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Matt Dillahunty, of course! He is president of the Atheist Community of Austin, host of the live internet radio show “Non-Prophets Radio” and of the Austin Public-access television cable TV show “The Atheist Experience”.

Donald Sutherland, Seth MacFarlane and Bill Maher would be great additions to your list of famous atheists.

stephen hawkings!!

he authored the book the brief history of time and the grand design!! in which he has theoretically proved that god is not necessary!!

I second Derren Brown!

you have a wonderful mind! I teach creativity and innovation in goa at the goa institute of management, India.

I also teach raelity and language to the students…loved your thoughts sir.
be well. be loved.
cedric serpes

Mikey –
Just wanted to say Hi and commend you on the excellent job you’re doing for us down here, its so greatly appreciated as its saving us a lot of time and effort. The work you’re doing along with all the others who’s souls I own and who embrace our strong beliefs in socialism – democratic atheism – gay rights – abortion – sexual freedoms with beast and children – destruction of good families – marriage and all moral values – standing up against these fundamentalists – born again, Christians and Jews, and other religions involving phobias of god/s and the supernatural. Also important to mention are the removal of crosses – Jesus statues – the prayer and bible reading – the coinage phrase, ‘In God We Trust’ – of the USA – religious holidays – (Except our day of Halloween) from society as a whole. You with OBAMA – the Clintons – and all other like minded people are really helping our cause worldwide – you’re making my job so much easier – and I can’t wait to shake you hand and reward you and all the others like you –who are working for me – too spent eternity with me! Looking forwarded to meeting you all personally! Keep up the good work!

Signed – LUCIFER ie.. satan the devil — See ya soon!

Ps – Ted Kennedy and his brothers – along with John Paul II and little Michael sent their best – await your arrival.

Hi Michael,

I’d like to see more Irish atheists on the list

regards,

Padraic

Hi, I tried to click on the “see also” links on the “famous atheists by date” page, but unfortunately, all I got were 404 errors. I thought it might be good if you would know that

Jake

Hi Michael,

Congratulations on your ovation from Richard Dawkins’ audience at the National Concert Hall yesterday evening. When Richard Dawkins’ replied to a question from an auditor about how to further progress secularism in Ireland, Richard Dawkins referred to Atheist Ireland and to yourself, by name, which induced a widespread ovation throughout the National Concert Hall. It was an evening of which to be proud: Richard Dawkins received frequent spontaneous ovations and the audience’s questions were overwhelmingly supportive of Richard Dawkins and his ideas. Yesterday evening proved that Ireland has matured and that Atheist Ireland, and you yourself, can take some credit for that progress. It was auspicious to observe that the audience was disproportionately teenage, twenty-something and thirty-something which indicates further progress for Irish secularism throughout the century.

Bravissimo!

Ryan Fitzpatrick

Please contact me in relation to a request for an interview.
01 6445129

HETAC are considering the accreditation of the academic programme validation of certain complementary therapies. Something we should all be concern about.
http://www.hetac.ie/publications_other.htm
(see links for Summary, Final Report etc).

‘trific ‘tcle, Myths about atheism ‘scures its ‘cular values, in IrishTimes.
unjumbled, “right on”, and dispelling.
my thanks.

Hi,
I have few questions and I need honest answers.
1) Is really God does not exist?
2) Why God does not exist?
3) Is it the nature that made us?
4) If yes, then the nature is God or the Creator, is it true?
5) If the nature or something else that made me then I think I have to obey its rules not mine is it right?
6) Why I should not believe in God? Is it because you hate religion?
I don’t know, could you please explain to the point and in relation to the questions above.
regards,
Sam

Your twitthis button does not work.

I would add Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Max Stirner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Stan Lee, Bruce Lee and Keira Knightley. Thanks.

Michael,

A lot of people are asking if the debate Monday night (science/faith) was videotaped. I know you had it recorded, and was wondering if I could get a copy please.

Jo Peters

There are a few problems with the arguments in your Trinity spiel. For a start, the reason why the Irish Roman Catholic church had such influence in health & education was because the state had abdicated its responsibilities to provide those kinds of services to a reasonable level. So comparing Irish Catholic schools to state-run atheist institutions is based on historical confusion – in Ireland, the ABSENCE of the state was the problem….

Secondly, the western philosophical tradition has never managed to completely conceptually separate concepts such as “the Good,” “the Beautiful” and “the True.” So whether we like it or not, our truth-seeking activity is genealogically grounded in transcendentalist monotheism. It makes very little sense to swear an oath (for example, to tell “the truth”) on the basis of a metaphysical/transcendental vacuum. Atheists have no symbolic use for oaths – their symbolism would be meaningless to an atheist. Cultural non-post-monotheists don’t have a concept of “Truth” which is strictly equivalent to that generally internalized by people from initially monotheistic cultural groups. Write the word “truth” in any university essay for any professor specializing in sinology or east Asian aesthetics, and you’ll get it back with a big red X. Sure, “The Truth” has become a secularized concept, but the point remains that it’s still genealogically inseparable from monotheism. The linguistic philosopher Hilary Putnam has analyzed our conception of “truth” to the positing of a “God’s-eye-view,” and even Nietzsche remarks that we created Gods because we needed somebody who could see in the dark. So whether we like it or not, we still implicitly invoke the metaphysical in our ordinary day-to-day speech, insofar as that speech represents itself as a “truth-seeking” activity…. “God” is just buried so deep in the implicature our occidental day-to-day communicative norms that it’s impossible to remove him completely.

Thirdly, the insistence that only religious practitioners within certain religious denominations should work for certain religious institutions (such as schools) is maintained most stridently by religious minorities in Ireland, not by Catholic institutions. The minority religious groups’ argument (quite understandably) is that, in order for pluralism to be a meaningful political and social concept, different identities must first exist, as opposed to a single ill-formed monolithic non-identity. Anglicans, Presbyterians and Muslims are the people most often insisting that the ethos of their educational institutions should be preserved, not Roman Catholics. This is the aspect of the pluralism issue which atheists don’t really get – it’s not just about literal personal belief – it’s about culture and identity in a much broader sense. Personally, I think that the fact that Ireland was the first nation-state in the EU to publicly fund an Islamic primary school makes indicates a conception of pluralism which is quite sophisticated, far more sophisticated than blatantly assimilationist policies such as those in France, for example. Ultimately, pluralism is about everybody having the opportunity to throw their values into the public arena.

The philosopher Paul Feyerabend once argued that, while the written constitutions of most western nation-states make some passing reference to “cherishing all traditions equally,” or words to that effect, what actually happens in the best possible case scenario is that everybody, regardless of their ethnic, religious or cultural background, is given equal access the same tradition, and that tradition is called scientific post-industrialism. This is the clandestine state-religion of every nation-state in the western world, including Ireland. And before you answer that science is just a matter of fact, please note that phenomenologists and philosophers of natural science (including eminently secular people like Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend) began deconstructing the intellectual naivete of that position a long long long time ago…. You can dismiss religious people’s skepticism about the epistemic foundations of what we call “the scientific method,” but to ignore everybody else’s grounds for skepticism would be a bit obtuse, especially considering that skepticism is one of the intellectual virtues which you claim to prioritize most highly….

Hi Michael,

I emailed you regarding a talk this Saturday. Can you give me a call on 087 7810037, if you can.

Thanks,
Shona

So I keep trying to post this link as my website with comments sometimes http://slymepitintrom.blogspot.com/2013/03/incredibly-ironic-post-of-century.html & it wont post if I do that. I tried changing .com to .ca, nothing. Did you block it and forget? Do you… *sniffles*… think my blog is BAD?

Padraig McGrath stated in post 33
“There are a few problems with the arguments in your Trinity spiel. For a start, the reason why the Irish Roman Catholic church had such influence in health & education was because the state had abdicated its responsibilities to provide those kinds of services to a reasonable level. So comparing Irish Catholic schools to state-run atheist institutions is based on historical confusion – in Ireland, the ABSENCE of the state was the problem….”
Here is a quote from http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/695/Ireland-EDUCATIONAL-SYSTEM-OVERVIEW.html which suggests that, rather than the state abdicating its reponsibilties, religious interests, both Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland elbowed the state out of education.
“Perhaps the most significant time in the establishment of a countrywide, state-aided educational system of elementary schools was in 1831, championed by Lord Edward G.S.M. Stanley. Conflicts immediately arose over the matter of keeping religious influence out of schools because the elementary schools were told that churches had the right to provide pupils with supplementary religious education. Even though, in theory, no aid was to be given to the primary schools and emerging secondary schools, in reality, religious influences permeated all levels of the educational system, particularly the school boards, which were headed by priests or vicars, depending on the district’s religious makeup.

At first, however, Protestants were the main critics against “godless” schools, while Catholic leaders, worried about high illiteracy rates among their people, generally supported the state-run educational system, at least at first. Eventually, Catholics came to despise the system, saying students were exposed to pro-British and anti-Catholic influences. Nonetheless, the formation of national schools was an important step forward in the history of education in Ireland. It was intended to give an equal education to all pupils without meddling from churches. It gave Irish schools a semblance of structure, and it established a policy of local districts to pick up their fair share of costs for teacher salaries, school lots and building costs, and schoolbooks.”

Read more: Ireland – Educational System—overview – Schools, Irish, Students, and School – StateUniversity.com http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/695/Ireland-EDUCATIONAL-SYSTEM-OVERVIEW.html#ixzz2Qijwmdyp

Michael, I previously submitted for quotation the set and a few of the names of the great/famous philosophers who were atheists. I even threw in the mathematician Kurt Godel, but he is commonly considered a theist; one could find an argument for either side, but then who wants to argue?