Atheists deny that God exists. Yet for an atheist to make our ranking of the 50 top atheists in the world—given in ascending order—it is not enough merely to deny that God exists. More is required.I know for a fact that some people on the list do not agree with the definition of atheist that the website promotes.
Certainty. To make our list, someone has to be very sure of him- or herself. No mere agnostics will do. To make the cut, one has to do more than merely question God’s existence or even deny that knowledge of God’s existence is possible.
Celebrity is another requirement. To make our list, the atheist must have a public identification with atheism and must have made some public impact by challenging religion and/or promoting atheism, either in print or on the Internet. In other words, our ranking is a list of people who are well known because they are atheists, among other things—as opposed to people who are mainly famous for some other reason (like Jodie Foster or Bruce Willis). In a few cases, a person has made the list mainly on the basis of his or her attack on free will and morality—the foundation of the traditional religious view of human beings—so long as the person has also publicly identified as an atheist.
The ranking seems to be based largely on the production of books about atheism so it's heavily tilted toward philosophers. In fact, the top five are all philosophers. The top scientist, at number 6, is E.O. Wilson.
I'm surprised that there are philosophers who deny that gods exists as opposed to just not believing in them.
I'm not a very good atheist 'cause I've never heard of most of the top 50 atheists.
Ricky Gervais is not on the list.
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