Atheists who changed the world

[Mystic]

I have no idea whom most of these people are :S

[jonb]

I could kick myself for being this thick that it was only the entry of a new Iraqi member that trigged my brain cells

Omar Khayyam

mathematician, astronomer, poet, at true polymath

[liam]

Feuerbach

[Raskolnikov]

Mark Twain?

Hmmm, I think he was very borderline. Poor bastard.

In his defence, I think Mark Twain made sufficient clear statements to qualify as a fully fledged unbeliever, e.g.:

"Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
-- Mark Twain, Following the Equator, ch. 12, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" (1897)

It now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one ... the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.
-- Mark Twain, "The Lowest Animal" (1897)

The two Testaments are interesting, each in its own way. The Old one gives us a picture of these people's Deity as he was before he got religion, the other one gives us a picture of him as he appeared afterward.
-- Mark Twain, Letters From the Earth (1909?; published in 1962)

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.
-- Mark Twain, Frederick Anderson, ed, Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals (1979), notebook 27, August 1887-July 1888, quoted from James A Haught, "Breaking the Last Taboo" (1996)

[Norfolk And Chance]

Would Einstein count?

He'd often count.