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Goodbye Jesus

Who Would You Say Was The Greatest Ever Free-Thinker


Castiel233

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Personally I would say Tomas Paine. The church was dealt a blow from his book "The Age of Reason" that it has never really been able to recover from (in terms of sensible arguments against the Christian Faith)

 

The church, unable to answer Paine's criticisms instead spent its time attacking him, and after his death, his memory

 

Paine's courage and his genuine love of democracy made him very powerful enemies.  yet they could not silence him.

 

At the end of his life,  Christians, unable to bear the thought that a friend of the world was preparing to cross the bridge and take  walk into the forest of forever without the benefit of holding the hand of Jesus,  attempted to witness to this  champion as he lay stricken upon his death bed.

 

Paine, although his body worn out and close to death, retained the clarity of his mind and had them thrown out.........

 

Towards the very , very end his doctor, busied himself with trying one final time to impose the Christian faith on one of the bravest men to ever walk this valley of tears.

 

He lent forward and said:

 

"Do you believe, or do you wish to believe, that Jesus Christ is the son of God?

 

Paine, summoning up the very last of his strength as he lay wasted  upon his bed, replied, "I have no wish to believe on that subject."

 

These were the final recorded words of one of the finest sons of the world 

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Samuel Clemens.

 

As Mark Twain he mocked all pretense and did it (usually) with great humor. His writing is still so engaging he attracts a very large audience.

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Many times I have laughed myself to tears reading Mark Twain. Especially when it came to mocking religion.

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Bertrand Russell, Thomas Paine, Mark Twain, Hitchens... I don't know if I could pick the best.

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Honourable runners up  for me:

 

Charles Bradlaugh 

Robert Green Ingersoll

Bertrand Russell 

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Bertrand Russell, Thomas Paine, Mark Twain, Hitchens... I don't know if I could pick the best.

 

Much as I love Hitchens, I'm not sure he belongs with those others.

 

Regarding OP, I would add Niels Bohr to the list. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable identifying one "greatest ever free-thinker". How would one go about quantifying such a thing?

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Other than those mentioned I would say Isaac Asimov, as well. 

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Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason" is really just the English version of Voltaire's "Dieu et les Hommes" (1769). It has a lot of the same ideas about the Bible, with the same conclusion ("Deism" is the only true religion). 

 

I don't think "Age of Reason" was that influential. 

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I don't know if I could pick the best.

 

Yeah, it's like trying to pick the greatest musician or greatest actor or greatest athlete ever. There are people who can be said to be among the greatest, but picking one single person as THE greatest is impractical. It's great to hear stories about some of the greats, though.

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Anyone who dared to stand up and speak out against christianity in the public square. For me personally, i love ingersoll, barker, and hitchens. Too many to list, but anyone who had the guts to fight against it publicly without fear of those human haters gets a vote from me. -peace/cat

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Well, looks like I'm going to have to read "Age of Reason" sometime.

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Socrates.  He may have been convinced of his own divine mission (though I wonder about that as well) but he seems to have been quite clear that his mission was to assume ignorance and challenge those who claimed knowledge.  And to accept the consequences when condemned to death for it.

 

Though I also have a soft spot for Diogenes. No time for pretensions whatsoever.  Pity we don't know more of his philosophy.

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The Great Charles Darwin!  As a scientist getting down to the actual facts, he provides the grist for all free thought.  Facts themselves is free thought, and he dug down into the facts.  He may not have been a vocal arguer on the question of God, but he moved the ball in a way that no one else did.  For example Thomas Paine was a Deist, and all Free Thinkers basically had to be deists until Charles Darwin allowed us to be atheists.

 

CharlesDarwinAsApe1871.jpg

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The Great Charles Darwin!  As a scientist getting down to the actual facts, he provides the grist for all free thought.  Facts themselves is free thought, and he dug down into the facts.  He may not have been a vocal arguer on the question of God, but he moved the ball in a way that no one else did.  For example Thomas Paine was a Deist, and all Free Thinkers basically had to be deists until Charles Darwin allowed us to be atheists.

 

CharlesDarwinAsApe1871.jpg

Gosh, I can't believe I did not even think of Darwin.....and you are right of course........

 

Ingersoll had this to say on him:

 

 

“. He was one of the greatest men who ever touched this globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the religious teachers. Write the name of Charles Darwin on the one hand and the name of every theologian who ever lived on the other, and from that name has come more light to the world than from all of those. His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the survival of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has removed in every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox Christianity. He has not only stated, but he has demonstrated, that the inspired writer knew nothing of this world, nothing of the origin of man, nothing of geology, nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature; that the Bible is a book written by ignorance--at the instigation of fear. Think of the men who replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin, and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule, the scorn and contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died, England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest and her grandest. Charles Darwinconquered the intellectual world, and his doctrines are now accepted facts. His light has broken in on some of the clergy, and the greatest man who to-day occupies the pulpit of one of the orthodox churches, Henry Ward Beecher, is a believer in the theories of Charles Darwin--a man of more genius than all the clergy of that entire church put together.

 

...The church teaches that man was created perfect, and that for six thousand years he has degenerated. Darwin demonstrated the falsity of this dogma. He shows that man has for thousands of ages steadily advanced; that the Garden of Eden is an ignorant myth; that the doctrine of original sin has no foundation in fact; that the atonement is an absurdity; that the serpent did not tempt, and that man did not 'fall.'

 

Charles Darwin destroyed the foundation of orthodox Christianity. There is nothing left but faith in what we know could not and did not happen. Religion and science are enemies. One is a superstition; the other is a fact. One rests upon the false, the other upon the true. One is the result of fear and faith, the other of investigation and reason.”

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Socrates.  He may have been convinced of his own divine mission (though I wonder about that as well) but he seems to have been quite clear that his mission was to assume ignorance and challenge those who claimed knowledge.  And to accept the consequences when condemned to death for it.

 

Though I also have a soft spot for Diogenes. No time for pretensions whatsoever.  Pity we don't know more of his philosophy.

Diogenes, wasn't he the one who lived in a barrel 

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Well I'm not sure I am qualified to know who is the greatest free thinker.  However I do admire the achievements and boldness of Galileo Galilei.  He had to know he was taking a terrible risk looking in the wrong places, seeing the wrong things and asking the wrong questions.

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Socrates.  He may have been convinced of his own divine mission (though I wonder about that as well) but he seems to have been quite clear that his mission was to assume ignorance and challenge those who claimed knowledge.  And to accept the consequences when condemned to death for it.

 

Though I also have a soft spot for Diogenes. No time for pretensions whatsoever.  Pity we don't know more of his philosophy.

Diogenes, wasn't he the one who lived in a barrel 

 

 

So they say - though probably a large storage pot I would have thought.  He's the one who reputedly answered Alexander the Great's question as to whether he could do anything for the philosopher by telling the general to stop  blocking the light.

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The Great Charles Darwin!  As a scientist getting down to the actual facts, he provides the grist for all free thought.  Facts themselves is free thought, and he dug down into the facts.  He may not have been a vocal arguer on the question of God, but he moved the ball in a way that no one else did.  For example Thomas Paine was a Deist, and all Free Thinkers basically had to be deists until Charles Darwin allowed us to be atheists.

 

CharlesDarwinAsApe1871.jpg

 

 

Not true. There were plenty of atheists pre-Theory of Evolution, most notably Denis Diderot. 

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