Rationalism Breeds Nontheism

Speakers featured in chronological order:

Lawrence Krauss is an American theoretical physicist who is professor of physics, Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, and director of the Origins Project at the Arizona State University.

Robert Coleman Richardson is an American experimental physicist, who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the property of superfluidity in helium-3 atoms.

Alan Guth is Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the originator of the inflationary universe theory.

Nicolaas Bloembergen is a Dutch-American physicist and Nobel laureate. He is professor at Harvard University in Applied Physics.

Oliver Sacks, CBE, is a British neurologist, and professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University.

Gerard ‘t Hooft is a Dutch theoretical physicist. He won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions”.

Ned Block is an American philosopher who has made important contributions to matters of consciousness and cognitive science. He obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard University, was a professor of philosophy at MIT and now teaches at NYU.

Riccardo Giacconi is an Italian/American Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist who laid the foundations of X-ray astronomy.

Colin McGinn is a British philosopher currently working at the University of Miami. McGinn has also held major teaching positions at Oxford University and Rutgers University.

Martinus Veltman is a Dutch theoretical physicist, who shared the 1999 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on particle theory.

Pascal Boyer is a French anthropologist, and Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory at Washington University in St. Louis.

Ivar Giaever is a Norwegian physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 “for their discoveries regarding tunnelling phenomena in solids”.

John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University where he earned an undergraduate degree and a doctorate in philosophy and ethics.

Herbert Kroemer is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California. In 2000 he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics “for developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics”.

Rebecca Goldstein is an American novelist and professor of philosophy. After earning her Ph.D. from Princeton, she has taught at Barnard, Columbia and Rutgers Universities.

Theodor Hänsch is a German physicist who shared the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics for “contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique”.

Richard Ernst is a Swiss physical chemist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1991 for his contributions towards the development of Fourier Transform nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

Mark Balaguer is Professor of philosophy, California State University, Los Angeles. His research interests are in philosophy of mathematics and language.

Douglas Dean Osheroff is an American physicist who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University.

Hubert Lederer Dreyfus is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is particularly renowned for his exegesis of Martin Heidegger.

Rudolph A. Marcus is a Canadian-born chemist who received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his theory of electron transfer.

Steven Weinberg is an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles.

The more scientifically literate, intellectually honest and objectively sceptical a person is, the more likely they are to disbelieve in anything supernatural, including god. This is a compilation of some of the best examples of such individuals with their thoughts on the divine. They include in order of appearance:

Professor Stephen Hawking is an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, and was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for 30 years.

Lord Martin Rees is the Astronomer Royal and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010.

Dr Sam Harris is an American author, neuroscientist and CEO of Project Reason. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA, and a BA in philosophy from Stanford University.

Professor Richard Feynman was an American physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.

Professor Noam Chomsky is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT and well known as one of the fathers of modern linguistics.

Stephen Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director.

Professor Leonard Susskind is Professor of Theoretical Physics at Stanford University, and widely regarded as one of the fathers of string theory.

Sir Bertrand Russell was an English philosopher who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950. He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy and is widely held to be one of the 20th century’s premier logicians.

Dr Richard Carrier is an American historian who received his PhD in ancient history from Columbia University.

Sir David Attenborough is a broadcaster and naturalist. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge, and his distinguished career in broadcasting now spans more than 50 years.

Professor Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History and Visiting Research Scientist and Lecturer at Princeton University. He attended Harvard College (B.A), University of Texas (M.A.) and Columbia University (M.Phil.), (Ph.D.).

Professor Vilayanur Ramachandran is a neuroscientist, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, and Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Neurosciences Graduate Program at the University of California, San Diego. He obtained his PhD from Trinity College, Cambridge.

Professor Sir Harold Kroto is a British chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996.

Steven Pinker is Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.

John Smythies is a neuropsychiatrist and neuroscientist. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatric Research at the University of Alabama Medical Center.

Sir Richard Friend is Cavendish Professor at the University of Cambridge. His research concerns the physics and engineering of carbon-based semiconductors.

Peter Atkins is a British Chemist and was Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford. He is a prolific writer of popular chemistry textbooks.

Marcus du Sautoy OBE is the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.

Sir Patrick Bateson is an English biologist and science writer. Bateson is emeritus professor of ethology at Cambridge University and president of the Zoological Society of London since 2004.

Professor AC Grayling is a British philosopher, supernumerary fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford, and first master of New College of the Humanities in London. He was previously Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London.

Brian Cox OBE is a British particle physicist, a Royal Society University Research Fellow and a professor at the University of Manchester. He works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Alan Macfarlane is a renowned social anthropologist and a Professor Emeritus of King’s College, Cambridge. He is the author or editor of 20 books and numerous articles on the anthropology and history of England, Nepal, Japan and China.

Alan Dershowitz is an American lawyer, jurist, and political commentator. He has spent most of his career at Harvard Law School where, at the age of 28, he became the youngest full professor of law in its history.

Quentin Skinner is Professor of the Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London, and was previously Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge. The author or co-author of more than 20 books, his works have been very widely translated.

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