Champions in the battle for rational thought...
...everyone has the right to hold their own opinions as to what is true, but not to present false evidence in support of what they want to believe is true. No thinking person wants to have faith in the absurd.

"Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again."
- Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould was among the best known and widely read scientists of our present generation. A paleontologist by strict profession, Gould is perhaps better recognized for his contributions to evolutionary theory and the philosophy and history of science. Until his death in 2002, he also held the position of Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, and Professor of Geology at Harvard University, and was also curator for Invertebrate Paleontology at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Source: http://www.freethought-web.org/ctrl/news/stephen_gould.html

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins says your genes care about themselves, not about you. You're just a vehicle to make more genes. Given his view, some of Dawkins' readers have asked him how he gets up in the morning knowing he is nothing but a collection of selfish genes in an uncaring universe. But Richard Dawkins wonders why people consider science so bleakly, thinking it robs life of warmth and worth. To him, science is filled with wonder, beauty, and awe. Dawkins contends that when Newton explained the prism, he didn't rob the rainbow of its mystery as the poet Keats complained, he opened the door to the greater wonders of relativity and an expanding universe.

Source: http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/

Carl Sagan was one of the most powerful voices in science and science education in this century.

The death of Carl Sagan on December 20, 1996, robbed the science world of one of its most creative researchers and articulate spokesmen. At the time of his death, Sagan was David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University, where he had held a professorship since 1971.

Source: Scientific American web site http://www.sciam.com/explorations/010697sagan/010697explorations.html

James Randi has an international reputation as a magician and escape artist, but today he is best known as the world's most tireless investigator and demystifier of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.

Randi has pursued "psychic" spoonbenders, exposed the dirty tricks of faith healers, investigated homeopathic water "with a memory," and generally been a thorn in the sides of those who try to pull the wool over the public's eyes in the name of the supernatural.

Source: James Randi Educational foundation