REV. ART'S ATHEIST PIN-UPS!

MICKY DOLENZ - ACTOR-SINGER-DRUMMER-PRODUCER

MICKEY DOLENZ (shown, right end, with Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones, peter Tork) began his show business career in 1956 (with bleached hair) when he starred in a children’s show called Circus Boy under the name Mickey Braddock. In the show he played an orphaned boy who is the water boy for the elephants in his uncle’s one-ring circus at the turn of the 20th Century. The program ran for three years, after which Dolenz made sporadic appearances on network TV shows and pursued his education. He also played with a couple of obscure rock and roll bands. In 1965 Dolenz was cast in the television sitcom The Monkees and became the drummer and lead vocalist for the band created for the show. He wrote a few of the band’s songs as well as providing the lead vocals for such hits as "Last Train to Clarksville" and "I'm a Believer".

Micky Dolenz, Producer

In the September 6, 2000 edition of The Onion A.V. Club titled "Is There A God?", celebrities were asked the question. Dolenz was among those asked.

Micky Dolenz is a producer and founding member of The Monkees.

The Onion: Is there a God?

Micky Dolenz: No. God is a verb, not a noun.

ANI DiFRANCO - SINGER-SONGWRITER-ACTIVIST

PICTURED WITH LEGENDARY FOLK SINGER-ACTIVIST BRUCE "UTAH" PHILLIPS

Celebrity Atheists
ANI DiFRANCO is a popular folk and rock artist who also runs her own record label, Righteous Babes Records. In the March 13, 2000 issue of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, columnist Jim Walsh interviewed Difranco. Here is an excerpt:

Q: What song proves to you that there is a God?

Ani: "I'm an atheist, for Chrissake!"
The full interview may be found at Pioneer Planet

"I'm an atheist ... how unfortunate it is to assign responsibility to the higher up for justice amongst people." - [from an interview with Matthew Rothschild] (The Progressive, May 2000)

From an 09-Oct-2002 Onion AV Club article titled Is There A God?:

Singer, songwriter, guitarist, label mogul, and rock icon Ani DiFranco just released a live double album called So Much Shouting / So Much Laughter.

The Onion: Is there a God?

Ani DiFranco: Well, it depends on how you mean. In my book, no. I guess the quick answer would be "no" for me. I think, whatever my spiritual leanings are, that the deities are many and that we possess them. I do not assign responsibility to a higher being. I think that we're responsible to each other, and God is a metaphor.

RICHARD DAWKINS - ZOOLOGIST-WRITER-ACTIVIST

Professor Richard Dawkins FRS is  Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford and also a British Humanists Assn. Vice-President. His published works include The Selfish Gene, Unweaving the Rainbow, and many more, including the current bestseller - The God Delusion.



Richard Dawkins is currently the Most Famous Atheist in the world! He demands that scientists and other rational people stop waffling and accept the lack of evidence for religious claims and draw the obvious conclusions: there is no god, and religion is a pack of lies. Some quotes:

Let's be less respectful, or less automatically respectful, of somebody's view just because it's a religious view, let's treat somebody's religious views exactly the same way we treat their political views. If somebody says they're a Communist or a high Tory, and we wish to attack the fact that they're a high Tory or a Communist we don't feel any inhibition against doing so. But we do feel inhibition against attacking their religious views, and we shouldn't.

Religions do make claims about the universe - the same kinds of claims that scientists make, except they're usually false.

The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

The trouble is that God in this sophisticated, physicist's sense bears no resemblance to the God of the Bible or any other religion. If a physicist says God is another name for Planck's constant, or God is a superstring, we should take it as a picturesque metaphorical way of saying that the nature of superstrings or the value of Planck's constant is a profound mystery. It has obviously not the smallest connection with a being capable of forgiving sins, a being who might listen to prayers, who cares about whether or not the Sabbath begins at 5pm or 6pm, whether you wear a veil or have a bit of arm showing; and no connection whatever with a being capable of imposing a death penalty on His son to expiate the sins of the world before and after he was born.

The survival value of the god meme in the meme pool results from its great psychological appeal. It provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next. The 'everlasting arms' hold out a cushion against our own inadequacies which, like a doctor's placebo, is none the less effective for being imaginary. These are some of the reasons why the idea of God is copied so readily by successive generations of individual brains. God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture."  [from The Selfish Gene]

MARIE CURIE - RESEARCH CHEMIST-NOBEL LAUREATE

Celebrity Atheists

Marie Curie (Polish: Maria Skłodowska-Curie, November 7, 1867 – July 4, 1934) was a chemist, pioneer in the early field of radiology and a two-time Nobel laureate. She also became the first woman ever appointed to teach at the Sorbonne.

She was born in Warsaw, Poland and spent her early years there, but in 1891 at age 24 moved to France to study science in Paris. She obtained all her higher degrees and conducted her scientific career there and became a naturalized French citizen. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw.

Despite being raised as a Catholic, she became a declared atheist.

PHYLLIS DILLER - COMEDIAN-ACTRESS-AUTHOR

From CelebAtheists

An article by Graydon Royce in the January 1, 1999 edition of the Star Tribune newspaper extracts some odd quotes from the new book Predictions for the Next Millennium: Thoughts on the 1,000 Years Ahead from Today's Celebrities by David Kristof and Todd Nickerson.

The interesting part of this article is the prediction for the year 3000 by Phyllis Diller:

"The constants all through the centuries will be the same; wine, women and song. Other than that, life will be very different technologically. In the year 3000 the universe will be expanding as it will forever, infinitely. We will probe outer space but never find life as evolutionized as ours. We were not created by a deity. We created the deity on OUR image." (Emphasis in the original as an underlined word) "Life began on this planet when the first amoeba split. Mankind will still be seeking God, not accepting that God is a spirit; can't see it, touch it, only feel it. It's called LOVE." [Phyllis Diller, July 17, 1997]

The contributor notes, "I found it somewhat ambiguous but nonetheless, had no idea that Phyllis was this heavy!" --MMcC

28 Dec 2001 - Adam Carley provides the following update on Diller:

In the November 2001 Issue of the AIDS magazine a&u, Phyllis Diller is interviewed, and talks about her own beliefs and Bob Hope's. The magazine says the "complete" interview is on their website, www.aumag.org, but it appears to be under renovation.

Here is text from the article: (p. 40-41)

How does she (Phyllis Diller) visualize the hereafter?

"There isn't any, you dingbat!" she replies as she lets out that legendary, raucous laugh: Ahhha... Ha... Ha... Ha... Haaah.

This is it, baby! Enjoy, carefully! Religion is such a medieval idea. Don't get me started. I have thought about every facet of religion and I can't buy any of it."

She pauses and with a subtle smile continues:

"So God made man in His own image? It's just the other way around. Man made God in his own image."

Diller's on a religion roll. "Ah... it's all about money."

GEORGE CARLIN - HUMORIST-WORDSMITH

Celeb Atheists

George Carlin has said many times that he is an atheist and is very critical of the religious through his humor, often directed at Catholics. Onstage, he has stated that "religion is just mind control."

During an August 1995 appearance on Tom Snyder's late-night CBS talk program, Carlin was responding to a caller during the show and elaborately described and defended his non-belief in a "man in the sky" who tells you "where you shouldn't put your hands."

Carlin was profiled in the New York Times: George Carlin, comedian. Attended Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx, but left during his sophomore year in 1952 and never went back to school. Before that he attended a Catholic grammar school, Corpus Christi, which he called "an experimental school."

"I credit that eight years of grammar school with nourishing me in a direction where I could trust myself and trust my instincts. They gave me the tools to reject my faith. They taught me to question and think for myself and to believe in my instincts to such an extent that I just said, 'This is a wonderful fairy tale they have going here, but it's not for me."' -[New York Times, August 20, 1995, p. 17]

Carlin was interviewed in the March/April 1997 issue of Mother Jones. He said, "The two big mistakes were the belief in a sky god -- that there's a man in the sky with 10 things he doesn't want you to do and you'll burn for a long time if you do them -- and private property, which I think is at the core of our failure as a species. That's the source of my indignations, my dissatisfactions, however it comes out on stage. I feel betrayed by the people I'm part of, these creatures, these magnificent creatures."

In the September 6, 2000 edition of The Onion A.V. Club titled "Is There A God?", celebrities were asked the question. Carlin was among those asked.

The Onion: Is there a God?

George Carlin: No. No, there's no God, but there might be some sort of an organizing intelligence, and I think to understand it is way beyond our ability. It's certainly not a judgmental entity. It's certainly not paternalistic and all these qualities that have been attributed to God. It's probably a dispassionate... That's why I say, "Suppose He doesn't give a shit? Suppose there is a God but He just doesn't give a shit?" That's the kind of thing that might be at work.

CARLIN on "Bullshit and Praying to God or Joe Pesci"...
(George says so far it's 50/50.)
Be sure to check out his official website

GEORGE CLOONEY - ACTOR-PRODUCER-DIRECTOR-ACTIVIST

From CelebAtheists

In a September 28, 1997 special to the Washington Post, writer Sharon Waxman profiles Clooney in a piece titled 'George Clooney, Uncowled'. Clooney talks of his current success (in NBC's E.R. and as Batman) and his future...

"The way you want to do it is like Cary Grant. Have a successful career, then in 1966 . . . decide you're looking too old, leave the movies and never look back. Then at 80 years old have a stroke and drop dead. That's perfect.

"I don't believe in Heaven and Hell," he says. "I don't know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I won't allow this life -- the only thing I know to exist -- to be wasted."

Then George Clooney gets into his beetle-black, turbo-charged Porsche convertible. Puts on silver-rimmed shades. Tips the attendant five bucks. And roars off into the blinding, midday Hollywood glare.

FREDERICK DOUGLAS - ESCAPED SLAVE-ORATOR-WRITER-POLITICAL LEADER

"I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs."
[Frederick Douglass]

"I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the South is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes-- a justifier of the most appalling barbarity, a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds, and a dark shelter under which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. Where I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me...I...hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land."
[Frederick Douglass, "After the Escape"]

"Once, in a heated controversy over the wisdom of giving the
Bible to slaves, he asserted that it would be 'infinitely
better to send them a pocket compass and a pistol."
[Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass]

The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors.... For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Welcome atheism! Welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by these Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done!
[Frederick Douglass, "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro"]

Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
[Frederick Douglass, quoted from the Civil Disobedience Manual]

In regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us.... I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! ... And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! ... Your interference is doing him positive injury.
[Frederick Douglass, having been asked how the country could help Blacks, "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro"]

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them . . ."
[Frederick Douglass, 1857]

WILLIAM B. DAVIS - ACTOR-ACTING SCHOOL DIRECTOR

(Da Rev is the original contributor of this profile to the Celebrity Atheists Website)

William B. Davis portrayed a major recurring character on the X-Files television series called 'Cancer Man' or 'Cigarette-smoking Guy' because of his chainsmoking of cigarettes.

In a May 15, 1997 Rolling Stone, he is interviewed by Anthony Bozza and is asked about whether he has a belief in UFOs. Davis answers "No, I'm a skeptic."
He continues, "I think we live in a very barren universe. Our task is essentially existential. If we're going to have any meaning in this universe, we have to make it for ourselves. It's not going to come from outside."

He discussed the X-Files finale of the previous season, which was based on Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. In particular, he points to the similarity between the philosophy of the Church and the philosophy of Cancer Man, that is, "We'll control the world for the sake of the world, because [people] can't look after themselves."

--AHi

ASIA CARRERA - PORN STAR-MENSA INDUCTEE

)___=> Of course angels can smoke, Silly - THEY'RE DEAD!!"
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

When Asia began performing, she took books on physics with her to the set.

"I've always been an atheist," says Asia. "Science explains everything. There is no meaning in life except to be the best at something. If only I could be the best at something, perhaps my parents would love me.

"Religion is silly," says Asia. "When you're dead, you turn into a source for future flowers and plants.... I don't know what's on the other side of death and it scares me. Darkness and nothingness scare me. I'd rather face the miseries of my day-to-day life than turn into darkness.

(Asia Carrera is a porn-star; she's a member of the national org. MENSA for folks with high IQs; she insists rumors of any involvement with so-called Satanism is not true.)