My Strong Disclaimer!!!!
It would be wrong of me to label these ALL beautiful people Atheists, or even Agnostics. It’s more appropriate to label them ALL as freethinkers: people who dared to challenge the religious standards of the time. They are mostly made up of open skeptics, but can you be a freethinker and be a person of faith? Sure! There are a few people who fall into that category below. I will be constantly adding to the list below…
![Thomas Paine: Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.](https://i0.wp.com/www.forgottenfoundingfather.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/thomaspaineoval.jpg)
Thomas Paine: Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true.
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.mylifetime.com/files/imagecache/photo_gallery_featured/files/images/Jodi-Foster-395x298-sagittarius-astro.jpg)
Jodi Foster: How could you ask me to believe in God when there's absolutely no evidence that I can see? I do believe in the beauty and the awe-inspiring mystery of the science that's out there that we haven't discovered yet, that there are scientific explanations for phenomena that we call mystical because we don't know any better.
![Zora Neal Hurston: Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws.](https://i0.wp.com/www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/IPHS/Projects/zora/W.E.B%20project/hurston%20smoking.jpg)
Zora Neal Hurston: Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws.
![“. . . this experiment, this magnificent experiment in democracy is just being shredded to pieces by these right-wing Christians...[Theyre] just shredding the rest of the Bill of Rights which hadnt been shredded already.”](https://i0.wp.com/brushmistress.com/gallery/george-carlin1.jpg)
Langston Hughes: Listen, Christ, You did alright in your day, I reckon-- but that day's gone now. They ghosted you up a swell story, too, called it Bible-- But it's dead now. The popes and the preachers've made too much money from it. They've sold you to too many.
![“I dont believe in heaven and hell. I dont know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I wont allow this life--the only thing I know to exist--to be wasted.”](https://i0.wp.com/www.reelmovienews.com/images/gallery/george-clooney-pic.jpg)
George Clooney: I don't believe in heaven and hell. I don't know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I won't allow this life--the only thing I know to exist--to be wasted.
![“My parents did not practice any organized religion, although my father was raised Roman Catholic and my mother was Jewish. But there was always an ethical context to our lives, a very strong notion of individual moral responsibility.”](https://i0.wp.com/www.babble.com/CS/blogs/famecrawler/2009/01/Harrison%20Ford.jpg)
Harrison Ford: My parents did not practice any organized religion, although my father was raised Roman Catholic and my mother was Jewish. But there was always an ethical context to our lives, a very strong notion of individual moral responsibility.
![Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States: When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion.](https://harperlibrary.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/abraham-lincoln1.jpg?w=352&h=565)
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States: When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion.
![James Taylor: [religions] an insanity that keeps us sane. You might call a lot of these songs spirituals for agnostics.](https://i0.wp.com/z.about.com/d/folkmusic/1/5/b/6/JamesTaylor.jpg)
![Sam Harris: The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy.](https://i0.wp.com/www.postreligion.org/wiki/uploads/Main/Harris.jpg)
Sam Harris: The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy.
![“What a burden to think one is conceived in sin rather than in pleasure; that one is born into evil rather than into joy. . . . It is chilling to think that the same people who persecuted the wise women and men of Europe, its midwives and healers, then crossed the oceans to Africa and the Americas and tortured and enslaved, raped, impoverished, and eradicated the peaceful, Christ-like people they found. And that the blueprint from which they worked, and still work, was the Bible.”](https://propagandica.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/walker.jpg?w=320&h=375)
Alice Walker: What a burden to think one is conceived in sin rather than in pleasure; that one is born into evil rather than into joy. . . It is chilling to think that the same people who persecuted the wise women and men of Europe, its midwives and healers, then crossed the oceans to Africa and the Americas and tortured and enslaved, raped, impoverished, and eradicated the peaceful, Christ-like people they found. And that the blueprint from which they worked, and still work, was the Bible.
![“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.”](https://joecastle.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/albert-einstein02.png?w=325&h=378)
Einstein: I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own--a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.
![Im an agnostic which basically mean I make up my own religion and dogma. I get joy and satisfaction out of making other people happy or by just doing something for someone else.](https://i0.wp.com/www.popstarsplus.com/images/NataliePortmanPicture.jpg)
Natalie Portman: I'm an agnostic which basically mean I make up my own religion and dogma. I get joy and satisfaction out of making other people happy or by just doing something for someone else.
![I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder.](https://i0.wp.com/www.clevelandleader.com/files/Bill_Maher.jpg)
I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder.
Beautiful, just beautiful. Makes me love Jodi Foster and George Clooney even more if that was possible.
Bill Maher may be on to something there.
Thank you !! Great blog ! Great info !!
You’re missing a few! Brad Pitt recently came out of the atheist closet. Douglas Adams called himself a “radical atheist” if only so people wouldn’t think he was a wishy-washy agnostic 🙂 Woody Allen has been pretty outspoken. Julia Sweeney did a wonderful performace called “Letting Go of God” which wonders for me in reaffirming what I did and didn’t believe and she turned me on to Richard Dawkins, too). Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter, himself!) recently made public his atheism, which I think is a wonderful free-thinker role model for kids. Katherine Hepburn once said “I’m an atheist, and that’s it. I believe there’s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for people”.
Ton more to be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_atheists
Sounds like I’ve got some work to do! I’m gonna have fun updating the blog this week! Thanks a bunch!