By - - SUPERSCHOLAR
Added: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 15:27:18 UTC

Thanks to TheRationalizer for the link.

Go back a few hundred years, and atheism was very much a minority position. Those who were atheists would have been ostracized by society and possibly even killed (as in burned at the stake, depending on how far back you go). Fast forward to the present, and atheism is far less objectionable, and in some circles even the dominant view.

In the new millennium, prominent atheists abound. One website, www.celebatheists.com, is even dedicated to listing celebrity atheists. Celebrity atheists are wide-ranging and include people like Mark Zuckerberg, Lance Armstrong, and Jodie Foster. Even so, they don’t make it on to our list of influential living atheists. Why? Because they, like so many other atheists, don’t make a big deal out of their atheism. They live their lives without God, but are happy to let other people live their lives with God.

To make it on SuperScholar’s list of influential living atheists, an atheist can’t merely disbelieve in God but also must actively encourage others to disbelieve in God. But even that isn’t enough to make our list. Bill Maher and Penn & Teller, for instance, use their prominence as entertainers to promote atheism. But they do so mainly as popularists, not as scholars attempting to make a considered case against theism and for atheism.

Thus, to make it on our list, an atheist needs not only to be actively promoting atheism but also to do so as scholars in scholarly forums – this is, after all, SuperScholar! All the names below fit that bill. They are notable scholars in their own right and they use their scholarship to promote atheism explicitly or to promote forms of thought that make belief in God untenable.

Many of the scholars listed here have given new life to atheism, inviting the term “neo-atheism” to describe their impact and movement. Since the rise of neo-atheism in the last decade, public acceptance of atheism in the United States has vastly increased. In Gallup polls until ten years ago, those willing to call themselves atheists hovered around 10 percent. It’s now up to just under 15 percent.

Whether this atheistic upsurge in polls indicates an actual increase in the number of atheists or just a greater willingness of atheists to be known as such, it underscores a seismic shift in our culture away from belief in God and toward more secular ways of viewing the world.
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TAGGED: ATHEISM, BOOKS, CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, RICHARD DAWKINS