Greatest Freethinker

[Quixote1818]

It was a very tough call on who to include and I am sure I will get many posts asking why I left out this person or that person. If you feel like I left out an important person, then make your case below.


Some other incredible Free-Thinkers, just to name a few:


Francois-Marie Voltaire
Ethan Allen
Isaac Asimov
Sir Alfred Jules Ayer
Clara Barton
Alexander Graham Bell
Oliver Wendell Homes
John C. Calhoun
Voltarine DeCleyre
John Stuart Mill
Benjamin Franklin
Margaret Mead
Kurt Vonnegut
Charles Dickens
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Dorothea Dix
Thomas Alva Edison
Sigmund Freud
Robert Frost
Mohandas Gandhi
David Hume
Huxley
Carl Gustav Jung
John Locke
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
James Madison
George Mason
Madalyn Muray O'Hair
John Adams
Thomas Paine
Sir Karl Popper
James W. Prescott
Joseph Priestley
Bertrand Russell
Carl Sagan
George Bernard Shaw
Percy Bysshe Shelley
George H. Smith
Ingersoll

[WritingIsMyReligion]

1. All wicked awesome...

...but I went with Darwin. :D

[silverweb]

2. What's the point?

Each had a unique point of view to offer and each is important in an individual way. I don't see any point in trying to rank them, but would like to appreciate them all.

[Quixote1818]

17. Umm, because it's fun?

Does it have to have a point other than being fun to see who does the best? This gives people a chance to voice their opinion on their favorite Freethinker, thats all.

This is an Existentialist poll with no point and that is what is great about it. :beer:

[silverweb]

21. Okay.

I'll pass, then. Must be my noncompetitive nature showing. :shrug:

Have fun.

[Quixote1818]

35. Come on, you have to have a favorate! nt

[skooooo]

3. i voted darwin..

...just because his theories were such a radical change from the status quo.

(But I was tempted to vote Twain.)

[WritingIsMyReligion]

5. Agreed. n/t

[Blue_Tires]

14. actually, i would say that

Martin Luther was the biggest (relatively speaking) status-quo challenger of any era, considering that NO ONE in that time dared go against the church's business affairs

another that belongs on the list is confucious (sp?)

[skooooo]

26. Hmm, well Luther..

..challenged the teachings of the Church, but Darwin did that AND added to science in a major way.

(just discussing, not trying to argue with you...)

[TerdlowSmedley]

4. Lenny Bruce

[DemocratSinceBirth]

6. John Stuart Mill

Has there ever been a better argument for freedom than Mill's On Liberty...

[melody]

12. I agree - I'd vote John Stuart Mill, too

[SofaKingLiberal]

7. George Bush isn't on the list?

:shrug:

edit -:sarcasm:

[jobycom]

9. Free thinker, not free of all thought.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

18. LMAO!

:rofl:

[jobycom]

8. Throw in Thomas Abelard

[Taxloss]

10. I vote Darwin

But I'm disappointed MB wasn't included.

[eallen]

11. David Hume and Bertrand Russell top all those listed in the poll.

Jefferson was the greatest statesman, and Darwin the greatest scientist, of the freethinkers listed. But you asked who was the greatest freethinker, which I can only interpret as most advancing thought on philosophical issues about religion and god. Hume and Russell. No doubt about it.

[Quixote1818]

22. I decided to include David Hume

nt

[Bok_Tukalo]

13. Alexis de Tocqueville

<ope>

[Quixote1818]

36. Fill me in

I don't know a thing about her.

[coffeenap]

15. Eleanor Roosevelt? nt

[riverwalker]

16. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull n/t

[Quixote1818]

27. I would be interested in finding out more about them

Do you have any information?
Thanks

[Quixote1818]

38. How about Chief Seattle?

One of his speeches has received a tremendous amount of attention in various Free Thought publications.

[Zenlitened]

19. I demand a re-vote!

You left Kurt Vonnegut off the list! :D

[melody]

20. John Adams certainly had among the greatest vision and conviction, imo

None of those people are slouches, though, and I'd add John Stuart Mill and Margaret Mead. If they don't have to be dead, I'd add Robert Anton Wilson to the list.

[melody]

25. Oh and... oh, hell, I've got too many to write in...

[opihimoimoi]

23. George CARLIN

[DemocratSinceBirth]

24. Where's Rousseau?

eom

[Quixote1818]

28. Jean Jacques Rousseau is in now

Ingersoll wasn't moving

[DemocratSinceBirth]

31. My Favorite Philosophers

Marx-Rousseau-Burke-Mill


Not necessarily in that order...

[Nay]

29. What about Robert Ingersoll, who galvanized tens of thousands

of people in the 1880's with his wonderful speeches?

[Quixote1818]

33. I actually had Ingersoll on the poll but to my surprise he wasn't

getting any votes.

[Qibing Zero]

43. I for sure would have voted for him. ;) nt

[melody]

34. He was on my endless list, too

There really are too many people to write down in one box.

Thank heavens, since our lock-box-thinker cup runneth over in the modern age.

[Quixote1818]

37. I wish I had at least five more slots

Their are several I feel should be in their but their is just not enough room.

[JohnLocke]

30. John Locke.

The first modern liberal.

[Quixote1818]

32. I was on the edge with John Locke because he influenced

Thomas Jefferson and many of the Founding Fathers. I probably should have put him in.

[Gabi Hayes]

40. ''Immanuel Kant was a real pissant

Who was very rarely stable......''

http://www.library.adelaide.edu.au/guide/hum/philosophy/philos_song.html

[FM Arouet666]

39. Francois-Marie Voltaire

or FM Arouet pen name Voltaire. Just saw his tomb in Paris last month. I made a point of seeing Voltaire, Galileo (in Florence), and Jim Morrison in Pere Lachaise, Paris. :evilgrin:

[SomewhereOutThere424]

41. I like them all, but I'd also add

George Fox, the founder of the quakers. I know a lot of people don't like the quakers, but what the founder stood for was also what Martin Luther stood for (not MLK, but the one who stood against the catholic church). Both were men who of their time it was very hazerdous to stand against the church, but promoted ideas of breaking away from a mainstream corrupt way of looking at a religion, and getting people to open their mind to greater truths.

I think the world needs a few Martin Luthers and George Fox's in this day and age (if not to mention just about everyone mentioned on that list or by other DUers. Definately another Martin Luther King JR would be another good one to have again in this day and age).

[Quixote1818]

48. Wasn't George Fox from England?

It seems to me he had some influence on the founders of the Christ Unity Church? A very liberal Christian church. I think I read about him in Unity's magazine once. He sounded amazing!

[Warren DeMontague]

42. Robert Anton Wilson n/t

[Az]

44. Tuff call but had to go with Twain

Darwin, Jefferson, etc. all great thinkers. But Twain had a unique dialog with the people and was a conduit to all manners of thought.

[Quixote1818]

47. Huck Fin was an absolute MASTERPIECE!!!!

I love the part where Huck thinks he has to turn in Jim or he may go to hell for protecting a slave. Stuck between a rock and a hard place he abandons all his Religious indoctrination and in perhaps the greatest moment in the history of literature Huck Fin leaves us with a line similar to this: "It's either turn in Jim or go to hell". He pauses for a few moments and thinks to himself "I guess I choose Hell."

This kid who has grown to know Jim and love him as a friend who has hopes and dreams and loves his family and is as human or more human than most white folks he knows breaks away from all the crap society has taught him and listens to his heart and soul for truth. What a brilliant and beautiful book that did so much for race relations as well as acceptance of free-thought and liberalism!

Twain is right their at the top with me. I am kind of torn between him, Jefferson and Emerson.

[psychopomp]

45. Socrates n/t

[psychopomp]

46. Jesus of Nazereth n/t