Wednesday, April 29, 2009

GHASTLY MISTAKE

agrasen

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fw: [prohindu] Re: [Hindu] Ghastly mistake : Barbarians were given the wand of magic - who wrote bible

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bharat J. Gajjar Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 4:35 PM


----- Original Message -----
From: govindan menon
To: prohindu-owner@yahoogroups.com ; yeshu2004@yahoo.com
Cc: sanghshakha@yahoogroups.com ; Arya youth group ; prohindu@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 11:02 AM
Subject: RE: [prohindu] Re: [Hindu] Ghastly mistake : Barbarians were given the wand of magic - who wrote bible





Please read this piece of informatiom. I do not blame Jesus. His followers are Barbarians. If the condition of nuns are like this what about ordinary christians.
SUFFERING IN SILENCE

Cardinal says nuns harassed in convents

Ananthakrishnan G | TNN

Thiruvananthapuram: Early last year, a study by the Catholic church found that 25% of the nuns in Kerala were unhappy with life inside the four walls of a convent. More recently, a former nun dropped a bombshell revealing in a book about sexual abuse and mental harassment she suffered in the order. Now, there’s further confirmation of their misery and it comes from the leader of India’s archbishops.

Cardinal Varkey Vithayathil, who is president of Catholic Bishops Council of India, says the nuns are humiliated by priests and they live in fear.

The cardinal’s views have appeared in his biography, much like the nun’s own. If Sister Jesmi’s book was called ‘Amen! Autobiography of a nun’, Vithayathil’s book is titled ‘Straight from the heart’. The cardinal tells his biographer Paul Thelakat, the spokesperson of Syro-Malabar Church, that the time has come to free the nuns from the “pitiable situation’’ they are in. “I would say to a great extent our nuns are not emancipated women. They are often kept under submission by the fear of revenge by priests. That’s how the priests get away with whatever humiliation they heap upon them. It is a pitiable situation from which somebody has to liberate them,’’ says the 82-year-old cardinal.

“A big complaint of our nuns is that the diocesan priests are treating them like servants, making them wash their clothes, prepare their food, wash the churches, etc and that too without getting paid. These are all unjust ways of treating the women religious”.

About the criticism against the clergy in the controversial Sister Abhaya murder, the senior priest says he believed that the Church had not tried to hide anything in the case. “The Church does not want to protect anyone.’’

Vithayathil admits that there has been erosion in values in religious life. “I think asceticism has gone out of religious life.’’ He also points to the growing gap between the clergy and laity.

Also, in what would be music to the ears of the Sangh Parivar, the cardinal lends legitimacy to arguments against religious conversion. “I must add that there is some truth in their contention that certain Christian groups are going about making mass conversions without any real conversion of heart.’’

He says the Church believes in admitting to its fold “people who have belief in the Church’’ and not in mass conversion of people “who have no faith and become Christians only nominally’’. He, however, slams anti-conversion laws, which he says, have banned even legitimate conversion.








--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: yeshu2004@yahoo.com
CC: sanghshakha@yahoogroups.com; aryayouthgroup@yahoogroups.com; prohindu@yahoogroups.com
From: hind1901@yahoo.com
Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:57:59 -0700
Subject: [prohindu] Re: [Hindu] Ghastly mistake : Barbarians were given the wand of magic - who wrote bible




You dumb ass Christian Slave . shut your propaganda.
.Bloody Bible is bed time story book written by many propaganda spreaders.

every para of your email is " hindu fucked other , killed next , sucked the third one "

what the bloody MC , BC murderous mercenaries so called christians
has done over 2000 yrs .
they burned the towns
destroyed the temples
crushed the libraries
poisioned the wells
spill blood in rivers

killed fathers ,
maimed brothers ,
raped daughters ,
Slaved mothers.


then then baptized the borns from the rapes and called

--- On Sat, 4/25/09, yeshu rathenam wrote:

From: yeshu rathenam
Subject: Re: [Hindu] Ghastly mistake : Barbarians were given the wand of magic - who wrote bible
To: hindu-dharma@yahoogroups.com, "ss" , "s" , "prodh"
Cc: hind1901@yahoo.com, "sang shak"
Date: Saturday, April 25, 2009, 5:48 AM


The incident of the Ganga coming to earth alone is enough to prove the Bible is a historic, reliable book compared to the fables and stories in Hinduism.
Bhageeratha’s effort in bringing the Ganga to the earth is an example of the legendary nature of Hindu scriptures. We are told that Sumathi, wife of King Sagara, gave birth to not two or three but 60, 000 sons. Legends can give incredible numbers. Sagara had another wife, Keshini. Keshini gave birth to Asamanja. Asamanja’s son’s name is Amsuman. King Sagara performed the Aswamedha Yaga. Gods should help and bless Sagara for te Yaga. But a God like Indra stole the horse of Sagara while he was performing the Yaga. Indra made another trick also. He wanted to put the blame on Kapila for stealing the horse. Seeing the horse tethered beside sage Kapila, the 60,000 sons of Sagara accused Kapila for stealing the horse. Kapila burnt Sagara’s 60,000 sons in his anger. Kapila ia also shown as god Narayana. It is a pity Narayana did not know the teft of another god, Indra. Kapila then told Amsuman that only the water of the Ganga can save the souls of Sagara’s 60,000 sons. Amsuman’s attempt to bring the Ganga to the earth from the celestial world was not a success. How did Amsuman enter the celestial world? In which planet did he find water? So Amsuman’s grandson Bhageeratha performed rigorous peance. Another god Brahma was pleased with the penance of Bhageeratha and told him that the earth could not withstand the force of the Ganga if she descended to the earth and advised him to meet another god, Siva, who could bear the force of the Ganga . So Bhageeratha had to continue his penance which brought Siva before him. Siva agreed to bear the Ganga on his head. However, Ganga wanted to knock down Siva on her way to the earth. Siva understood hr wicked intentions, and trapped her in his matted locks. Look at the primitive imagination of storytellers! So Bhageeratha had to make renewed efforts to get the Ganga to the earth. He prayed to Siva and Ganga was released from his matted locks. But the Ganga on her way destroyed the sacrificial fire of the sage Jahnu. Jahnu in his anger swallowed the Ganga . Again look at the primitive fancy of the storyteller. The Ganga was described by Braham as a forceful, torrential and stormy river which could be controlled only by Siva. Now an ordinary sage swallows it as a glass of water! Now Bhageeratha had to pray to sage Jahnu to forgive Ganga and release her from his stomach. Jahnu released poor Ganga from his stomach. Bhageeratha directed Ganga over the ashes of Sagara’s 60,000 sons and they gained salvation.




Even the Arabian fables like Sindbad, Aladdin etc., are more realistic than Bhageeratha's Ganga's arrival to earth.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Vinayak Bhatia
To: ss ; s ; prodh ; hd
Sent: Saturday, April 25, 2009 1:50:47 AM
Subject: [Hindu] Ghastly mistake : Barbarians were given the wand of magic - who wrote bible


http://www.mondovis ta.com/noah. story.html


Did the Hindus Help Write the Bible
and Give the Ancient Mexicans Their Religious Traditions



By Gene D. Matlock, B.A., M.A.
When I was a child, my parents were, for a while, members of a Fundamentalist Christian sect called The Nazarenes. It was not a fun church. I escaped from it at age twelve, just when puberty and interest in girls set in.
Though they tried to make me stay in that church, Mom and Dad could not weaken my determination to leave it. However, I did enjoy a certain short song that all the Nazarene children had to learn by heart: Jesus Loves Me, This I know, for the Bible Tells Me So! Had I known then what I know now, I would've sung it this way: The Bible Comes From India, This I Know, for the Hindu Vedas and Puranas Tell Me So!
The following account, taken from the Hindu Matsya Purana (Fish Chronicle), describes some of the people who, after a severe flood, left India for other parts of the world:

To Satyavarman, that sovereign of the whole earth, were born three sons: the eldest Shem; then Sham; and thirdly, Jyapeti by name.
They were all men of good morals, excellent invirtue and virtuous deeds, skilled in the use of weapons to strike with, or to be thrown; brave men, eager for victory in battle.
But Satyavarman, being continually delighted with devout meditation, and seeing his sons fit for dominuion, laid upon them the burdens of government.
Whilst he remained honouring and satisfying the gods, and priests, and kine, one day, by the act of destiny, the king, having drunk mead
Became senseless and lay asleep naked. Then, was he seen by Sham, and by him were his two brothers called:
To whom he said, "What now has befallen? In what state is this our sire?" By these two he was hidden with clothes, and called to his senses again and again.
Having recovered his intellect, and perfectly knowing what had passed, he cursed Sham, saying, "Thou shalt be the servant of servants."
And since thou wast a laugher in their presence, from laughter thou shalt acquire a name. Then he gave Sham the wide domain on the south of the snowy mountains.
And to Jyapeti he gave all on the north of the snowy mountains; but he, by the power of religious contemplation, attained supreme bliss...

If you have read the Jewish or Christian bible, can you guess who Satyavarman, Shem, Sham, and Jyapeti were? Were Satyavarman and his sons our Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japhet? The Old Testament tells us that Satyavarman (Noah) got drunk by imbibing wine made from his vines in what is now Armenia, near Mt. Ararat. But I'm absolutely sure that my Hindu readers would know from where this story originated.
In Sanskrit, Satya-Varman means "Protector of Truth; Protector of the Righteous." Varman often occurs at the end of the names of Kshatriyas (Hereditary Hindu Leadership Caste)... Shem/Sem means "An Assembly." According to White racists(s), Ham was turned black as punishment for lacking in respect for his father. The Christian Fundamentalists insist that Sham fathered the Africans. It was this superstition that helped perpetuate the institution of slavery in our antebellum (pre-Civil War) South. Jyapeti became the "God of the Sun" or the Christian, Jewish, Assyrian, Greek and Roman Jupiter and Jahve or Jehovah. For the Hindus, he is Dyaus Pitar, mankind's first known manifestation of God Shiva..
Satyavarman told Sham that he would acquire a name from laughter. Two of the two tribes descended from Sham were the Ha-Ha and Ho-Ho. They later migrated to other parts of the world. Ha-Ha(am)/Ham, meaning "The Ha people," were among the founders of Egypt. Other descendants of Sham, the Hohokam, settled in the American Southwest. Kam derives from the Sanskrit Gana, meaning "Tribe." Hohokam = "The Ho-Ho Tribe." Notice that both groups were desert people. Another tribe that first settled in the American Southwest were the Anazazi, known in ancient India as Anaza-zi (The Undestroyed and Living God Shiva).
The Jewish Noah's Ark legend appears to be a mixture of three Hindu flood myths: Satyavarman, Vaivasvata, and Nahusha. The Mahabharata states:

"The progeny of Adamis and Hevas (Adam and Eve) soon became so wicked that they were no longer able to coexist peacefully. Brahma therefore decided to punish his creatures "Vishnu" [right] ordered Vaivasvata to build a ship for himself and his family. When the ship was ready, and Vaivasvata and his family were inside with the seeds of every plant and a pair of every species of animal, the big rains began and the rivers began to overflow."
Not only are the names of the main players in the Noah story the same as the family of Satyavarman, but, like the Vaivasvata part that the Old Testament authors plagiarized from the Mahabharata, the rains fell for forty days and forty nights.
According to the Vaivasvata story, Shem's name is Manu; Ham or Sham is Nabhanedistha; Japhet is Yayati or Dyaus-Pitar (Jupiter or the Hebrew Jehovah).
The third "Noah" was a deity named Dyaus-Nahusha. We Westerners call him Dionysius or Bacchus. Bacchus derives from the Sanskrit Bagha, meaning "God the Androgynous. " When a great flood destroyed the world, Nahusha left India in order to restore civilization to mankind. He also left India for another reason which I'll relate in another part of this article. One of the places where he stopped was a small island city state called Sancha Dwipa (Sancha Island), where the citizens built their homes out of seashells.
The Hindu historian Paramesh Choudhury wrote in his book, The India We Have Lost, that Sancha Dwipa was an Egyptian island. However, there is a small Mexican island town just off the Pacific coast in Nayarit state, Mexcaltitan, where the preconquest citizens built their homes out of seashells. According to Toltec mythology, Mexcaltitan [right] was the Mexican deity Quetzalcoatl' s port of entry into Mexico. In Hindu mythology, Nahusha and God Vishnu are in close association. Vishnu is often pictured as floating on a raft of snakes [ left]. He also holds a conch hand in his hand. The Mexican deity Quetzalcoatl was also pictured as floating on a raft of snakes. Conch shells adorned his temples. One drawing of Quetzalcoatl shows him wearing a necklace of conch shells.
But the Mexican anomalies don't stop here.
The pre-Aztec Toltecs were also called Nahoa and Nahua. Nahua tribes did, and still do, extend even into South America. Since the Toltecs could not pronounce "V," I ask myself whether the words Nahoa and Nahua derive from the Sanskrit Nava, meaning "Ship; Boat." The word "Toltec" also appears to derive from the Sanskrit word for "Descendant of the Upper World Nation": Tal-Toka. Quetzalcoatl' s original homeland was Tlapallan (See my article about Atlantis). This could derive from the Sanskrit Tala-Pala (The Upper World Land of Pala), another name of the Indian state of Bihar. Even the stories of the lives of Dyaus-Nahusha and Quetzalcoatl are similar. Dyaus-Nahusha was banished from India for getting drunk and raping the wife of the legendary Hindu philosopher Agastya. Quetzalcoatl was banished getting drunk and raping his own daughter. I can provide even more proofs that Nahusha and Quetzalcoatl were the same individual. It's easy to prove that India
once colonized Mexico. The hard part is keeping ourselves brainwashed to remain blind to this fact!
More than twenty years ago, when I first started investigating these matters, some Fundamentalist Christians scolded me: "What can you gain by proving that all the religions and cultures of the world copied their religious traditions from the Hindus?"
I answered, "Well, you're always saying that someone should go to India and save the Hindus' poor lost souls. O.K, you win. I'm doing it!"

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

INDIAN PARLIAMENT - the composition!

Bharat J. Gajjar
show details 4:44 PM (1 hour ago) Reply




----- Original Message -----
From: Yashwini1@yahoo.com
To: yashwini1@yahoo.com
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 12:28 PM
Subject: Fwd: About INDIAN parliament




--- On Sun, 4/26/09, bhagavaandaas tyaagi wrote:
From: bhagavaandaas tyaagi
Subject: Fw: about 100 Christians in INDIAN parliament
To: bhagavaandaas@yahoo.ca
Date: Sunday, April 26, 2009, 10:16 AM


MORE THAN 100 Christians in INDIAN parliament-------------------

In our present parliament there are about 100 Christians members with Hindu names. Most of the UPA ministry is of Christian people. As Ambika Sony is Christian. Sardesai is Christian, Naveen Chawla is Christian, jagdish Tytler is Christian and MANY MANY MORE---- there are many many with Christians - names -----and there are many many Muslims also .

In 85 % of HINDUU MAJORITY COUNTRY INDIA ONLY 1/4 ARE HINDUUS AND 3/4 ARE NON HINDUUS------ CHRISTIANS , MUSLIMS , SIKHS , BUDHISTS , JAINS ETC. ETC. Congress is ANTI - HINDUU , ANTI - NATIONAL , GREEDY , INCOMPETENT AND COMMUNAL NOT SECULAR IF SECULAR THEN HINDUUS HAD 85 % SEATS AND JOBS AND MINORITIES SHOULD HAD 15 % SEATS AND JOBS .

HINDUUS SEE YOUR SELF AND WAKE UP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

COULD ANY ONE CAN SUPPLY THE LIST OF NON HINDUU PEOPLE IN INDIAN GOVERNMENT ???? PLEASE DO THAT AND CIRCULATE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! .

Related article :
What's in a Name? @ http://members.tripod.com/indowave/NAMES.html

Sunday, April 26, 2009

FEAR OF DEATH

Dayawanti D'Sa

- Hide quoted text -
Date: Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 7:09 PM
Subject: [OurExtendedUNFamily] *HarmonyofHarmonies* Raising Your Spiritual Consciousness - IV
To: welhamsclassof72 , ourextendedunfamily









---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dayawanti D'Sa
Date: Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 9:06 PM
Subject: *HarmonyofHarmonies* Raising Your Spiritual Consciousness - IV
To: HarmonyofHarmonies@yahoogroups.com






http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/HarmonyofHarmonies/message/17252

Raising Your Spiritual Consciousness - IV
Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj

(cont'd)

Freedom from Fear

Another aspect of spiritual consciousness is freedom from fear. What is it that
most of us fear the most? Most people fear death. They think of death as the end
of their existence. Little do people realize that death is just a transition
from this physical world to another realm of existence. It is only by raising
our consciousness to a spiritual level that we discover that we exist at the
level of the soul even without the physical body.

Saints and mystics have been telling us through the ages that we are soul, a
part of God. This human body is but a covering over the soul. If we can raise
our consciousness we can discover our true identity.

People who have had near-death experiences attest to this truth. Their body
clinically died, and during the time before they were revived, they experienced
their soul going into a region of Light and being met by a Being of Light. They
speak of the wondrous experiences of light and love in the realm beyond.
Accompanying this joy is the freedom from fear of death. Once we experience
ourselves as soul, separate from our physical body, we no longer have to fear
the end of our physical form. We know that we can exist at the level of the
astral plane in an astral body, at the level of the causal plane covered by a
causal body, and as soul in the purely spiritual realms.

Saints who have attained this state faced their final end free of fear. They
accepted their death with confidence and fearlessness because they had already
traversed to the beyond during their lifetime. St. Paul said, "I die daily."
Kabir Sahib has said, "The death of which others are afraid is a source of joy
for me." He had already seen what lies beyond and no longer feared it. People
who have had near-death experiences know the joy and bliss that awaits them
beyond and live out the rest of their lives with confidence and certainty of the
hereafter.

By attaining spiritual consciousness, we too can become fearless for we know
that a beautiful existence awaits us in the beyond.

(cont'd)

Saturday, April 25, 2009

BILL GATESES

: Raising Bill Gates
InboxX

Reply to all
Forward
Reply by chat
Filter messages like this
Print
Add to Contacts list
Delete this message
Report phishing
Report not phishing
Show original
Show in fixed width font
Show in variable width font
Message text garbled?
Why is this spam/nonspam?
Anu Jain to Siddharth, me, Pushpa, mira, Punam
show details 6:54 AM (13 minutes ago) Reply





Raising Bill Gates

By ROBERT A. GUTH
SEATTLE -- Spend time with the family of Bill Gates, and eventually someone will mention the water incident.
The future software mogul was a headstrong 12-year-old and was having a particularly nasty argument with his mother at the dinner table. Fed up, his father threw a glass of cold water in the boy's face.
"Thanks for the shower," the young Mr. Gates snapped.
The incident lives in Gates family lore not just for its drama but also because it was a rare time that Bill Gates Sr., father of his famous namesake, lost his cool. The argument presaged a turning point in the life of a tempestuous boy that would set him on course to become the Bill Gates whom the public knows as co-founder of Microsoft Corp. and the world's richest man.
Behind the Bill Gates success story is the other William Gates. The senior Mr. Gates balanced a family thrown off kilter by a boy who appeared to gain the intellect of an adult almost overnight. He served as a quiet counsel as his son jumped into and thrived in the cutthroat business world. When huge wealth put new pressure on the son, the elder Gates stepped in to start what is now the world's largest private philanthropy.
William H. Gates at his home in the Laurelhurst neighborhood of Seattle, WA.
Bill Gates Sr., 83 years old, is now co-chair of his son's $30 billion philanthropy, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He has avoided the spotlight. The public details of his life include little beyond his official biography at the foundation, which says he was a Seattle lawyer, World War II veteran, nonprofit volunteer and father of three. He has compiled his thoughts on life in a short book to be published next week.
In interviews with The Wall Street Journal, Bill Gates Sr., Bill Gates and their family shared many details of the family's story for the first time, including Bill Gates Jr.'s experience in counseling and how his early interest in computers came about partly as a result of a family crisis. The sometimes colliding forces of discipline and freedom within the clan shaped the entrepreneur's character.
The relationship between father and son entered a new phase when the software mogul began working full-time seven months ago at the Gates Foundation. For the past 13 years, the father has been the sole Gates family member with a daily presence at the foundation, starting it from the basement of his home and minding it while his son finished up his final decade running Microsoft. They now work directly together for the first time.
At six-foot-six, Bill Gates Sr. is nearly a full head taller than his son. He's known to be more social than the younger Bill Gates, but they share a sharp intellect and a bluntness that can come across to some as curt. He isn't prone to introspection and he plays down his role in his son's life.
"As a father, I never imagined that the argumentative, young boy who grew up in my house, eating my food and using my name would be my future employer," Mr. Gates Sr. told a group of nonprofit leaders in a 2005 speech. "But that's what happened."
The first stage -- argumentative young boy -- "started about the time he was 11," Mr. Gates Sr. says in one of a series of interviews. That's about when young Bill became an adult, says Bill Sr., and an increasing headache for the family.
Until that time, the Gates home had been peaceful. Bill Sr. and his wife, Mary, had three children: Kristi; then Bill, born in 1955; and Libby. It was a close family that thrived on competitions -- board games, cards, ping-pong. And on rituals: Sunday dinners at the same time every week, and at Christmas, matching pajamas for every family member.
While very involved in his kids' lives, Mr. Gates Sr. was somewhat distant emotionally, which his children say probably reflects his generation. His stature, combined with a lawyerly bent for carefully choosing his words, also made him intimidating at times. "He'd come home and he'd sit in a chair and eat dinner, but there was never any kind of warm, give-me-a-hug kind of thing," says Kristi Blake, his oldest daughter.

WSJ's Rob Guth speaks to Stacey Delo about his profile of the relationship between Bill Gates Sr. and his son, Bill Gates Jr.
Mr. Gates Sr. left much of the day-to-day parenting to his wife while he was building his career at a Seattle law firm. Daughter of a Seattle banker, Ms. Gates had been an athlete and top student in high school and college, where she met Bill Sr. She became a full-time volunteer and served on corporate boards.
Ms. Gates encouraged her kids to study hard, play sports and take music lessons. (Bill Gates tried the trombone with little success.) And she imparted a discipline that reflected her upbringing in a well-to-do family. She expected her kids to dress neatly, be punctual and socialize with the many adults who visited their home. For the most part, young Bill dutifully abided.
"She was the most engaged parent and she had high expectations of all of us," says Libby Armintrout, Bill's younger sister. "Not just grades and that sort of thing, but how we behaved in public, how we would be socially."
A Battle of Wills
Bill Gates at an early age became a diligent learner. He read the World Book Encyclopedia series start to finish. His parents encouraged his appetite for reading by paying for any book he wanted.
Still, they worried that he seemed to prefer books to people. They tried to temper that streak by forcing him to be a greeter at their parties and a waiter at his father's professional functions.
Then, at age 11, Bill Sr. says, the son blossomed intellectually, peppering his parents with questions about international affairs, business and the nature of life.
"It was interesting and I thought it was great," Mr. Gates Sr. says. "Now, I will say to you, his mother did not appreciate it. It bothered her."
The son pushed against his mother's instinct to control him, sparking a battle of wills. All those things that she had expected of him -- a clean room, being at the dinner table on time, not biting his pencils -- suddenly turned into a big source of friction. The two fell into explosive arguments.
Discuss
· What will be Bill Gates's most lasting legacy?
"He was nasty," Ms. Armintrout says of her brother.
Mr. Gates Sr. played the role of peacemaker. "He'd sort of break them apart and calm things down," says Ms. Blake, the eldest sibling.
The battles reached a climax at dinner one night when Bill Gates was around 12. Over the table, he shouted at his mother, in what today he describes as "utter, total sarcastic, smart-ass kid rudeness."
That's when Mr. Gates Sr., in a rare blast of temper, threw the glass of water in his son's face.
He and Mary brought their son to a therapist. "I'm at war with my parents over who is in control," Bill Gates recalls telling the counselor. Reporting back, the counselor told his parents that their son would ultimately win the battle for independence, and their best course of action was to ease up on him.
Mr. Gates Sr. understood that counsel because of his own childhood, an hour's ferry ride from Seattle in the working-class town of Bremerton. "There wasn't a lot of structure to my growing up," he says. "I had an awful lot of discretion about where I went, what I did, who I did it with."
His mother was doting and easygoing. His sister, his only sibling, was seven years older. And his father was a workaholic who sacrificed child-rearing to work at a furniture store he owned with a partner. "His complete focus was on the store," Bill Sr. says.
Mr. Gates Sr. early on built a life outside of his home. Next door, the Braman family had two boys for him to play with and a father who would become his most important role model.
That man, Dorm Braman, had built his business and would later become a Naval officer, mayor of Seattle and a U.S. assistant secretary of transportation. In the late 1930s, Mr. Braman brought Bill Sr. on family road trips across the country. He was scoutmaster of Bill Sr.'s Boy Scout troop, leading the boys on hikes through the Olympic Mountains and driving them in a beat-up bus to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. The troop spent two years building a log house from Douglas firs they felled themselves. Mr. Braman had "no sense of personal limitations whatsoever," says Mr. Gates Sr.
Bill Sr. and Mary ultimately took a page from that upbringing: They backed off. They enrolled their son in a school that they thought would give him more freedom. That was the private Lakeside School, now known as the place where Bill Gates discovered computers.
Mr. Gates says he began to realize, "'Hey, I don't have to prove my position relative to my parents. I just have to figure out what I'm doing relative to the world.'"
A Rare Independence
From age 13, he was given rare independence. He took off some nights to enjoy free use of the computers at the University of Washington. He spent chunks of time away from home -- much as his dad had done as a kid. He lived for a time in Olympia, where he was a page in the state legislature, and in Washington, D.C. as a Congressional page. During his senior year, he took a break from school to work as a programmer at a power plant in southern Washington. And in what would become his first major collaboration with Paul Allen, his future Microsoft cofounder, Mr. Gates designed the "Traf-O-Data", a device for counting cars traveling over a section of road.
His parents played supporting roles. They acquiesced when Bill quit Harvard and then moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to start Microsoft. It was a tough decision to back.
"Mary and I were both concerned about it -- I think she a bit more than I," Bill Sr. says. "Her expectations and mine were very ordinary expectations of people who have kids in college -- that they get a degree."
The family support was one reason Mr. Gates decided to move Microsoft to Seattle, where he settled into a house not far from his parents. Ms. Gates arranged to have a maid clean her son's house, and made sure he had clean shirts for his big meetings. She also insisted he kept observing the family traditions, including the weekly Sunday dinner at his parents' house.
Mr. Gates Sr., drawing from his own experience as a lawyer guiding small companies, helped find Seattle businesspeople to serve on the Microsoft board. In 1980, Bill Gates brought his father along to dinner to help persuade college friend Steve Ballmer -- now Microsoft's chief executive -- to quit graduate school and join Microsoft. The father's law firm would also end up representing Microsoft, which became the firm's biggest client.
Bill Sr. eased his son's worries about taking Microsoft public when Bill fretted that it would be a distraction for employees. The offering would turn Bill Gates into a billionaire. It also spawned the next challenge for the family.
The Philanthropy Push
After the windfall, Ms. Gates pressed her son to get into philanthropy. At his father's law office late one night, someone present recalls, Bill quarreled with his mother as she urged him to give money away.
"I'm just trying to run my company!" he snapped, says the person in the office at the time. Mr. Gates says that at the time he wasn't opposed to philanthropic work, he just didn't want to be distracted from his duties at Microsoft.
Eventually, she got her son to start a program at Microsoft to raise money for the United Way. He also followed his mother onto the national United Way board in the 1980s.
But as Bill Gates's wealth grew, letters from Seattle-area nonprofits asking for donations piled up. He says he planned to get serious about philanthropy after retiring from Microsoft, or at about 60 years old.
That plan would be fast-tracked after Ms. Gates was diagnosed with a rare form of breast cancer. As she battled the disease, she continued to urge her son to do more philanthropy. Ms. Gates passed away in June 1994.
The day of her funeral, the Gates family had dinner at home. Bill Sr. told his children not to worry about him, saying that he had about 10 good years left in him. He was 70 at the time. Still, after his wife died he was listless.
About six months later, standing in a line for a movie with his son and daughter-in-law, Melinda, the elder Mr. Gates again broached the idea of philanthropy. He suggested he could start sifting through the requests for money and give some out.
A week later, the software mogul set aside about $100 million to create a foundation that his father could run. Bill Gates Sr. later sat at his kitchen table and wrote the first check, $80,000 to a local cancer program.
In the early days, Mr. Gates Sr., who soon remarried, would scribble a few notes on the most-promising requests for donations. He would then put them in a cardboard wine box that he periodically sent to his son's house. The box would come back with Bill Jr.'s responses. Mr. Gates Sr. would then reply to all the grant seekers, sometimes including a $1 million check with little more than a single-page letter of congratulations.
Bill Sr. and a former Microsoft executive managed the foundation, doling out money, overseeing a staff of hundreds and expanding its purview to areas like education and vaccines.
Mr. Gates Sr. says he hasn't lost sight of the fact that he was playing the role of caretaker until his son and daughter-in-law took the helm. And after 53 years, he knows to give his son space.
"He has very fixed ideas of some things," says Mr. Gates Sr. "The dynamic of the family is that you don't cross him on those things, because it's a waste of time."

HARMONY OF HARMONIES III

OurExtendedUNFamily] *HarmonyofHarmonies* Raising Your Spiritual Consciousness - III
InboxX


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dayawanti D'Sa
Date: Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 5:23 AM
Subject: *HarmonyofHarmonies* Raising Your Spiritual Consciousness - III
To: HarmonyofHarmonies@yahoogroups.com


http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/HarmonyofHarmonies/message/17251

Raising Your Spiritual Consciousness - III
Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj
(cont'd)

All-Consciousness

Another aspect of spiritual consciousness is that of all-consciousness or
wisdom. God is all-knowing, all-aware. The life of every soul is known to God,
whether the soul inhabits a human form, a mammal, a bird, a reptile, or souls
who have transcended the physical plane and inhabit higher planes and heaven
realms, such as deceased beings, angels, deities, or even a tiny ant or a single
blade of grass. God created all creation and is fully aware of everyone and
everything. God is aware of every soul that existed from the far distant past
into the unimaginable future.

If we want to get a small glimpse of how this is possible, we need only look to
our primitive technology today. We think we are very advanced, but it is just a
small beginning for what humanity will develop in the future. If we look at the
internet, we find that all information is available to us by logging onto
different sites. The server that hosts all the sites is a storehouse of all the
information on all the sites. By logging on we access all the information we
want. God is like a giant server that hosts all our individual souls or
websites. Thus, all knowledge about us is known to God. God is also able to
simultaneously know what is happening to each of us at every second at the same
time. When we tap into that spiritual consciousness and merge into the ocean of
God, we too have access to all-consciousness. That is why it is often said that
we become conscious co-workers of the divine plan.

We hear of people who have transcended physical consciousness to tap into the
spiritual consciousness. Many of the saints, prophets, and mystics have been
able to read the past of others, or foresee into the future. They can do this
because they are tapping into the level of consciousness known as
all-consciousness. It is said that some of the rishis and seers of the past
could see their past up to one hundred lives back. While doing so can also be
cumbersome and complicate our already complicated lives with even more
relationships, it is possible.

In a way, it is a blessing from God that when we come into this life we forget
our past lives and start anew. If we were to remember our past lives, we would
then be tied to numerous past husbands and wives, children, and families, and it
would be difficult to focus on the relationships we have in this life with whom
we have entered into bonds to learn certain lessons and work out certain
experiences. While at the level of our physical consciousness we may not be
aware of our past lives, our soul at the level of spiritual consciousness and
God knows all of our past.

When we merge in all-consciousness, we also gain a full understanding of
universal laws. We understand that there are different levels of existence. We
find that the physical plane is not the only level of existence. When we become
all-conscious, we become knowledgeable about the astral, causal, and supracausal
planes as well as the purely spiritual realms in which there are no traces of
matter or illusion. We begin to understand the laws of nature. Many of those who
we respect as great inventors, scientists, and pioneers were those who had a
glimpse into hidden truths and were able to bring them forth on this planet.
Some of the greatest inspirational creations were made by people who tapped into
a higher source to bring out beautiful music, art work, architecture, poetry, or
literature. By tapping into our spiritual consciousness, we open up a whole new
world of discovery for ourselves.

(cont'd)

Part I

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=8233&uid=49349582665#/topic.php?uid=49349582665&topic=8208

Part II

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=8233&uid=49349582665#/topic.php?uid=49349582665&topic=8216



__._,_.___
Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic
Messages | Files | Photos | Links | Database | Polls | Members | Calendar
Thank you all for making the online One University - the One group of forums the success that they are today! Thank you for raising your own vibrations and Light Quotient today and bringing in more of the Light to our beautiful planet Earth, thus raising the vibrations of collective mass consciousness! Remember the 100th Monkey Experiment? Everything you do counts! Infinite gratitude. All is well. You are loved. EFT Suggestion: "Even though (state today's problem), I choose to make today an awesome day!"

One_University Group of Forums:

Newsletter
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/In_Joy/
Ezine and Discussion:
Quantum Consciousness, Energy Psychology, Allowing the Flow, Abraham, Manifestation, EnergyFlows with Phi, Golden Mean Ratio, TLR, STLR, Q.I. Protocol, PIVOT, D.E.P.T.H., Kalos, EFT, etc.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LivingFromTheHeartSpace
EFT for Newbies - Tap 'n B Free:
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/EmotionalFreedomTechniques/
Jyoti Meditation - Inner Light and Sound Meditation
Science of Spirituality:
http://health.groups

Friday, April 24, 2009

HOW TO OVERCOME SEXUAL THOUGHTS (KAMA)

gita-talk] How to overcome the sexual thoughts (KAMA)?
Question: How to overcome the sexual thoughts (KAMA)?

Shankar
-------------------------------------------------------
Shree Hari Ram Ram

Prayer to God that was shared by Swamiji ...

O Lord? How do I save myself from thoughts of enjoyment of sensual pleasures? How do I free myself from the world? How do I get inclined towards you? How do I get involved in You and You alone? Let me not go anywhere except to You. Let me be free from the worldly sufferings. Let me not get stuck in the worldly pleasures. I feel myself helpless in renouncing the worldly pleasures. The worldly pleasures, praise and fame seem so pleasing. I do not know how to escape them. I do not know the way out. Have Grace O Lord. O My Lord - I take refuge at Your Feet. I preach to others but cannot free myself from the thoughts and desire for mundane worldly pleasures.

How do I overcome these thoughts of sensual pleasures? Lord, let me have only love for You. I can be free from them only by Your Grace. Let me be immersed in only You. I do not even have a strong enough desire to overcome sense pleasures, and to get engaged in You. I can see the world is full of sorrows but I am still unable to renounce my attachment for it. I am not able to do it - to be free of desires. How should I do it? What should I do? The true longing and want for You is lacking - I do not know why?

You have showered a lot of Grace on me. Due to my conceit and pride I do not realise and recognise it. They are obstacles in my path and can be removed only by Your Grace. Be Gracious enough so that I can take refuge at Your feet. I cannot ask for this from anyone else. I can see only You. Let me be inclined only towards Your Feet. I do not even know how to truly pray. There is no true desire - I am stuck and only You can take me out. I cannot get out by my
strength. Have Grace O Lord.

Good saints have said not to take their flaws and sins to Your heart. You are even minded to all. Be Gracious to such a sinner as I. O Lord - Shower Your Grace.

From one of the old pravachans of Swami Ramsukhdasji
Ram Ram
------------------------------------------------------
GITA TALK GROUP GUIDELINES: PLEASE -

1. Only responses that further clarify Gita message will be posted.
2. Quote Gitaji/scriptures wherever possible..
3. Limit personal feelings, opinions, beliefs etc. to the
extent that they further help in understanding the Gita shlokas
4. Be as concise, to the point, respecting sadhaka's time.
5. Focus on subject at hand only.
6. Do not include links to the other sites; personal information (Ph #, address
etc) or personalize message to particular person
7. All responses may

SACHCHE SUKH KI KUNJI - BUDDHA

Thus have I heard:
The Blessed One was once living at the monastery of Anathapindika in Jeta's grove, near Savatthi. Now when the night was far advanced, a certain deity, whose surpassing splendour illuminated the entire Jeta Grove, came into the presence of the Blessed one, and, drawing near, respectfully saluted Him and stood on one side. Standing thus, he addressed the Blessed one in verse:

'Many deities and men, yearning after happiness, have pondered on Blessings. Pray, tell me the Highest Blessing!'

Not to associate with fools, to associate with the wise, and to honour those who are worthy of honour - this is the Highest Blessing.

To reside in a suitable locality, to have done meritorious actions in the past, and to set oneself in the right course-this is the Highest Blessxing.

Vast learning (skill in) handicraft (in modern days languages, computering, etc.) a highly trained discipline, and pleasant speech - this is the Highest Blessing.

Supporting one's father and mother, cherishing wife and children, and peaceful occupatgions - this is the Highest Blessing.

Liberality, righteous conduct, the helping of relatives, and blameless actions - this is the Highest Blessing.

Liberality, righteous conduct, the helping of relatives, and blameless actions - this is the Highest Blessing.

To cease and abstain from evil, abstention from intoxicating drinks, and diligence in virtue-this is the Highest Blessing.

Reverence, humility, contentment, gratitude and the opportune hearing of the Dhamma- this is the Highest Blessing.

Patience, obedience, seeing the Samanas (holy men), and (taking part in) religious discussions at proper times - this is the Highest Blessing.

Self-control, Holy Life, perception of the Noble Truths, and the realization of Nibbana - this is the Highest Blessing.

If a man's mind is sorrowless, stainless, and secure, and does not shake when touched by worldly vicissitudes - this is the Highest Blessing.

Those who thus acting are everywhere unconquered, attain happiness everywhere-to them these are the Highest Blessings.
Suttanipata, II.4)

new tryst with destiny ii

New tryst with destiny - 2
InboxX

Reply to all
Forward
Reply by chat
Filter messages like this
Print
Add to Contacts list
Delete this message
Report phishing
Report not phishing
Show original
Show in fixed width font
Show in variable width font
Message text garbled?
Why is this spam/nonspam?
Mohan Gupta to vempire007
show details 9:08 PM (10 hours ago) Reply



New tryst with destiny - 2

Mr. Jagmohan wrote New tryst with destiny in The Statesman-15th August 2008. The views expressed in this article make some points clear about Nehru and congress party.
The introspective and self-criticising article by Mr. Jagmohan published on the occasion of the 61st anniversary of our Independence, sums up quite befittingly, the malady of India’s inner decay.

Referring to the historic speech delivered by Jawaharlal Nehru on the midnight of 14-15 August 1947, sparkling with passion and poetry, he has pointed out, analytically, how the empty idealism, recorded with flourish of rhetoric, was devoid of resolute practicality, and how the leadership failed to show extraordinary courage and commitment in the arena of not only politics, but also in the intellectual, social, cultural and spiritual spheres.

It is really a sad commentary on our national attainment that neither the requisite motivating force nor the requisite leadership was forthcoming in India at the momentous period of her history.

2. In fact, the “tryst with destiny” that Jawaharlal Nehru so gloriously upheld, had come over inconceivable sufferings and travails of a very large section of Indians due to partition of the country, riots, rapes, plunders and loss of life, of property and the policies pursued by Nehru were mainly responsible for that. Even after independence, the hollowness of Nehru’s much-vaunted idealism, which lacked practical reality and all-comprehensive foresight, has contributed much to the present deplorable condition of India.

It is a disgrace that even after six decades of independence, income-gap between the rich and poor is widening: problems of unemployment are mounting; acute poverty and malnutrition continuing; numbers of squatters and slum-dwellers are increasing; about 30 per cent of the people of India-men, women and children- cannot afford even one square meal a day; about 40 per cent of the babies are born underweight; fifty-seven millions of children under the age of five years are undernourished; terrorism, subversion and violence in different forms, particularly between rival political groups are rising and brutalising the atmosphere.

Though we have gained independence over sixty years, we are utterly in shambles. Our economy is not yet steady; our education system has failed to instill a sense of prestige for the country and its effulgent culture; and is now turning out, mainly, unemployed youths; our social life is being constantly polluted and debased by the propagation of misconceived notion of fashion, fun and frolic by some designing brutes who are minting money through the wide circulation of all these prurient ideals through the printed as well as electronic media.

Politically, we are trying to uphold the high ideals of democracy, but we are being ruled, in reality, by elected representatives, many of whom may put to shame the most hard-core anti-social elements.

Our state professes, vauntingly, to be secular. But unfortunately, it has not been able to create and atmosphere is which all the religions may feel secure, and Hinduism, which is the most tolerant and liberal of them all, is constantly being rubbed in the wrong end by the so-called secularistic policies of the government.

Thus in the stark reality that stares at our face we find that by pursuing the policies initiated by Nehru and subduing and trampling Dharma with vengeance, this country, which was once regarded as truthful, civilized and highly-cultured, has turned out to be a land of power-hungry, greedy, intolerant, short-sighted, confused, diffident and utterly corrupt persons.

Is it absolutely impossible to change this dismal picture even at this stage? We can at least take a pledge and try to do so by standing up with an honest desire for self-criticism and introspection and sincerely try to find out the true culprits and the wrong policies, those have led us to this deplorable situation.g

The dragon seeds planted and carefully nurtured by our high-towering leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru of pampering, appeasing and granting all possible favour on platters of silver to treat the Muslims of Kashmir as a class much above the ordinary run of citizens of India, and much above the most honoured guests to guard their sentiments, and to bow down low before all their petty grouses and whims, are now coming to fruition and these cosseted breed, who never considered themselves as Indians, and never cherished any intention of upholding the interest of the Indian Union, are now prepared to declare boldly and brazenly their true colours. It is reported that Syed Ali Shah Geelani, at the head of the lakhs of protestors, vociferously demanded; “Hum Pakistani hain, Pakistan hamara hai”, thus betraying their true and mischievous intentions.

It was none else than Jawaharlal Nehru, who is mainly responsible for originating the Kashmir problem. Kashmir has remained a problem ever since independence. Pakistan, and most of its haughty rulers, could never reconcile with the idea that Kashmir should remain as an integral part of India. In 1946, before Independence and partition of India, Jinnah wanted the Muslin leaders of Kashmir to opt for Pakistan. But they did not agree and thus Jinnah’s plan of dividing India on the basis of religious lines, and two-nation theory, received a jolt. The inclusion of Kashmir in Pakistan has remained as an unfinished agenda for Pakistan, and a Jehad for that was started by successive Pakistan rulers. Barely two months after partition, on 20th October 1947, Pakistan Army attacked Kashmir. Even as the Pakistani invaders were advancing, Maharaja Hari Singh, the then ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, signed the instruments of accession on 26th October 1947, and joined the Indian Union fully and unconditionally and sought for military help from India Indian Army and the Air Force retaliated and the area up to the present LoC was liberated. But Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India, under the instructions and guidance of Mountbatten, restrained the Indian Defence Forces to move any further. He did not listen to the wise advice given to him by Lt. Gen. K.M. Cariappa, the then GOC, Western Command, to let army and air force to fully drive out the invaders from the Indian Territory beyond the original boundary line of Pakistan. Had he listened to that sound advice of the Indian military personnel, without succumbing to his weakness and infatuation over the Mountbattens, there would be no Kashmir problem to pester us even after six decades of our Independence. Pakistan retained its control over a part of Kashmir, though it was a part of India, and called it PoK (Pak occupies Kashmir).

Nehru’s next mistake was that within five months of accession he got rid of Meherchand Mahajan and appointed a power-crazy Muslin as Prime Minister of Kashmir. Under pressure from that greedy-hyena, Sheikh Abdullah, he announced that the accession of the State would be decided finally by people of Kashmir through a plebiscite, after restoration of normalcy. This paved the way for his next blatant mistake of accepting Kashmir affair as an Indo-Pakistan dispute and of agreeing to refer it to U.N.

His fifth mistake was in July 1952 when he entered into an agreement with the potential traitor Abdullah and to give Kashmir a separate constitution, a separate flag and a separate President. All serious efforts by Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee to avoid article 370 to bestow all these benefits on Kashmir, were not only ignored, Shyama Prasad was imprisoned and slowly poisoned to death. Nehru’s next mistake was to release Sheikh Abdullah unconditionally on 8th April 1964, after spending Rs. 31.45 lakhs on his case to prove him as a traitor. And then to invite Sheikh Abdullah to stay as his own guest in the Prime Minister’s house in New Delhi.


Please click and vote "No" to banning Varun Gandhi from running as a candidate for the Lok Sabha.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/national-ani.html
-------------

50 MOST BRILLIANT ATHEISTS

The 50 Most Brilliant Atheists of All Time ftom Guide book of Cuckoo Singh Post Your
Articles / Joke

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by humrahi
CUCOO SINGH presents
50 of the most prominent atheists of all time who also happen to be recognized as some of the most brilliant members of our species.
.

1. Democritus
Democritus was an ancient Greek philosopher, the most prolific and influential of the pre-Socratics and whose atomic theory is regarded as the intellectual culmination of early Greek thought. For this atomic theory, which echoes eerily the theoretical formulations of modern physicists, he is sometimes called the "father of modern science." He was well known to Aristotle, and a thorn in the side to Plato - who advised that all of Democritus' works be burned.

A cheerful and popular man with the citizenry for his uncanny ability to predict events, his was known among his fans as the "Laughing Philosopher," a title that may well have referred more to his scoffing rejection of assigning to gods the mechanistic operations of nature itself. His cosmology and atomic theory held that the world was spheroid, that there were many worlds and many suns, and that all things manifest in nature were comprised of atoms bound together. There are varying accounts of his age at death, ranging from a ripe 90 all the way to 109 years.


2. Diagoras of Melos
The first and most ancient of recognized atheists must include a 5th century b.c.e. poet and sophist from Melos known as Diagoras the Atheist. Not content to simply speak against the popular pantheon of Greek gods, he also criticized the Eleusinian Mysteries. He became a disciple of Democritus after that notable philosopher paid a hefty ransom to free Diagoras from captivity following the subjugation of Melos in 416 b.c.e.

Prosecuted by the Athenian democratic party for impiety in 415 b.c.e., he was forced to flee the city and died in Corinth. None of Diagoras' own writings survive, but in the 1st century b.c.e. Cicero wrote that one of Diagoras' friends tried to convince him that the gods did exist by citing the many people saved from storms by their pleas to their favorite gods, to which Diagoras was purported to reply, "there are nowhere any pictures of those who have been shipwrecked and drowned at sea."


3. Epicurus
Born in 341 b.c.e. in Athens, Epicurus established the school of philosophy known as Epicureanism, and was a follower of Democritus even though his own philosophy denied the influence of strong determinism and often denounced other philosophies as confused. He was an important figure in the early development of the scientific methodology, insisting that nothing which cannot be tested through direct observation and defended through logical deduction should be believed.

For Epicurus the purpose of philosophy was to attain peace of mind and a happy life, freedom from fear and absence of pain. He considered pleasure and pain the measures of that which is good or evil. He insisted that there were no gods to reward or punish humans after death, that the universe is infinite and eternal, and that all things are ultimately material in nature. Epicurus himself was never able to escape a life of pain or a painful death, as he suffered greatly from kidney stones and died at the age of 72 of complications from that ailment.


4. Theodorus the Atheist

[no image available]

Theodorus the Atheist from Cyrene lived around 300 b.c.e. He was banished from Cyrene in his early years, and moved to Athens to become a follower of the younger Aristippus. He also managed to get himself banished from Athens which caused him to go into the service of Ptolemy in Alexandria. It was in this service that he was sent as an ambassador to Lysimachus, who became offended by Theodorus' free speech as a lack of respect and decorum.

Theodorus taught that the aim of human life was to obtain joy and avoid grief, and that joy comes through prudence while grief arises from folly. Prudence and justice represented good, their opposites evil. Laertius complained that Theodorus "did away with all opinions respecting the Gods," but he may have just rejected the notions of deity popular in his time.


5. Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie [1835-1919] was a noted American industrialist, businessman and philanthropist. A Scottish-born immigrant, he established the Carnegie Steel Company in Pittsburgh and later merged it with the Federal Steel Company to become U.S. Steel. He is regarded as the second richest man in history, then he gave most of his steel and railroad fortune away to establish libraries, schools and universities all over America. He limited himself to an income of $50,000 per year, everything else went into good works.

He wrote many books on the subjects of wealth and its responsibilities, on social issues and on political philosophy. He self-identified as a positivist, and kept away from organized religion due to his distaste of sectarianism. Carnegie preferred naturalism and science, saying in his autobiography that, "not only had I got rid of the theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution."


6. Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov [1849-1936] was a Russian physiologist, psychologist and physician. He won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1904 for research on the digestive system. It was his investigation of the saliva of dogs that first led him to notice that the animals salivated more when they expected food, a phenomenon he termed "psychic secretion." He was particularly interested in studying conditioned behaviors as an experimental model of the induction of neuroses. His approach became known as "behaviorism," and after his death his work was extended by William Sargant and others in an attempt to develop a systematic method for brainwashing and implantation of false memories.

Pavlov died in Leningrad, his laboratory in St. Petersburg was carefully preserved by the Soviet government as a museum. He had one of his students attend him on his deathbed to record the circumstances of his dying, as if it were just another psychological experiment.


7. Sigmund Freud
Born Sigismund Schlomo Freud [1856-1939], Freud was an Austrian psychiatrist founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. Using his theories of the unconscious mind and defense mechanisms of repression, his psychoanalysis sought to cure sufferers of psychopathology through a dialogue between the patient and his psychoanalyst. He had an elaborate system for interpretation of dreams as indicators of unconscious desires, and did early neurological research on cerebral palsy.

Despite his ideas falling out of favor or being modified in later years, his methodology and theoretics continue to exert influence in the humanities and some social sciences. Freud's family escaped after Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938 and moved to London. He suffered more than 30 operations for oral cancer in his late life, and convinced his physician friend Max Schur to assist his suicide in 1939. His philosophical writings established his strong advocacy for an atheistic world view, and he was eulogized as "the atheist's touchstone" for the 20th century.


8. Clarence Darrow
Clarence Seward Darrow [1857-1938] was an American lawyer, a leading member of the ACLU and a notable defense attorney. Starting out as a corporate lawyer for a railroad company, he soon jumped the ideological tracks and represented the leader of the American Railway Union in the Pullman Strike of 1894.

His most famous case was the defense of Tennessee teacher John Scopes in the "Monkey Trial" against the state law that barred the teaching of evolution. The prosecution side was argued by William Jennings Bryan, the the trial served as the story for the play and later film, Inherit the Wind. During the trial Darrow self-identified as an agnostic by saying, "I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means." Yet he wrote essays with titles like "Absurdities of the Bible" and "The Myth of the Soul," suggesting that his agnosticism was strong enough to be considered atheism.


9. Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss [1864-1949] was a brilliant German composer who began writing music at the age of six and continued almost until his death. He was noted for his "tone poems" and operas such as Salome and Elektra, which made use of dissonance and generated much public outcry. During the Nazi period he was appointed president of the German State Music Bureau and composed the theme song for the infamous 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. He produced the opera Friedenstag in 1938, a thinly veiled criticism of the Third Reich. He is said to have stretched his influence very thin in his efforts to protect his son and Jewish daughter-in-law and their children from the Nazis.

Strauss was dubious of all religion, except perhaps the religion of reason. "I shall never be converted, and I shall remain true to my old religion of the classics until my life's end," he declared shortly before his death.


10. Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell [1872-1970], 3rd Earl of Russell, was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, pacifist and social activist. Russell led the revolt against idealism in the early 20th century and is considered along with Wittgenstein and Frege a founder of analytic philosophy, which considers formal logic and science as the principal tools of philosophy. Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950.

Russell was not fond of organized religion, but expressed some difficulty in defining himself as an agnostic or an atheist. In his 1949 speech, "Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?" Russell admitted that he could not prove the non-existence of God any more than he could prove the non-existence of the Homeric gods. But in his autobiography he stated, "At the age of eighteen, ...I read Mill's Autobiography, where I found a sentence to the effect that his father taught him the question "Who made me?" cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question "Who made God?" This led me to abandon the "First Cause" argument, and to become an atheist."


11. Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru [1889-1964] was a follower of Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru rose to leadership of the Indian National Congress at a young age in part due to his charisma and advocacy of complete Indian independence from the British Empire. He was the first and longest serving Prime Minister of an Independent India from 1947 to 1964. His appreciation for parliamentary democracy and concern for the poor allowed him to formulate policies derided by some for their socialist leanings.

Nehru enjoyed the honorific title of "Scholar" and despite his family's Hindi religious background, was an atheist. Forging am independent, modern India where educational and social opportunities could been afforded to all citizens regardless of religion or caste, this rejection of any particular belief system in a region hosting such wide diversity no doubt helped him toward his considerable accomplishments.


12. Linus Pauling
Linus Carl Pauling [1901-1994] was one of the most influential chemists in history as well as one of the most important scientists of the 20th century - or, according to Gautam Desiraju who wrote the Millennium Essay in the journal Nature, one of the greatest thinkers and visionaries of the last thousand years. One of only 4 individuals ever to have won solo Nobel Prizes in separate and unrelated fields - for chemistry in 1954, and the Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless campaign against atmospheric nuclear bomb testing in 1962. His activities in favor of pacifism and against nuclear weapons earned him an appearance before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, which explicitly accused him of being in league with the Communists.

Pauling's wife Ava Hellen, whom he married in 1917, was a pacifist and peace activist who got him involved in the crusade against nuclear weapons and atmospheric bomb testing. He had been raised Lutheran and later joined the Unitarian Universalist Church, but publicly declared his personal atheism two years before his death of prostate cancer at the age of 93.


13. Paul Dirac
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac [1902-1984] was a British theoretical physicist who contributed to the early development of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics [QED]. He shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in physics with Erwin Schrodinger, formulated what became known as the Dirac equation, and held the Cambridge Lucasian Chair in mathematics established by Sir Isaac Newton and currently held by Stephen Hawking.

Dirac was noted for his personal humility, refusing to call his contributions to physics by his own name, and for his somewhat Edwardian sense of social propriety. He married Margrit, the sister of fellow Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner, in 1937. He adopted her two children and the couple had two more. While he once said that "God used beautiful mathematics in creatiing the world," his personal views on religion were far less expansive. Wolfgang Pauli once described Dirac's first commandment concerning religion as, "God does not exist and Paul Dirac is his prophet."


14. Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand [1905-1982] was a Russian-born writer who emigrated to the U.S. in 1925. Her first play, Night of January 16th, was produced in Hollywood and then on Broadway. Her autobiographical and anti-Soviet novel We the Living, was published in 1936. Best known for her sweeping intellectual masterpiece Atlas Shrugged, the fiction mystery allowed her to fully develop her philosophy of objectivism.

For the rest of her life Rand lectured and wrote about objectivism, which she termed "a philosophy for living on earth." All of the books Rand published during her lifetime are still in print, and her philosophy is still taught at many major universities as one of the most important philosophical movements in the modern world. Objectivism is particularly prized by dedicated capitalists and economists and underpins much of the wider freethought movement.


15. Katherine Hepburn
Katherine Houghton Hepburn [1907-2003] was an acclaimed actress in film, television and stage for 73 years of her long life. She received 12 Academy Award nominations for Best Actress in a film, and still holds the record with four wins. In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked Hepburn as cinema history's greatest female star. A child of New England privilege with a genealogical heritage tracing back to Louis IX of France, she received her degree in history and philosophy from Bryn Mawr despite a record of breaking curfew, smoking and skinny dipping in the fountain. She married socialite businessman Ludlow Ogden Smith in 1928, but divorced six years later. Despite several romances, the love of her live was Spencer Tracy, with whom she made nine movies.

In a 1973 interview on The Dick Cavett Show Hepburn said that while she agreed with Christian principles and thought highly of Jesus Christ, she had no personal religious beliefs nor any belief in an afterlife. "I am an atheist and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people."

16. Jacques Monod
Jacques Lucien Monod [1910-1976] was a French biologist who contributed greatly to the understanding of the Lac operon as a regulator of gene transcription in cells, suggested the existence of mRNA molecules in the process of protein synthesis, and further contributed to the field of enzymology. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965. He married archeologist and orientalist Odette Bruhl in 1938, they had twin sons, Oliver and Phillippe, one of whom became a geologist, the other a physicist.

Monod wrote the book Chance and Necessity in 1970, which became a popular primer on the relationship between the roles of random chance and adaptation in biological evolution and provided much ammunition to the atheist community by proposing that the natural sciences revealed an entirely purposeless world that undermines the traditional claims of the world's religions. His views also contributed to the development of the idea of "Memes" that Richard Dawkins made famous in his writings.


17. Subrahmanyan Chandresekhar
Padma Vibhushan Subrahmanyan Chandresekhar [1910-1995] - better known by his nickname "Chandra" - has a space-based X-ray observatory named after him, launched by the space shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 for his important contributions to knowledge about the evolution of stars, he is probably better known for his 1995 opus >Newton's Principia for the Common Reader which explains the detailed arguments of Newton's original Principia using the language and methods of ordinary calculus.

A naturalized American citizen born in Lahore, India, Chandra's family long displayed signs of brilliance, even genius. His father was a government worker and accomplished violinist who wrote several books on musicology. His mother was an intellectual noted for translating Ibsen's A Doll's House into the Tamil language. His paternal uncle was physicist C.V. Raman, who also won a Nobel Prize.


18. Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing [1912-1954] was a mathematician, logician, computer scientist and cryptanalyst from England. He displayed distinct signs of genius early in his life, solving advanced problems without having studied elementary calculus. At the age of 16 he encountered Einstein's work and extrapolated it to question Newton's laws of motion from a text in which this challenge was not made explicit. Perhaps his most momentous achievement was his 1936 paper reformulating Kurt Godel's results on the limits of proof and computation, replacing Godel's arithmetic-based formal language with what are now known as Turing machines - formal and simple devices.

It was the death of Turing's first love in their last year at Sherborne from complications of bovine tuberculosis (contracted from drinking infected milk as a boy) that shattered Turing's religious faith. He became an atheist with a firm conviction that all phenomena must be materialistic in nature.


19. Francis Crick
Francis Harry Compton Crick [1916-2004] is best known as the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. He first coined the term "central dogma" to describe the flow of genetic information in cells as a one-way street - DNA to RNA to protein. His primary interests encompassed two fundamental problems in biology. How non-living molecules become living organisms, and how the human brain creates a conscious mind.

On the matter of religion, Crick once said, "Christianity may be okay between consenting adults in private, but should not be taught to young children." In his book Of Molecules and Men he expressed his strong views on the relationship between science and religion. Those views continued to play a role in his work when he transitioned from molecular biology into theoretical neuroscience.


20. Claude Shannon
Claude Elwood Shannon [1916-2001] was an electronic engineer and mathematician known as "the father of information theory." While at the University of Michigan he was introduced to the works of George Boole, and once in grad school at MIT working with the 'differential analyzer', an early analog computer, he saw that Boole's concepts could be used used to simplify the complicated circuitry of the analyzer and wrote his master's thesis on what became known as Boolean logic. His PhD thesis at MIT applied this work to establish mathematical relationships in Mendelian genetics. He became a National Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and worked freely across disciplines with other notable scientists to shape the ideas that became information theory.

Shannon and his wife Betty put their collective mathematical and analytical abilities together in a game theory for many successful visits to the gaming tables in Las Vegas and made a fortune. An even bigger fortune was made later by Shannon and colleague Ed Thorp when they applied the same theory (later known as the Kelly criterion) to the stock market.


21. Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman [1918-1988] contributed much to the development of quantum mechanics, including what became known as Feynman diagrams, the path integral formulation, the theory of quantum electrodynamics [QED], the physics supercooled liquid helium's superfluidity, and the parton model of particle physics. He won the Nobel Prize in 1965 for QED and became one of the best known scientists in the world through his popular books and lectures about physics and about his own storied life.

Among his colleagues he was perhaps better known as a beatnik and clown, always thinking up clever pranks or juggling or sitting in with any impromptu band playing bongos. Some of his other interests were painting, biology, Mayan hieroglyphics and lock-picking. He was dubbed the "Great Explainer" for two masterful lecture series on physics at Cal Tech (which were later turned into the books Six Easy Pieces and Six Not So Easy Pieces. He developed two rare forms of cancer late in his life, complaining that, "I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring." In the end, he died after surgery for only one of them.


22. Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky [b. 1928] is one of the most notable American philosophers of any age. Professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT, and is considered a father of modern linguistics. Also a prolific writer, he has also become famous for being an outspoken political dissident, anarchist, humanist freethinker and libertarian socialist.

Beginning with his 1959 critique of B.F. Skinner's behaviorist theory of language, Chomsky has iterated and refined his own theory of linguistics as a branch of cognitive psychology. This view drew much criticism from behaviorists, particularly his hypothesis that humans share an innate linguistic capability. On his views of religion, Chomsky said in a Common Sense interview in 2002, "...if you ask me whether or not I'm an atheist, I wouldn't even answer. I would first want an explanation of what it is that I'm supposed not to believe in, and I've never seen an explanation."


23. James D. Watson
James Dewey Watson [b. 1928] received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1962 as co-discoverer along with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins of the molecular structure of DNA. Watson began his Ph.D. research with Salvador Luria, who later earned his own Nobel for work with Max Delbruck on phages. It was from this association with the leaders of the "Phage Group" of molecular biologists that he became involved in the search for the nature of genes. He earned that Ph.D. in zoology from Indiana University at the age of 22.

Watson was politically active in opposition to the war in Vietnam and nuclear proliferation, active in environmentalism. When asked by a student if he believed in God, Watson answered, "Oh, no. Absolutely not... The biggest advantage to believing in God is you don't have to understand anything, no physics, no biology. I wanted to understand."

24. Peter Higgs
Peter Ware Higgs [b. 1929] is a theoretical physicist and emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He is a recipient of the 1997 Dirac Medal and Prize for outstanding contributions to theoretical physics, the High Energy and Particle Physics Prize by the European Physical Society, and the Wolf Prize in physics. If his predicted Higgs particle - the field boson imparting mass to matter - is discovered as expected by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and he is still alive, Higgs is expected to receive the Nobel Prize in physics within the year.

Higgs describes himself as an atheist, but expresses discomfort with one of the designations of his field boson, the "God Particle." That designation was popularized by Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman in his book by that title, published in 1993 as part of a PR campaign in favor of the proposed Superconducting Super Collider [SSC] proposed to be built in Texas. Higgs lives a reserved life and is not anxious to offend religious believers.


25. Warren Buffet
Warren Edward Buffett [b. 1930] is an American businessman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway rated by Forbes as the richest person in the world (in the first half of 2008, before the Wall Street meltdown). He is noted for adherence to the philosophy of "value investing" and for accepting an annual salary for himself of less than $200,000. Compare that to what taxpayers are now paying the CEOs of failed Wall Street investment firms!

Buffett is further noted for his philanthropy, a passion he shares with fellow billionaire Bill Gates, along with a weekly bridge play date. In 2006 Buffett announced that 83% of his fortune would be going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for further philanthropy. He describes himself as religiously agnostic. In Roger Lowenstein's 1995 biography Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, he is described and non-religious. "He adopted his father's ethical underpinnings, but not his belief in an unseen divinity."

26. John Searle
John Rogers Searle [b. 1932] is an American philosopher whose contributions to the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and social philosophy made him an influential member and spokesperson for the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley during the late 1960s and early '70s.

Drawing upon his theory of intentionality, Searle argued in his 1992 book The Rediscovery of the Mind that much of modern philosophy has attempted to deny the existence of consciousness, with little success among conscious people. The primary issue Searle identifies is a philosophical false dichotomy between strong materialism and subjective, first-person experience of the world. What emerged from his resolution is a view he calls "biological naturalism" - that consciousness is real, caused by the physical processes of the brain. Searle is regarded as an atheist who believes in freedom of will and has argued eloquently (and controversially) for that position.


27. Steven Weinberg
Steven Weinberg [b. 1933] is an American physicist best known for his work on unification of electromagnetism and the weak force, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1979. It was as a visiting professor at MIT in 1967 that he first proposed his electroweak unification theory, which predicted the existence of the Z boson and the existence of a mechanism of mass later known as the Higgs boson. In 1973 he proposed a modification of the Standard Model of physics did not predict the Higgs, but there is as yet no consensus.

Weinberg has been prominent in the science vs. religion 'culture wars'. His popular science books and articles combine explaining science in the added context of history, philosophy of science, and atheism. In a 1999 speech in Washington, D.C., he said, "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion."


28. Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan [1934-1996] was an American astronomer, astrochemist, and successful popularizer of science.Sagan was connected to the American space program from the beginning, working as an advisor to NASA from the 1950s. He contributed to many of the robotic missions that explored the solar system and arranged experiments to be conducted during manned moon missions. He designed the gold placque attached to the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft, a message that could be understood by an extraterrestrial intelligence that encountered it.

Sagan was an outspoken opponent of nuclear weapons and starred in the popular PBS television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Noted as a skeptic who advocated for humanist ideals, the public considered him an atheist. Sagan called himself an agnostic instead, explaining that "an atheist has to know a lot more than I know" in order to make a positive assertion that no deity exists.


29. David Suzuki
David Takayoshi Suzuki [b. 1936] is a Canadian zoologist, geneticist, science broadcaster and entironmental activist. His work in television began in 1970 with the weekly children's series, Suzuki on Science, going on to host CBC's The Nature of Things and the acclaimed PBS series A Planet for the Taking. He also worked in radio, hosting CBC Radio One's Quirks and Quarks, and a weekly program for more mature audiences called Science Magazine. He has also written several books about science and environmentalism, is an outspoken critic of global climate change corporate deniers and established the David Suzuki Foundation to promote sustainability.

Though he has been often accused by his critics of turning his environmental causes into a religion of its own, Suzuki describes himself in his autobiography as an atheist with no illusions about life and death.


30. George Carlin
George Denis Patrick Carlin [1937-2008] was one of the most popular and controversial comedians during his lifetime, having won five Grammy awards for his comedy albums. He was the very first guest host for Saturday Night Live and is considered one of the most brilliant satirists of American culture. He was most noted for his focus on psychology, religion, the English language and any other subject that might shock and delight his audiences. He came in second on the Comedy Central network's list of 100 Greatest Comedians of all time.

Just four days before his death the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced that he would receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. An outspoken atheist, Carlin joked in his book Brain Droppings that he worshipped the sun because he could actually see it. He also introduced in an HBO special the "Two Commandments," a condensed version of the ten ending with one additional commandment, "Thou Shalt keep thy religiion to thyself."


31. Bruce Lee
Bruce Jun Fan Lee [1940- 1973] was an American born Chinese martial artist, philosopher, instructor and actor, the founder of the Jeet Kune Do combat form. When he turned to development of his martial arts form in the 1960s, he also became notable for his views and practices of promoting peak physical fitness with proper training, diet and vitamin supplements. Bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger was influenced by Lee, described his physique as defined, with very little body fat. "I mean, he probably had one of the lowest body fat counts of any athlete. And I think that's why he looked so unbelievable."

Lee had majored in philosophy at the University of Washington and kept an extensive library of philosophy. His first book expressed a well-developed philosophical outlook and was entitled Chinese Gung-Fu: The Philosophical Art of Self Defense. As he developedJeet Kune Do he cited influence from Taoism, Jiddu Krishnamurti and Buddhism, but was himself an atheist who expressed disbelief in God.


32. Leonard Susskind
Leonard Susskind [b. 1940] is an American physicist specializing in string theory and quantum field theory. He is Felix Bloch professor of theoretical physics at Stanford. He is a notable promoter of public understanding of science, and his entire course on quantum physics can be downloaded on the iTunes platform from Stanford. His contrubutions to theoretical physics are voluminous, including the independent discovery of string theory, the theory of quark confinement, the development of Hamiltonian lattice gauge theory, the holography principle, the string theory of black hole entropy and the principle of "black hole complementarity."

Susskind is also a popular speaker for both science and against religious creationism. In a review of the book, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design, Michael Duff wrote that Susskind is "a card-carrying atheist."


33. Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould [1941-2002] was a paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and historian of science who became one of the most influential popularizers of evolutionary biology through his books and essays. Though a critic of the deterministic view of human behavior and society, he contributed much to expanding upon the mechanisms of natural evolution. He generated some controversy with A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, taking issue with the gradualism and reductionism of orthodox neodarwinists. He contributed "Punctuated Equilibrium" to the evolutionary lexicon to explain the fossil evidence of abrupt changes in organismic form interspersed with long periods of stability.

Himself an atheist, Gould was an advocate for what he called "Non-Overlapping Magisteria" [NOMA] as a way to resolve the conflicts between science and religion. "Science and religion occupy two separate realms of human experience," he wrote in Rock of Ages. "Demanding that they be combined detracts from the glory of each."

34. Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins [b. 1941] is the most prominent scientific atheist in the world today, and was the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford until his retirement in 2008. Dawkins' particular brilliance is not so much reflected in radical discoveries in his field of biology, but in his popular science writings like his books The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype. He has been called "Darwin's Rottweiler" in the press for his strong support of evolution by natural selection. He has also written against creationism in the book The Blind Watchmaker and against theism in A Devil's Chaplain and The God Delusion, both popular best-sellers.

An engaging and energetic speaker, Dawkins promotes atheism as senior editor and columnist for the Council for Secular Humanism's Free Inquiry magazine, and as a member of the editorial board of Skeptic magazine since it was founded. In2006 Dawkins founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, and in 2007 founded the atheist "Out" campaign, and in 2008 he supported the Atheist Bus Campaign, Britain's first atheist advertising blitz.


35. Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett [b. 1942] is an American philosopher specializing in the philosophies of mind, science and biology. Dennett's father was a spy for the OSS, disguised as a cultural attache in Beirut during WW-2. He died in a plane crash in 1947 and the family moved back to the U.S. Dennett enjoyed study under a number of notable philosophers at Harvard and Oxford, and is currently a professor of philosophy and co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.

Dennett's popular work in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, the books Content and Consciousness and Consciousness Explained reflect an expansive and detailed development of his philosophical ideas that have generated some heated debates among his peers. In the book Breaking the Spell Dennett examines religious beliefs from an evolutionary point of view as social adaptations that conveyed selective advantages to the species.


36. Stephen Hawking
Stephen William Hawking [b. 1942] is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, a position once held by Sir Isaac Newton. He is recognized as one of the most creatively intelligent people of the modern scientific age, best known his contributions to the fields of cosmology, quantum gravity and general relativity, as well as for his best-selling popular science books. He developed ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) in graduate school in Cambridge and has survived with the condition longer than was thought possible. he has almost no neuromuscular control and must communicate via a speech synthesizer.

Hawking sometimes comes across quite like a deist in his popular writings, particularly in the book, A Brief History of Time, in which most of the questions posed of the universe also echo questions traditionally asked of God. In that book Hawking expounded upon his "no boundary" model by stating, "If the no boundary proposal is correct, He [God] had no freedom at all to choose initial conditions.". While he does not publicly profess atheism, Hawking does profess agnosticism.


37. Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger [b. 1943] was expected by his family to become a teacher, like his father and grandfather, but what he really loved to do was sing. He was a capable student and went to the London School of Economics on scholarship. In his off time he took to being a pick-up singer in London's club scene, developing a small fan following even though he had no formal musical training. He left school at 19 to follow his musical ambitions. He and friends Keith Richards and Brian Jones formed a band called the Rolling Stones, and the rest is history.

Having become one of the wealthiest musicians in the world - and a Knight of the Realm as of 2003 as well - Jagger founded his own film company with Victoria Pearman in 1995, Jagged Films. A notorious womanizer, Jagger has seven children by 4 women (two of whom he married), and four grandchildren. Not bad for a fabulously wealthy, world famous economics school dropout.


38. Richard Leakey
Richard Erskine Frere Leakey [b. 1944] was born in Nairobi, Kenya, one of three sons of noted archaeologists Louis and Mary Leakey. By 1962 he'd earned a private pilot's license and began offering aerial tours of Olduvai. Noting a potential fossil bed, he went back with an associate of his father's and was given the funding for a month's dig. Soon he and his business partner Kimoya Kameu discovered Australopithecus boisei. His storied career has been set with his accomplishments as a conservationist, a promoter of civil rights and a supporter of the Kenyan Safina Party.

In a 2007 interview upon his induction into the Academy of Achievement for his contributions to paleoanthropology and environmentalism he said, "I simply would not accede to being forced into this, and would frequently be kept out of classes because of irreverent comments and mocking this religious stuff. Frankly, it stayed with me to this day. In fact, don't get me going. I'm almost as bad as Richard Dawkins on this issue."

39. David Gilmour
David Jon Gilmour [b. 1946] of the legendary rock group Pink Floyd was born in Cambridge, England, son of a senior lecturer in zoology at Cambridge University. His interest in music, writing and a life on the road led him into musical and busking adventures during the early 1960s, and finally to Pink Floyd in 1967, which went on to become one of the top grossing rock bands in history. On his 60th birthday he released his third solo album, On An Island, which debuted #1 on the UK charts.

Gilmour has a penchant for philanthropy, support which includes housing funds for the homeless, Oxfam, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, the Lung Foundation and others. He was made a Commander in the Order of the British Empire in 2005, an honor just below full knighthood. His On An Island has been called "the most spiritual album ever made by an avowed atheist."


40. Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno [b. 1948] is an English musician, composer, record producer, music theorist and singer best known as the father of ambient music. Starting with the art rock band Roxy Music in 1971, he became bored with the rock and roll lifestyle quickly. He then became a prominent member of the performance art/classical music orchestra the Portsmouth Sinfonia from 1972-74, and developed his highly eclectic, ambient style in a series of solo albums.

As a producer he contributed to recordings by Genesis, David Bowie, Zvuki Mu and Robert Calvert. He composed and performed the "Prophesy Theme" for David Lynch's Dune, and produced Laurie Anderson's Bright Red album, among many other projects in music, performance and fine art, literature, theatrical soundscapes and sound bytes for iPhone, Windows and video games. When not being a prolific and brilliant artist, Eno is politically active, a humanist with strong anti-war and futurist views.


41. David Sloan Wilson
David Sloan Wilson [b. 1949] is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University in New York, a prolific popular science writer, and a promoter of evolution by group and multi-level selection. He has been vice president of the American Society of Naturalists and serves on the editorial board of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. In his Evolutionary Studies program at Binghamton students study not only the sciences related to evolution, but also religion and the psychology of religion in terms of evolution.

Wilson, who describes himself as a "nice atheist," views religions as a sort of mega-trait that evolved because it conferred advantages on believers. He explored this theme in his book, Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society. Not a supporter of Richard Dawkins' public efforts to organize atheists, Wilson described atheism as a "Stealth Religion" on the political blog Huffington Post in 2007.


42. Steve Wozniak
Stephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak [b. 1950] is a computer engineer who founded the Apple computer company with Steve Jobs. The two became friends while working on a mainframe during the summer of 1970. The two sold some possessions to raise $1,300, assembled the first prototypes in Job's garage. They formed the company on April 1, 1976 and priced their Apple I personal computer at $666.66 - Woz later claimed he had no idea about the correlation with the mark of the beast).

Wozniak is a committed philanthropist, funding various educational projects, and has even taught fifth graders. Since leaving Apple he founded other ventures to produce things like the first universal remote and wireless GPS. He's a member of the Silicon Valley Aftershocks Segway polo team, which won the 2008 Woz Challenge Cup. Woz calls himself "atheist or agnostic," in that he says he doesn't know the difference between the designations.


43. Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams [1952-2001] was an English writer, dramatist and musician, best known for his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. He also wrote three episodes of the BBC series Doctor Who for his friend Russell T Davies and served as script editor during the seventh season. He further wrote for and appeared in Monty Python's Flying Circus, and counted Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour among his closest friends.

A notable environmental activist and self-described "radical atheist," Adams loved fast cars, cool cameras, Apple computers and any tech gizmo he could get his hands on. Richard Dawkins dedicated his book The God Delusion to Adams. A veteran of many different day jobs, Adams once worked as a bodyguard for a Qatar oil family and told hilarious stories about his misadventures. He was locked in a hotel suite by his editor for three weeks to force him to complete his book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, he was a bit notorious for his deadline difficulties.


44. Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker [b. 1954] is an experimental psychologist and cognitive scientist best known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. He is also known for his controversial positions on issues like eugenics and euthanasia. He is a best-selling author of popular science books as well as a popular speaker. He describes the human mind as a sort of Swiss Army knife that comes with specialized tools designed to deal with problems our Pleistocene ancestors encountered.

Pinker's works on how children acquire language echoes Noam Chomsky's work on language as an innate faculty of mind. Pinker argues that many other human mental faculties are adaptive in an evolutionary sense and can be understood best from that angle. Born into the Jewish community in Montreal, he became an atheist at the age of 13 but remains a "cultural Jew."


45. PZ Myers
Paul Zachary Myers [b. 1957], better known as "PZ," is an evolutionary developmental biologist and professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, Morris. He is an energetic promoter of science generally and evolution in particular. He got involved in the use of the internet for this purpose and was a founding member of the pro-evolution website The Panda's Thumb, and created his own web blog, Pharyngula, in 2002. PZ Myers has become the leader of the science-focused online atheist movement and his brilliance as an atheist might be said to be the remarkable success he has had in this position.

Pharyngula received the Koufax Award in 2005 for 'Best Expert Blog', and Nature named it the top ranking blog written by a scientist. It was picked up by Seed Magazine that year and anchors their large stable of popular, multidisciplinary science blogs. His increasing popularity as a proponent of atheism have made him a popular speaker at freethought, atheist and humanist events.


46. Jodie Foster
Alicia Christian Foster [b. 1962] is an American film actor, director and producer who has won three Bafta Awards, two Golden Globes, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a People's Choice Award, and two Emmy nominations for her extensive body of work. She began her career as a child star who later made the transition to adult stardom and expanded from there to produce some of the most popular and thought-provoking films of the last decades.

In 1997 she starred in the movie adaptation of Contact, a novel by Carl Sagan. The following year an asteroid was named in her honor. At the age of 14 she starred in the movie Taxi Driver, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. This earned her the obsessed attention of would-be Presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr. who stalked her while she was attending Yale. Foster is an atheist who celebrates both Christmas and Hannukah with her two sons, and claims great respect for all religions.


47. Russell T Davies
Stephen Russell Davies [b. 1963] is a Welsh writer and producer of the modern version of the popular science fiction television series Doctor Who. A fan of the good doctor since childhood, his writing and direction of the new series has won critical acclaim and a new generation of fans. In 2005, Davies was tapped to write and produce a more adult spinoff called Torchwood, which featured darker science fiction drama and more sex and which Davies described as "The X-Files meets This Life."

Davies was named the most influential gay person in Britain in 2006, spent several years on the top 100 list of influential media figures, and was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2008. His 2008 book Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale is a collection of autobiographical emails between Davies and journalist Benjamin Cook that has been described as "...a funny, revealing insight into the workings of the genius" behind the beloved Doctor Who.


48. David Chalmers
David John Chalmers [b. 1966] Is an Australian philosopher, director of the Center for Consciousness and past director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona in the U.S. His 1996 book The Conscious Mind is considered a seminal work on consciousness and its relation to issues in the philosophy of mind, even by its physicalist detractors. Chalmers argues for an essentially dualistic view of mind which he terms, "naturalistic dualism."

Chalmers sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Consciousness Studies and his paper published there characterizing the mind-body problem in terms of philosophical zombies generated more than twenty response papers from such notables as Daniel Dennett, Francisco Varela, Francis Crick and Roger Penrose, and the exchanges are still among the most valuable literature debating the philosophy of consciousness ever generated.


49. Sean Carroll
Sean M. Carroll [b. 1966] is a theoretical cosmologist specializing in general relativity and dark energy. Currently he is a Senior Research Associate in Physics at Caltech, writes scientific books and textbooks in his areas of expertise, contributes to the blog Cosmic Variance, writes articles for science magazines such as Nature, Seedm and and is a popular presenter and lecturer at scientific symposia.

Carroll is perhaps better known for his strong advocacy of atheism, once going so far as to turn down an invitation to speak at a conference sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation because he didn't want to be seen as advocating a reconciliation between science and religion. He argues that scientific thinking must lead to a materialistic world view and a rejection of all notions of deity or spiritual nature. Which is why, Carroll wrote in 2003, (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists.


50. Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg [b. 1984] is an American computer programmer named by Time Magazine as one of the World's Most Influential People in 2008 for his development of the internet application Facebook. While attending Phillips Exeter Academy he developed an AI program called Synapse that both Microsoft and AOL attempted to purchase as part of recruitment efforts, but he determined to attend Harvard instead.

Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room in 2004. It spread to other universities with the help of his roommate Dustin Moskovitz. Despite some controversy over the platform and a lawsuit over the ConnectU application which was later dismissed, Zuckerman sold a 1.6% stake in Facebook to Microsoft, which had a $15 billion market value at the time according to Forbes. He was born into the Jewish tradition, yet self-identifies as an atheist.