Since his childhood in Vienna Bondi had been an atheist, developing from an early age a view on religion that associated it with repression and intolerance. This view, which he shared with Hoyle, never left him. On several occasions he spoke out on behalf of freethinking, so-called, and became early on active in British atheist or "humanist" circles. From 1982 to 1999, he was president of the British Humanist Association, and he also served as president of the Rationalist Press Association of United Kingdom." Helge Kragh: "Bondi, Hermann
He's a controversial appointee because, in addition to being a radical promoter of the theory of man-made climate change, he is an atheist and an advocate of population control
Conway propped up the pillow behind his head and grinned. "I like showing off. When I make a new discovery, and I really like telling people about it. I guess I'm not so much a mathematician as a teacher. In America, kids aren't supposed to like mathematics. It's so sad.' Conway sat up suddenly. 'Most people think that mathematics is cold. But it's not at all! For me, the whole damn thing is sensual and exciting. I like what it looks like, and I get a hell of a lot more pleasure out of math than most people do out of art!' He relaxed slightly, and he lowered his voice. 'I feel like an artist. I like beautiful things – they're there already; man doesn't have to create it. I don't believe in God, but I believe that nature is unbelievably subtle and clever. In physics, for instance, the real answer to a problem is usually so subtle and surprising that it wasn't even considered in the first place. That the speed of light is a constant – impossible! Nobody even thought about it. And quantum mechanics is even worse, but it's so beautiful, and it works!
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)I realized that the existence of God is not supported by scientific evidence and became an atheist.
I have been described by one of my colleagues as a "militant agnostic" with my tagline, "I don't know, and neither do you!". I take this hard-line, fence-sitting position because it is the only position consistent with both my scientific ethos and my conscience.
What I don't like about Richard [Dawkins] is not so much what he knows or doesn't know as the dogmatic way in which he says things. I think that is a poor advertisement for science, because the whole thing about being a scientist is that you shouldn't be prejudiced, you should have an open mind. So, I don't believe in God but that is a belief, not some thing I know. I believe I love my husband, but I couldn't prove it to you one way or the other. How could I? I just know I do. My particular belief is that there is no Deity out there, but I can't prove it and therefore I would not have the temerity to tell other people they're wrong. The coinage of proof is not appropriate for belief and Dawkins thinks it is. But if you keep an open mind, that doesn't mean you swallow anything whole. As someone has said, 'Believing in anything is as bad as believing in nothing.
which prevented the atheist De Haas had nothing to do with the Catholic piety of Keesom.
Nevertheless, no less a person than Nobel laureate and arch-atheist Steven Weinberg believes that one particular constant of nature - Einstein's cosmological constant Λ - may be anthropically determined.
(a) the belief that there is no God; (b) Some philosophers have been called "atheistic" because they have not held to a belief in a personal God. Atheism in this sense means "not theistic". The former meaning of the term is a literal rendering. The latter meaning is a less rigorous use of the term though widely current in the history of thought
{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)There is Crick the mentor, Crick the atheist, Crick the free-thinker, and Crick the playful.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)Muller, who through Unitarianism had become an enthusiastic pantheist, was converted both to atheism and to socialism (p. 353).
Zwicky has dealt critically with religion during his whole life. (Source: "Everybody a genius"). In a diary entry of 1971, he writes "To base the unexplainabilty and the immense wonder of nature onto an other miracle God is unnecessary and not acceptable for any serious thinker.
Hardy... was a stringent atheist...
An atheist, Faber speaks like an evangelist as she weaves quantum physics and astronomy to describe the dawn of time. "I think that the story of the creation of the universe is the most inspiring and exciting story science can tell. I mean, who would have thought I could be telling you about events 10 to the minus 35 seconds after the big bang?" she said, seated in her cluttered, sunny UC Santa Cruz office amid photos of her two daughters and her husband. "It's just totally inspiring.
I pointed out a few examples, and he could not answer. So I became an atheist
Interviewer: Do you think that science and religion can be compatible, or do you consider, like the Darwinist Richard Dawkins, that the scientific vision cannot be reconciled with faith? Haroche: [...] In my case, I am not religious nor do I believe in God, but I have colleagues who are and are capable of maintaining a coexistence between their faith and their scientific work, without this interfering with the quality of their research. But to me this never ceases to amaze me, because I think that if you look at the world from a scientific perspective, you don't need religion.
{{cite web}}: نگهداری CS1: url-status (link)The religious vision says that God decided that there should only be life here on Earth and created it. Scientific facts say that life is a natural process. I think the only answer is to research and find the answer, but for me there is no place for God in the universe.
{{cite web}}: نگهداری CS1: url-status (link){{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)The two greatest astronomers of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France were Laplace and his rival, Joseph Jérôme Le Français de Lalande (1732-1807), director of the Paris Observatory. Both were atheists.
It was to her grandfather, a convinced freethinker, that Irène owed her atheism, later politically expressed as anticlericalism.
Suchet's father Jack, an atheist and eminent surgeon, emigrated from South Africa to England in the 1930s and never spoke about his family's past.
Born in New York City, Gould was the oldest of three sons. Both his parents were Methodists that were active in their community church, but Gould himself was an atheist.
As for his own Jewish identity, Cohen was an avowed atheist who was cremated after he died, against Jewish tradition. But still he was proud of being Jewish, his daughter said, and even had a kind of “arrogant attitude” about Jewish intelligence.
Hilbert was famously atheist, but mathematics at the time often bordered on philosophy
Bob Phelps was a convinced atheist and, rare for an American, almost militant in his views.
Morgan's passion for experimentation was symptomatic of his general scepticism and his distaste for speculation. He believed only what could be proven. He was said to be an atheist, and I have always believed that he was. Everything I knew about him—his scepticism, his honesty—was consistent with disbelief in the supernatural.
When asked by Rod Liddle in the documentary The Trouble with Atheism "Give me your views on the existence, or otherwise, of God", Peter Atkins replied "Well it's fairly straightforward: there isn't one. And there's no evidence for one, no reason to believe that there is one, and so I don't believe that there is one. And I think that it is rather foolish that people do think that there is one."
“[When asked by a student if he believes in any gods]: Oh, no. Absolutely not... The biggest advantage to believing in God is you don't have to understand anything, no physics, no biology. I wanted to understand.
Zwicky has dealt critically with religion during his whole life. A 1971 diary entry states: "To base the inexplainabilty and the immense wonder of nature upon another miracle, God, is unnecessary and not acceptable for any serious thinker." According to one story, Zwicky once discussed the beginning of the universe with a priest. The priest, quoting Scriptures, stated that the universe had started with "and there is light." Zwicky replied that he would buy this, if instead God had said "and there is electronmagnetism.
No, I am not religious [...] I consider myself a very moral person but I do not need a religion for that.
ANDERSON: What, uh, one thing I’m fascinated with is, of course, George Gamow left the university in ’59 [1956], and Edward Teller had left in 1946 [1945] and went to the University of Chicago. But do you have any recollections of maybe some of the, anything between Dr. Marvin and Dr. Gamow, as far as, just before he left and went to Colorado?; NAESER: Ah, no, I don’t know of any. I know Gamow made no, never did hide the fact that he was an atheist, but whether that came into the picture, I don’t know. But the story around the university was that Gamow and Mrs. Gamow were divorced, but they were in the same social circles some of the time, he thought it was better to get out of Washington. That’s why he went to Ohio State.
In his own words, "I'm not qualified to say whether or not God exists. I kind of doubt He does. Nevertheless, I'm always saying that the SF has this transfinite Book that contains the best proofs of all mathematical theorems, proofs that are elegant and perfect...You don't have to believe in God, but you should believe in the Book."
I see no reason to believe that a creator of protoplasm or primeval matter, if such there be, has any reason to be interested in our insignificant race in a tiny corner of the universe, and still less in us, as still more insignificant individuals
Despite what my names implies, I think I’ve been a humanist since my late teens. Through science I discovered the beauty of gaining knowledge through evidence and reason. And through progressive causes I was introduced to human rights and social justice.
؛Interviewer: What is your attitude to religion now? JMS: Ever since reading (J. B. S. Haldane's book) Possible Worlds I have been an atheist, and a semi-conscious atheist before that. I think there are two views you can have about religion. You can be tolerant of it and say, I don't believe in this but I don't mind if other people do, or you can say, I not only don't believe in it but I think it is dangerous and damaging for other people to believe in it and they should be persuaded that they are mistaken. I fluctuate between the two. I am tolerant because religious institutions facilitate some very important work that would not get done otherwise, but then I look around and see what an incredible amount of damage religion is doing."
“I gave it all up around 16 and have been an atheist ever since. ”
...Rich Roberts... delivered a public lecture on his Bright journey from Science to Atheism in April 2006.
In his later years, Chandra had openly admitted to being an atheist which also meant that he subscribed to no religion in the customary sense of the word.
There is no God.' It's not going to happen. If people turn away from religion it is because they see there is no need in their worldview for a supernatural being guiding how they live their lives.
Having abandoned the tenets of Judaism at 13, he never wavered in his gentle atheism, nor in his determination to stay away from matters about which he had opinions but no expertise.[پیوند مرده]
After retirement, he remained politically active, defending Andrei Sakharov, and was President of the French Atheists
Both were pious — his mother a Hindu, his father a Buddhist — while he himself remained an atheist.
He was not only a distinguished German physicist and one of the most famous inventors on the staff at the Zeiss optical works at Jena but a notable social reformer, By a generous scheme of profit-sharing he virtually handed over the great Zeiss enterprise to the workers. Abbe was an intimate friend of Haeckel and shared his atheism (or Monism). Leonard Abbot says in his life of Ferrer that Abbe had "just the same ideas and aims as Ferrer.
self-professed atheist" who "appears to believe in a Mother Earth.
The Bernals were originally Sephardic Jews who came to Ireland in 1840 from Spain via Amsterdam and London. They converted to Catholicism and John was Jesuit-educated. John enthusiastically supported the Easter Rising and, as a boy, he organised a Society for Perpetual Adoration. He moved away from religion as an adult, becoming an atheist..
The Nobel Laureate Dr Richard Roberts will give a public lecture entitled
I’m an optimist. I believe in new ideas, in progress. It’s faith. I’ve recently been thinking about faith. If you’re a religious person, which I’m not, you believe God created the universe.
Pavlov's follower E.M. Kreps asked him whether he was religious. Kreps writes that Pavlov smiled and replied: "Listen, good fellow, in regard to [claims of] my religiosity, my belief in God, my church attendance, there is no truth in it; it is sheer fantasy. I was a seminarian, and like the majority of seminarians, I became an unbeliever, an atheist in my school years." Quoted in George Windholz, "Pavlov's Religious Orientation
Muller, who through Unitarianism had become an enthusiastic pantheist, was converted both to atheism and to socialism (p. 353).
As a self-described Jewish atheist,
Dirac was contemptuous of philosophy and, as many scientists do, professed atheism. But it was a narrow sort, mainly dismissive of religious orthodoxy. In notes he wrote in 1933, he embraces another creed: "[T]his article of faith is that the human race will continue to live for ever and will develop and progress without limit . . . Living is worthwhile if one can contribute in some small way to this endless chain of progress.
Dan Barker:When we invited Robert Sapolsky to speak at one of out national conventions to receive our 'Emperor Has No Clothes Award', Robert wrote to me, 'Sure! Get the local Holiday Inn to put up a sign that says Welcome, Hell-bound Atheists!' [...] So, welcome you hell-bound atheist to Freethought Radio, Robert." Sapolsky: "Well, delighted to be among my kindred souls." [...] Annie Laurie Gaylor: So how long have you been a kindred non-soul, what made you an atheist Robert?" Sapolsky: "Oh, I was about fourteen or so... I was brought up very very religiously, orthodox Jewish background and major-league rituals and that sort of thing [...] and something happened when I was fourteen, and no doubt what it was really about was my gonads or who knows what, but over the course of a couple of weeks there was some sort of introspective whatever, where I suddenly decided this was all gibberish. And, among other things, also deciding there's no free will, but not in a remotely religious context, and deciding all of this was nonsense, and within a two week period all of that belief stuff simply evaporated.
The paradox is that he thought of himself as a hard-boiled philosophical materialist. He was also what one may call a devoted atheist; a freemason; a member of the Austrian Socialist Party; and a regular contributor to the Monisticshe Monatshelfe, the monthly published by the German league of Monists.
[I am] completely a-religious—atheist. I find that people seem to think religion brings morals and appreciation of nature.
An atheist himself, Friedman refused to answer theological questions...
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)It was nice to be honoured but I like ‘Mark’ not ‘Sir Mark’. When one’s young, one’s brash and all-knowing; when one’s old, one realises how little one knows. You asked me earlier if I believed in God and the hereafter. I would tend to say no but when one dies one could well be surprised.
Watson is identified as an atheist by his acquaintance, Rabbi Marc Gellman.
...he always remained true to his own concepts and ideals and did not dissimulate. His open designation of himself as "atheist" in "Who's Who in America" and his opposition to the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Allies...
I’m a confirmed atheist. Although, being a scientist, I have to keep an open mind. The evidence presented to me so far indicates a lack of deity. But if I ever meet one, I’m prepared to admit I was wrong.
In the end, Sagan... died an uncompromising atheist.
I turned secular at the age of 11, by divine revelation. [Laughs.] I was standing on the roof of the house my father built, looking down on the street and suddenly it became very clear to me that there is no God."
Azpurua: Would it be accurate to say that you are an atheist?; Weinberg: Yes. I don't believe in God, but I don't make a religion out of not believing in God. I don't organize my life around that.
{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall succeed in our aims: the improvement of mankind
There is Crick the mentor, Crick the atheist, Crick the free-thinker, and Crick the playful.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)He was raised in the Congregational Church, but faith in God clashed with his well-known analytical nature and he told his family as a young man that he could not in good conscience become a church member.
I am an atheist, that is, I think nothing exists except and beyond nature.
I was a nominal church going Christian until I left home for Cambridge University on a scholarship when, to my great relief, I could drop all religion and become my natural atheist self.
{{cite web}}: نگهداری CS1: url-status (link)I am a devout atheist – nothing else makes any sense to me and I must admit to being bewildered by those, who in the face of what appears so obvious, still believe in a mystical creator.
I gradually slipped away from religion over several years and became an atheist or to be more philosophically correct, a sceptical agnostic.
He claimed to be an atheist, but he used religious symbolism and believed that his scientific work was 'an approach to God.
...I don't believe in God. I tell people I'm an atheist, but a nice atheist.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)Instead, it is interlaced with descriptions of Crick’s vacations, parties and assertions of atheism — occasionally colorful stuff that drains the intellectual drama from the codebreaking.
Dr. Eisner died from complications of his disease on March 25, at the age of 81. He had a notoriously mordant sense of humor: “I may not believe in God,” he once said, “but I don’t ring doorbells saying I’m a Seventh-Day Atheist,”...
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)His tolerance and good humour enabled him to disagree strongly without giving or taking offence, for example with his brother Michael Ramsey whose ordination (he went on to become archbishop of Canterbury) Ramsey, as a militant atheist, naturally regretted.
In these years Leslie was an unsuccessful candidate for the chairs of natural philosophy at the universities of St Andrews and Glasgow respectively. He failed at the former because he was then an extreme whig and an atheist who deplored the Erastianism of many of the Scottish clergy.
By that time Longuet-Higgins had become a convinced atheist, although he still respected many of the features of the Church of England.
Although both parents were English Lutherans, Crile, after reading Paine, Ingersoll, and Voltaire in his college years, became a lifelong atheist, devoted to the concept of intellectual freedom.
Nuclear power is uniquely unforgiving: as Swedish Nobel physicist Hannes Alfvén said, "No acts of God can be permitted.
But that tells you about my religious affiliation, which is not very strong, and I must say I’m not even an agnostic. I’m just an atheist in real life.
First of all, I do not believe in the supernatural, so I take it for granted that consciousness has a material explanation. I also do not believe in insoluble problems, therefore I believe that this explanation is accessible in principle to reason, and that one day we will understand consciousness just as we today understand what life is, whereas once this was a deep mystery.
Susskind is a card-carrying atheist.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
I never know whether I should say "Agnostic" or whether I should say "Atheist"... As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove (sic) that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist...
Leon Lederman is himself an atheist and he regrets the term, and Peter Higgs who is an atheist too, has expressed his displeasure, but the damage has been done!
Born and raised in a Sephardic Jewish family in which culture and love of learning were categorical imperatives, she abandoned religion and embraced atheism.
Rabid atheist by age six. (His father, Boris, was too, but intensely studied great religious works.)
I am a practising atheist.
Generally, I do not get a lot of satisfaction out of being identified with causes or logos. But – a couple of years ago, when Richard Dawkins started his "out campaign" for atheists, I thought that showing my support was not a bad idea.
...I'm an atheist...
Although he is an atheist, Dr Ashtekar says, his attitude toward work is from the Hindu religious text, the Bhagavad Gita.
As Richard Dawkins points out, I have no obligation to explain why I am an atheist, it’s for those who believe in a god to supply evidence. Atheism, religion, science and ethics are linked: Religion provides a simple world view based on the existence of one or more gods. Gods are super-beings who are unscrutable, far superior to humans and endowed with supernatural powers. Such a world view starts from the axiom that humans will not be able to understand the world around them. There is no further argument possible: one lives "by the book".
In public life the scientist is a strong supporter of communism, an atheist strongly objecting to advancement of religious education in Russia, and proponent of science and knowledge as the means to see a better future.
"I was brought up a Lutheran, but I became an atheist"—PZ Myers
He was a left-wing atheist who argued against African enslavement.
As for standard religion, though, Bohr was unsympathetic. His mother was a nonpracticing Jew, his father an atheist Lutheran.
If you'd asked, I would've told you that I, like yourself, am what most people would call a disbelieving atheist infidel heretic.
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.
"Having a reasonable grounding in statistics and probability and no belief in luck, fate, karma, or god(s), the only casino game that interests me is blackjack," he wrote in a .plan file.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)James Franck was born in Hamburg, the son of a Jewish banker. ...As he said, science was his God and nature his religion. He did not insist that his daughters attend religious instruction classes (Religionsunterricht) in school. But he was very proud of his Jewish heritage...
But Nobel, both atheist and a socialist...
...Victor Weisskopf, who describes himself as an atheist Viennese Jew....
Karlin was born in Yonova, Poland, in 1924. His family immigrated to Chicago when he was a small child and struggled financially through the Great Depression. He was raised in a strict Orthodox Jewish household but broke with religion in his early teens and remained an atheist for the rest of his life.
I mention that I am indeed an atheist. To count oneself as an atheist one need not claim to have a proof that no gods exist. One need merely think that the evidence on the god question is in about the same state as the evidence on the werewolf question.
Hering and Mach were atheists, and disbelieved in a soul, but still accepted the idea that nature had internal direction.
Outside the field of scientific research, he was known for his outspoken atheism: belief in God, he once declared, is not only incompatible with good science, but is "damaging to the wellbeing of the human race.
Dirac’s story ends with a whimper. As a young man he had joked that physicists were all washed up by 30 and as he aged his powers waned. The Cambridge physics department took away his parking space and an outraged Manci insisted he take up a fellowship at Florida State University. He died in 1984, aged 82. An atheist, he was buried under a gravestone chosen by Manci. It read “because God said it should be so.
Reber was a diehard atheist, and whatever he understood of those bumps in the night is not certain.
Callaghan was brought up a Methodist, but showed a typically scientific interest in other faiths, trying out Anglicanism, Catholicism and Marxism, before finally settling for atheism.
As it turns out, Lord Rees is an atheist, though one who said in a recent interview that he is not allergic to religion, and that he enjoys participating in aesthetic and cultural activities of the Anglican church, in which he was raised.
Officially, the particle is called the Higgs boson, but its elusive nature and fundamental role in the creation of the universe led a prominent scientist to rename it the God particle. The name has stuck, but makes Higgs wince and raises the hackles of other theorists. "I wish he hadn't done it," he says. "I have to explain to people it was a joke. I'm an atheist, but I have an uneasy feeling that playing around with names like that could be unnecessarily offensive to people who are religious.
Thorne grew up in an academic, Mormon family in Utah but is now an atheist. "There are large numbers of my finest colleagues who are quite devout and believe in God, ranging from an abstract humanist God to a very concrete Catholic or Mormon God. There is no fundamental incompatibility between science and religion. I happen to not believe in God.
{{cite web}}: نگهداری CS1: url-status (link)In a letter to the Guardian, Jane Wynne Willson, Vice-President of the British Humanist Association, added to his obituary: "Also president of the Rationalist Press Association from 1982 until his death, and with a particular interest in Indian rationalism, Hermann was a strong supporter of the Atheist Centre in Andhra Pradesh. He and his wife Christine visited the centre a number of times, and the hall in the science museum there bears his name. When presented with a prestigious international award, he divided a large sum of money between the Atheist Centre and women's health projects in Mumbai.
All of which makes the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize a matter of bemusement. "Yes, tell me," he says, frowning. "What is it, and why are they giving it to an old Jewish atheist who has unkind things to say about Zionism?
He has worked with monkeys in laboratories and in the wild. He has been a media don, a campaigner against nuclear weapons and the holder of a chair in parapsychological research who was dedicated to debunking even the possibility of telepathy or survival after death. He is an atheist, and the man who suggested to Richard Dawkins the analogy of viruses of the mind for religions; yet nowadays he talks as if spirituality were the thing that makes us human.,
On the side of the atheists were Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, [...] Jones, meanwhile, revealed that he would "love to believe in God", because it would offer some degree of comfort. But he said he stopped believing in God as a child as soon as he discovered that what he was learning in school biology classes conflicted with the kind of things he had been taught in Sunday school – like dinosaurs and humans walking the earth at the same time.
Do you believe in a god? No.
I never outgrew my conversion to atheism at 13, but at various times was a serious cultural Jew.
Paul MacCready, the inventor, defines it thus: "A secular humanist does not believe in God, and doesn't steal.
This loss shattered Turing's religious faith and led him into atheism...
Dr Perutz, said: "It is one thing for scientists to oppose creationism which is demonstrably false but quite another to make pronouncements which offend people's religious faith – that is a form of tactlessness which merely brings science into disrepute. My view of religion and ethics is simple: even if we do not believe in God, we should try to live as though we did.
The first Bombe to be delivered was named Agnus by Turing: a joke that atheist Hardy might have made...
It is a scene I won’t forget in a hurry: Jean-Marie Lehn, French winner of the Nobel prize in chemistry, defending his atheism at a packed public conference at the new Alexandria Library in Egypt.
[Müller] was an atheist...
Of course, Markov, an atheist and eventual excommunicate of the Church quarreled endlessly with his equally outspoken counterpart Nekrasov. The disputes between Markov and Nekrasov were not limited to mathematics and religion, they quarreled over political and philosophical issues as well.
He studied at the Jesuit College in Lyon and at this stage he nearly decided to join the Jesuit Order. In fact it was his parents who encouraged him to continue his education by going to Paris to study law, which he did. It is somewhat ironical that Lalande, who would later become renowned as an atheist, should have come so close to becoming a Jesuit.
When asked about being religious, Bloembergen said No.
When asked about being religious, Giacconi said No. Giacconi also said that he doesn't believe in an afterlife, apart from just a rearrangement of molecules and atoms of your body. He also expressed his idea that irrational thinking is very dangerous and wished that scientists should inject more rationality in the world.
Interviewer: Are you religious? Giaver: Absolutely not. [...] I'm not religious and I don't like religion. I think religion is to blame for a lot of the ills in this world.
Glauber says that he has no feelings towards the intelligent designer approach to science [...] He says that what has been discovered (physical world) is enormously interesting but it tells us nothing about intelligent design and certainly nothing at all about life.
Interviewer: Are you religious?" Koshiba: "/(You Mean) God?... I don't know... You know... science deals only (with?) those things which you can confirm by observation or by experiment...God doesn't come into that (category). So God...the problem of God, is not a problem in science.
Interviewer: "What is your view about God and religion? Veltman: "We are living in a totally ridiculous world. We have all kinds of things from horoscopes to Zen Buddhism to faith healers to religions to what have you. [...] "So for science it's very essential that we take a position that through the scientific method that keeps us away of all the irrationalities that seem to dominate human activities. And I think we should stay there. And the fact that I'm busy in science has little or nothing to do with religion. In fact I protect myself, I don't want to have to do with religion. Because once I start with that I don't know where it will end. But probably I will be burned or shot or something in the end. I don't want anything to do with it. I talk about things I can observe and other things I can predict and for the rest you can have it.
Interviewer: You have no belief in a afterlife? Kroemer: That's correct. Interviewer: ...You don't see the evidence of a designer?" Kroemer: No, I don't. Interviewer: Could you say more about it? Kroemer: I think it's just wishful thinking.
By most definitions he would be called an atheist, but he hated the term. 'An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid.
Kinsey was also shown to be an atheist who loathed religion and its constraints on sex.
Unusually at such an early age, she became what T.H. Huxley had just invented a word for: agnostic.
I never know whether I should say "Agnostic" or whether I should say "Atheist"... As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove (sic) that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist...
Hilbert was famously atheist, but mathematics at the time often bordered on philosophy
Conway propped up the pillow behind his head and grinned. "I like showing off. When I make a new discovery, and I really like telling people about it. I guess I'm not so much a mathematician as a teacher. In America, kids aren't supposed to like mathematics. It's so sad.' Conway sat up suddenly. 'Most people think that mathematics is cold. But it's not at all! For me, the whole damn thing is sensual and exciting. I like what it looks like, and I get a hell of a lot more pleasure out of math than most people do out of art!' He relaxed slightly, and he lowered his voice. 'I feel like an artist. I like beautiful things – they're there already; man doesn't have to create it. I don't believe in God, but I believe that nature is unbelievably subtle and clever. In physics, for instance, the real answer to a problem is usually so subtle and surprising that it wasn't even considered in the first place. That the speed of light is a constant – impossible! Nobody even thought about it. And quantum mechanics is even worse, but it's so beautiful, and it works!
Hardy... was a stringent atheist...
Of course, Markov, an atheist and eventual excommunicate of the Church quarreled endlessly with his equally outspoken counterpart Nekrasov. The disputes between Markov and Nekrasov were not limited to mathematics and religion, they quarreled over political and philosophical issues as well.
As Richard Dawkins points out, I have no obligation to explain why I am an atheist, it’s for those who believe in a god to supply evidence. Atheism, religion, science and ethics are linked: Religion provides a simple world view based on the existence of one or more gods. Gods are super-beings who are unscrutable, far superior to humans and endowed with supernatural powers. Such a world view starts from the axiom that humans will not be able to understand the world around them. There is no further argument possible: one lives "by the book".
He claimed to be an atheist, but he used religious symbolism and believed that his scientific work was 'an approach to God.
An atheist himself, Friedman refused to answer theological questions...
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)ANDERSON: What, uh, one thing I’m fascinated with is, of course, George Gamow left the university in ’59 [1956], and Edward Teller had left in 1946 [1945] and went to the University of Chicago. But do you have any recollections of maybe some of the, anything between Dr. Marvin and Dr. Gamow, as far as, just before he left and went to Colorado?; NAESER: Ah, no, I don’t know of any. I know Gamow made no, never did hide the fact that he was an atheist, but whether that came into the picture, I don’t know. But the story around the university was that Gamow and Mrs. Gamow were divorced, but they were in the same social circles some of the time, he thought it was better to get out of Washington. That’s why he went to Ohio State.
Leon Lederman is himself an atheist and he regrets the term, and Peter Higgs who is an atheist too, has expressed his displeasure, but the damage has been done!
After retirement, he remained politically active, defending Andrei Sakharov, and was President of the French Atheists
As it turns out, Lord Rees is an atheist, though one who said in a recent interview that he is not allergic to religion, and that he enjoys participating in aesthetic and cultural activities of the Anglican church, in which he was raised.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)...I don't believe in God. I tell people I'm an atheist, but a nice atheist.
{{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)It is a scene I won’t forget in a hurry: Jean-Marie Lehn, French winner of the Nobel prize in chemistry, defending his atheism at a packed public conference at the new Alexandria Library in Egypt.
He was a left-wing atheist who argued against African enslavement.
؛Interviewer: What is your attitude to religion now? JMS: Ever since reading (J. B. S. Haldane's book) Possible Worlds I have been an atheist, and a semi-conscious atheist before that. I think there are two views you can have about religion. You can be tolerant of it and say, I don't believe in this but I don't mind if other people do, or you can say, I not only don't believe in it but I think it is dangerous and damaging for other people to believe in it and they should be persuaded that they are mistaken. I fluctuate between the two. I am tolerant because religious institutions facilitate some very important work that would not get done otherwise, but then I look around and see what an incredible amount of damage religion is doing."
The Nobel Laureate Dr Richard Roberts will give a public lecture entitled
...Rich Roberts... delivered a public lecture on his Bright journey from Science to Atheism in April 2006.
William Bateson was a very militant atheist and a very bitter man, I fancy. Knowing that I was interested in biology, they invited me when I was still a school girl to go down and see the experimental garden. I remarked to him what I thought then, and still think, that doing research must be the most wonderful thing in the world and he snapped at me that it wasn’t wonderful at all, it was tedious, disheartening, annoying and anyhow you didn’t need an experimental garden to do research.
The paradox is that he thought of himself as a hard-boiled philosophical materialist. He was also what one may call a devoted atheist; a freemason; a member of the Austrian Socialist Party; and a regular contributor to the Monisticshe Monatshelfe, the monthly published by the German league of Monists.
But that tells you about my religious affiliation, which is not very strong, and I must say I’m not even an agnostic. I’m just an atheist in real life.
... I am also atheist or agnostic (I don't even know the difference). I've never been to church and prefer to think for myself. I do believe that religions stand for good things, and that if you make irrational sacrifices for a religion, then everyone can tell that your religion is important to you and can trust that your most important inner faiths are strong.
I've been an atheist - I had found it difficult to have religious beliefs and scientific ones," Brooks explained. "But I've accepted that I have a duality - there's a human way of interacting with people but also a mechanistic explanation of what people are and how they work.
Muller, who through Unitarianism had become an enthusiastic pantheist, was converted both to atheism and to socialism (p. 353).
... I am also atheist or agnostic (I don't even know the difference). I've never been to church and prefer to think for myself. I do believe that religions stand for good things, and that if you make irrational sacrifices for a religion, then everyone can tell that your religion is important to you and can trust that your most important inner faiths are strong.
...I had the opportunity to participate in several exciting panel discussions at the World Science Festival in New York City. But the most dramatic encounter took place at the panel strangely titled 'Science, Faith and Religion.'... I ended up being one of two panelists labeled 'atheists.'...". On the 21 June 2012 'Colbert Report, the author of A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing told Colbert: "There is no evidence for any deity.... You don't need him.... There's no need for God." The evolutions of the universe occur "without any supernatural shenanigans.
Like, for me, as an atheist, bisexual, Jew, I'm gonna go on, uh - oh and Emma Goldman is one of my great heroes and I really think that anarchism is a fantastic principle by which to fashion a utopian society even if we can't get there.
Charlie Rose, interviewing Oliver Sacks, asked him whether he believed in God. Sacks replied, "I can't imagine what it meant.... No, I guess not.