It was on this date, June 19, 1947, that novelist Salman Rushdie was born Ahmed Salman Rushdie in Bombay, India. Rushdie was born into a Muslim family of Kashmiri descent and the family name was chosen by Salman’s father as a tribute to Islamic scholar Averroes or Ibn Rushd. He was educated in Mumbai and […]

It was on this date, June 14, 1928, that Argentine-born Marxist revolutionist, physician and military leader Che Guevara was born Ernesto Guevara (Lynch) in Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina. He grew up in a family which already had leftist leanings, but which also valued education: Guevara’s reading list not only included Karl Marx but William Faulkner, […]

It was on this date, June 4, 1945, that American writer and independent scholar Susan Jacoby was born. A journalist for the Washington Post and other publications for over 25 years, and author of the Post’s weekly column, “The Spirited Atheist,” Jacoby has authored the 1984 Pulitzer Prize finalist Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge, […]

W.P. Kinsella (1935) It was on this date, May 25, 1935, that Canadian novelist W.P. Kinsella was born William Patrick Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. A writer of baseball fiction, Kinsella's bestselling 1982 novel, Shoeless Joe, was made into the very successful 1989 motion picture Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones. Kinsella […]

Having “little taste for the otherworldly speculations of dogmatic theology,” Wagner wrote his most powerful music in his “Ring” years, when he was an Atheist.

In an earlier age, a Deist of Pope's beliefs would have been tried and either burned or hanged for impiety. Today, no longer having the power to do that, they embrace him as a "Catholic poet."

Mill said he believed in a "probable God," or a "limited liability God," but disbelieved in miracles and immortality.

"I think of myself as an agnostic, but an agnostic is really a cowardly atheist," said Terkel.

“God was invented to explain mystery,” says Feynman. “Now, when you finally discover how something works, you don't need him anymore.”

Marcus Aurelius (121) It was on this date, April 26, year 121, the 16th Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was born Marcus Annius Verus, the son of Annius Verus and nephew of Emperor Antoninus Pius, who adopted him in 138. He became consul in 140, held various public offices between 140 and 161 and, as […]