Isaac Asimov
Author, Biochemist & Humanist · 1920–1992
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, and one of the most prolific writers in history — credited with nearly 500 books across science fiction, popular science, history, and biblical commentary. He gave us the Foundation saga, the Three Laws of Robotics, and a lifetime of essays that made difficult science feel like a conversation with a generous friend.
He was also a lifelong unbeliever. Asimov described himself as a secular humanist and an atheist, and from 1985 until his death in 1992 he served as honorary president of the American Humanist Association. He had been named Humanist of the Year in 1984 and was a founding figure in the organized skeptic movement. For Asimov, leaving the supernatural behind was not a loss of meaning but a clearer view of a genuinely astonishing universe.
Unusually for a New York intellectual of his era, Asimov spent years reading scripture closely — not to defend it, but to understand it. The result, Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, treats the text as a historical artifact with a time, a place, and an agenda, and remains one of the most accessible secular companions to the Bible ever written.
Emotionally an atheist, honestly so
Asimov refused to overclaim. He couldn't prove no god exists, but he 'so strongly suspected he doesn't' that belief was a waste of his time. He resisted the label 'agnostic' as a polite hedge and eventually owned the word atheist plainly — a model of saying exactly what the evidence warrants and no more.
Read the Bible as history, not revelation
His two-volume Guide to the Bible treats scripture the way he treated any text — as a human document with a datable origin, a geography, and a politics. He argued that reading it carefully, rather than reverently, is one of the surest paths away from faith.
Secular humanism as a working ethic
Honorary president of the American Humanist Association until his death, Asimov located meaning and morality in human beings and this world. Progress, he held, comes from reason and knowledge applied to human problems — not from commandments handed down from above.
Scientific literacy is a civic necessity
Asimov warned that a society dependent on science but ignorant of it is dangerously vulnerable. His 'A Cult of Ignorance' diagnosed the anti-intellectual streak that treats one person's ignorance as equal to another's knowledge — a warning that has only sharpened with time.
Emotionally I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.
Reading the Bible without reverence
Where many critics argue about scripture from the outside, Asimov went through it line by line. Asimov’s Guide to the Bible (Old Testament 1967, New Testament 1969) walks a reader through the historical and geographical context of the text — who wrote it, when, and why — without assuming it is true. His conclusion was blunt: read carefully rather than selectively, the Bible is “the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
Essential books
Best quotes
“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have.”
“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
“I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.”
“Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'”
Legacy
Asimov died in 1992, but his voice endures wherever science is explained with patience and delight. His fiction shaped how a century imagines robots and the long arc of civilizations; his nonfiction taught generations that the universe is more interesting understood than mythologized. As a humanist, he left a simple, durable case: that reason, curiosity, and plain honesty about what we don’t know are enough to build a good and meaningful life.
Continue exploring
Secular humanism
The this-worldly ethic Asimov championed as AHA honorary president.
What is atheism?
A clear introduction to what atheism actually means.
Science and religion
How the two relate — conflict, independence, or something else.
Carl Sagan
The other great science communicator of Asimov's century.
Recommended reading
Our full list of books, articles, and resources.