Nowadays in the United States, we are awash in misinformation created and propagated by religious partisans.  The supposed "Christian values of America's founding fathers" are widely accepted but largely fictitious.  Biographers have invented mythical "deathbed conversions" of acknowledged atheists and other freethinkers.  Religious apologists have seized upon figurative remarks (such as Jefferson's "endowed by their Creator" or Einstein's "God does not play dice"), in an effort to convince themselves and the rest of us that the world's greatest minds unanimously believe in traditional religion.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  We need only consult the actual words of these often misquoted or misinterpreted individuals to expose the lies spread about them by the ignorant and the unscrupulous.

Adams Asimov Barton Beethoven Bierce Carnegie Clarke Curie Demosthenes Descartes Dick Diderot Edison Einstein Epicurus Franklin Freud Hume Huxley Ingersoll Jefferson Lewis Lincoln Mencken Montaigne Nehru Paine Pascal Roberts Russell Shaw Shelley Thurber Twain Washington Wilde Wright

John Adams
(1735-1826)
co-author of the U.S. Constitution; 2nd U.S. President.

"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."  (Treaty of Tripoli, 1797)

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved—the Cross.  Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced."

"This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it."  (letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1817)

Isaac Asimov
(1920-1992)
Russian-born American scientist and writer

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."  (Asimov's Guide to the Bible)

Clara Barton
(1821-1912)
founder of the American Red Cross

Although brought into the Universalist Church, Barton never became a member.  None of her writings reveal any hint of belief in deity.  Proclaimed by Civil War General Miles as "the greatest humanitarian the world has even known," Barton was, by all accounts,  not a religious person.

Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
German composer

Beethoven was raised a Catholic, but abandoned that faith and became a Pantheist for the rest of his life.  As he was dying, he reluctantly yielded to the entreaties of Catholic friends to have a priest administer final rites, following which Beethoven wryly remarked, in Latin:

"Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over."

The fact that artists sometimes create or perform works with a religious theme does not signify that they personally subscribe to the corresponding beliefs—any more than creating a work based on Greek or Norse mythology reflects belief in Zeus or Odin.  Even the lofty profession of the artist has its mundane moments: When creating art is how you earn your living, you create whatever those who pay you want.

Ambrose Bierce
(1842-1914)
American author

"Christian, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin."

"Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessed unworthy."

"Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the meaning of the Unknowable."

(selections from The Devil's Dictionary, 1911)
 

Luther Burbank
(1849-1926)
American botanist

Burbank declared publicly that he did not believe in an afterlife.

Andrew Carnegie
(1835-1919)
American industrialist and philanthropist

"I don't believe in God. My god is patriotism. Teach a man to be a good citizen and you have solved the problem of life."

Arthur C. Clarke
(1917-2007)
English writer

"A faith that cannot survive collision with truth is not worth many regrets."

Marie Sklodowska Curie
(1867-1934)
Polish-born French chemist, co-discoverer of radium

"Pierre belonged to no religion and I do not practice any."  (memoir concerning her late husband)

Demosthenes
(c.384-322 BCE)
Greek orator

"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." (Third Olynthiac, 349 BCE)

Philip K. Dick
(1928-1982)
American science fiction writer

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away." (1972)

Denis Diderot
(1713-1784)
French encyclopedist and philosopher

"The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and … people whose aim is to disrupt society know how to make good use of them on occasion." (Conversations with a Christian Lady, 1777)

Thomas Alva Edison
(1847-1931)
American inventor and industrialist

"Religion is all bunk."

Albert Einstein
(1879-1955)
German-born American theoretical physicist

"If people are good only because they fear punishment and hope for reward, then we are indeed a sorry lot."

"If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. ... For me, the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions." (letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, 1954)

Epicurus
(c.341-270 BCE)
Greek philosopher

"Why should I fear death?  If I am, death is not.  If death is, then I am not.  Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?"

Benjamin Franklin
(1706-1790)
American writer, printer, scientist, and statesman

"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."  (letter to Dr. Price)

"I have found Christian dogma unintelligible."  (Autobiography)

"As to Jesus of Nazareth, … I have some doubts as to his divinity, tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon."

Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939)
Austrian physician and pioneer of psychoanalysis

"In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable."

David Hume
(1711-1776)
British philosopher

"A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence." (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding [87])

"The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one." (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding [101])

Thomas Henry Huxley
(1825-1895)
British biologist

"It is as respectable to be a modified monkey as modified dirt." (response to criticism, on biblical grounds, of Charles Darwin's theory of biological evolution)

Robert Green Ingersoll
(1833-1899)
American orator

"If people were a little more ignorant, astrology would flourish; if a little more enlightened, religion would perish."

"With soap, baptism is a good thing."

Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826)
3rd U.S. President, philosopher, educator, architect

"He is less remote from truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."

"I … do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature.  They [religions] are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies."  (letter to Dr. Woods)

"The greatest enemies of Jesus are the doctrines and creeds of the Church.  It would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all than to blaspheme him by the atrocious writings of the theologians."  (letter to John Adams)

"The Christian God is a being of terrific character—cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust. … I read the Apocalypse and considered it merely the rantings and ravings of a maniac. … What has not meaning admits no explanation."

"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings."  (letter to John Adams, 11 Aug. 1820)

"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because if there be one, He must approve the homage of Reason rather than that of blindfolded Fear."  (letter to Peter Carr, Jefferson's nephew and ward)

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity.  What has been the effect of this coercion?  To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites."  ("Notes on Virginia")

"In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty; he is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."

"They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes.  And they believe rightly:  for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."  (excerpted in the Jefferson Memorial, removing the final sentence from its context)

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."  (letter to John Adams, 11 Apr. 1823)

Sinclair Lewis
(1885-1951)
American novelist

Lewis's novel Elmer Gantry (1927) is a scathing portrayal of religion in America.

Abraham Lincoln
(1809-1865)
16th U.S. President

"Christianity is not my religion, and the Bible is not my holy book.  I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma."  (1855)

James Madison
(1751-1836)
primary author of U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights; 4th U.S. President; co-author of the Federalist Papers

"During almost fifteen centuries, the legal establishment of Christianity has been on trial.  What have been its fruits?  These are the fruits more or less, in all places:  pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, and in both clergy and laity, superstition, bigotry, and persecution."

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." (1 Apr. 1774)

Henry Lewis Mencken
(1880-1956)
editor American Mercury

"Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."

"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration – courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth."  (1925)

Michel de Montaigne
(1533-1592)
French essayist

"Man is certainly stark mad. He cannot make a worm, and yet he makes gods by the dozens."

Jawaharlal Nehru
(1889-1964)
Indian statesman

"No country or people who are slaves to dogma and dogmatic mentality can progress."

Thomas Paine
(1737-1809)
British-American political activist

"To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead."

Blaise Pascal
(1623-1662)
French mathematician and philosopher

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."  (Pensées, 1670)

It should be noted that Pascal was a Christian, and even presented an argument ( known as Pascal's Wager) advocating advantages of belief in God, whether or not such a being actually exists.  Nevertheless, his own belief did not blind him to the abuses and atrocities of some of his fellow believers.

Stephen Henry Roberts
(1901-1974)
Historian

"I contend that we are both atheists.  I just believe in one fewer god than you do.  When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

Bertrand Russell
(1872-1970)
British mathematician, philosopher

"Man is a credulous animal and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones."  (Unpopular Essays: "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish," 1950)

"Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires." (A Free Man's Worship and Other Essays, 1976)

"The fundamental defect in Christian ethics consists in the fact that it labels certain classes of acts 'sin' and others 'virtue' on grounds that have nothing to do with their social consequences." (The Quotable Bertrand Russell, 1993)

George Bernard Shaw
(1856-1950)
Irish-born British playwright

"The fact that a believer may be happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality."  (Androcles and the Lion, 1916)

Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792-1822)
British poet

"If God has spoken, why is the universe not convinced?"

James Thurber
(1894-1961)
American writer and cartoonist

"You can fool too many of the people too much of the time."

Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
(1835-1910)
American author

"Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world—and never will."

"Religion is believing what you know ain't so."  (Following the Equator, 1897)

Voltaire (François Marie Arouet)
(1694-1778)
French philosopher, author

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."

"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities."

George Washington
(1732-1799)
American military leader; President of the Constitutional Convention; 1st U.S. President

Washington was never open about his religious beliefs, so we are left to speculate about the precise nature of his religiosity.  However, he left some rather obvious—if somewhat mixed— clues, in both his actions and his writings.

• It is true that at his inauguration as the first President of the United States, Washington extemporaneously appended the words "So help me God!" to the oath of office.
  However, in none of his speeches, letters, or other writings, did he ever allude to personal belief in the Christian faith.  Indeed, when pressed directly, he purposefully evaded the issue.
• It is true that Washington regularly attended Episcopal services with his wife.
  However, he always exited the church prior to the sacrament of communion.  When questioned about this by the rector, Washington simply declined to attend all further church services at which the Eucharist would be celebrated.
• It is true that, on his deathbed, Washington asked of his family "to spend his last hour with his Maker."
  However, he refused to have a minister in attendance.

Whatever God it might have been that Washington worshipped, it was evidently not one that approved of traditional Christian practices.

Oscar Wilde
(1854-1900)
Irish actor and playwright

"When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers."

Frank Lloyd Wright
(1869-1959)
American architect

"I believe in God, only I spell it 'N-A-T-U-R-E'."

The foregoing small sampling of freethinkers is presented, not to claim that all great minds are opposed to conventional religious belief (for that would be just as dishonest as claiming the opposite), but rather to reveal a considerable diversity of opinion among noted thinkers, leaders, innovators, patriots, and humanitarians, which many religious apologists would prefer not come to our attention.