definitely Jesus

George W. Bush!! Just kidding... I'd have to say Albert Einstein.. think of all the sciences he opened up.. oh yeah same with Newton. Him and his apple...

Mitochondrial Eve's boyfriend.

You couldn't really say that anyone who invented or discovered something was influential. It was the creation or discovery that was influential. Without Columbus, Cabot or another would still have discovered the New World. The printing press, the atomic bomb, and the wheel would have been invented even without Gutenberg, Einstein or some nameless Mesopotamian.

IMHO, its the peddlers of ideas that have the most impact. Religious men like the Buddha and Jesus, political minds like Marx and Locke, philosophers and authors and ideologists. Ideas are more flexible and fragile than technological progress.

And I would avoid people in the last century, even the last millenium. A world without Caesar would be almost unrecognisable, but a world without, say, Ronald Reagan would be different but similar. Influence grows with time, the historical snowball effect.

bill gates

ahhh the irony! i wonder if xman even read the post right above his before spouting off such a witty, unique and hilarious remark!

the individual who first harnessed fire was burned to incineration before they could identify who he was and he never got credit for it

you can't really pick scientists as influential, because someone would have come up with their theories sooner or later. science is cumulative - people are always building on each others work. religion, on the other hand, is taken at face value as truth and never reworked. so religious figures are probably more influential on society.

titty board? what titty board?

Bill Gates or Ghandhi....both extremely influential and effective.

Most influential man ever!
 

The man, the myth, the legend:

http://i.imdb.com/Photos/Events/1494...609154_400.jpg

I think this whole thread was
[img]http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0VADLAuEa2ZX8c2CZqUuoF1HDKT1qV0A*xuJf4OhYOq3qdkVISMrnq0ojDAnPwZ!ceNk6O9Y7Q6xbhA6TpMXpXEnGa7aJ*XP*arzE4U587aQxG9!P8h2wmCYZtdUOanh*/owned-baby0.jpg?dc=4675434651889219935[/img]
with this post!

I would also like to bring up a notable entry in this little debate.
In a few hundred years there is a high probability that robotics will have come a LONG way and that society will be literally crawling with mechanical objects controlled by radio frequencies. The man who essentially gave birth to robotics by realizing that energy could be transmitted through the air was Nikola Tesla. Oh and just an on the side thing, he also harnessed the power of water at Niagra and thus created Hydroelectricity.
No bigee

Oh and as for all the people that listed Bill Gates, you guys should watch that "Pirates of Silicon Valley" TV movie that came out a while ago. It shows how Gates pretty much stole every idea that is credited to him.

Woah woah woah...Bill Gates is credited with ideas now? I just thought he was some law breaking, anti-competition, pro-monolopy evil business mogul? No?

What exactly do people believe Gates created?

I think the answer is obviously Jesus.

edit: Lay off Bill Gates, he has a 24+ billion dollar organization and has routinely broken the record for largest donation to a charitable organization by an individual. I don't care what he did to make his money (the coding and the programs werent really what made Bill Gates a genius, the fact that he got a contract with IBM that had percentage clauses in it and a clause that allowed him to sell his products to other companies -- That was and is the genius of Mr. Gates), it isn't important compared to what he does for others

The most influential person is indisputably:

Dean Kamen

Inventor of the Segway. The device that changed the world!

Calling Ahkenaton Henotheistic is a touch revisionist. Any henotheistic leanings were likely just marketing to keep nonAtenic priests from having him murdered by his own guards. Ahkenaton was pretty darned montheistic, and the backlash that resulted was ugly. I would definitely think his ideas influenced Moses. There is no way Moses could have avoided the concept growing up where and when he did.

Do not take this as a comment that Ahkenaton was the most influential man in history. I do not think so. I would lean towards Abraham and/or Locke

I can think of two people I'd consider to be the most influential in history. Between the two of them, it's a toss-up.

1. Muhammad. Unlike Jesus or Buddha, he was successful in both the political and religious axes. To this day in Islam, there's no meaningful separation of culture, politics, and religion from one another.

2. Genghis Khan. His conquests delineated and realigned political and geographical boundaries. If not quite the most influential person in history, he's at least the most influential person of the millenium.

Caveman the fire tamer
Caveman the wheel maker
Caveman the Breeder

not in that particular order

oh yeah and Friedrich Nietzsche, everything happened in the 21st century because of his writings

Muhammed is probably most influential
 

I think Muhammed is the most influential man in history. He even got #1 in in Micheal Harts book Top 100: A list of most influential men in history. This is what he says:

Excerpt from Hart's book:

My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world's most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular levels...

Muhammad founded and promulgated one of the world's great religions, and became an immensely effective political leader. Today, thirteen centuries after his death, his influence is still powerful and pervasive... Like all religions, Islam exerts an enormous influence upon the lives of its followers. It is for this reason that the founders of the world's great religions all figure prominently in this book. Since there are roughly twice as many Christians as Moslems in the world, it may initially seem strange that Muhammad has been ranked higher than Jesus. There are two principal reasons for that decision. First, Muhammad played a far more important role in the development of Islam than Jesus did in the development of Christianity. Although Jesus was responsible for the main ethical and moral precepts of Christianity (insofar as these differed from Judaism), St. Paul was the main developer of Christian theology, its principal proselytizer, and the author of a large portion of the New Testament.

Muhammad, however, was responsible for both the theology of Islam and its main ethical and moral principles. In addition, he played the key role in proselytizing the new faith, and in establishing the religious practices of Islam. Moreover, he is the author of the Moslem holy scriptures, the Koran, a collection of certain of Muhammad's insights that he believed had been directly revealed to him by Allah. Most of these utterances were copied more or less faithfully during Muhammad's lifetime and were collected together in authoritative form not long after his death. The Koran therefore, closely represents Muhammad's ideas and teachings and to a considerable extent his exact words. No such detailed compilation of the teachings of Christ has survived. Since the Koran is at least as important to Moslems as the Bible is to Christians, the influence of Muhammed through the medium of the Koran has been enormous It is probable that the relative influence of Muhammad on Islam has been larger than the combined influence of Jesus Christ and St. Paul on Christianity. On the purely religious level, then, it seems likely that Muhammad has been as influential in human history as Jesus

Abraham trumps Jesus though. Without Judaism, there would be no Christianity or Islam.

I'm going to throw down and say Socrates, who affected a whole culture which has spread itself world-wide. He is also indirectly one of the founders of the scientific method.

Ohh another big one is Adam Smith (if I'm to credit him with the rise of capitalism, and at this point I am). Capitalism was the cause of colonialism, resulting in the development of North America and the quasi-enslavement of Africa, South America, and parts of Asia.

tisonlyi: "Stole" is such a harsh word. How about "embraced"?

My vote goes to Joan of Arc. She was the key that solidified the French army - through her moral stance and her unique vision. That army was able to hold together a rudimentary country and actually was the foundation of the modern nation France. France as a strong and individual country put an end to the Hundred Years War. Before this event Europe was a fighting ground where no real advances were possible because of the generations of random pillage and destruction. After Joan of Arc Europe was able to settle into a collection of genuine nations which through economic and scientific competition/cross fertilization gave rise to the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the modern systems of banking and the miliatary. And no one can deny the impact the Europeans have had on the world.

Joan was the key. Joan rules :thumbsup:

Howard Stern. I don't care what people think. He created shock radio. His show isn't just porn stars and dick jokes, its actually pretty intelligent. I find it very entertaining and informative. Fuck the FCC! :thumbsup:

What about all the middle aged scientists like Galileo, Capurnicus, Newton and others that went against popular belief, and proved wrong what people have been believing in for 2000 years before them. If it wasn't for them there would've been a delay in the discovery of such things as gravity, friction, and the teliscope. That delay could've changed the whole course of the development of modern technologies. The Idea that man could fly might not of gotten to the Wright Brothers, and who knows how long it would've taken man to build and fly the first airplane after them, and everyone else who was trying to build a flying machine then. I'm kind of a physics geek, so that may make my opinion biased.

1 - Muhammad

some famous quotes on Muhammad ...

George Bernard Shaw - "I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Saviour of Humanity

Reverend Bosworth Smith - "Head of the State as well as the Church, he was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without the Pope's pretensions, and Caesar without the legions of Caesar, without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a police force, without a fixed revenue. If ever a man ruled by a right divine, it was Muhammad, for he had all the powers without their supports. He cared not for the dressings of power. The simplicity of his private life was in keeping with his public life."

Alphonse de LaMartaine - "If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astonishing results are the three criteria of a human genius, who could dare compare any great man in history with Muhammad? The most famous men created arms, laws, and empires only. They founded, if anything at all, no more than material powers which often crumbled away before their eyes. This man moved not only armies, legislations, empires, peoples, dynasties, but millions of men in one-third of the then inhabited world; and more than that, he moved the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and the souls.

Mahatma Ghandi - It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle. When I closed the second volume (of the Prophet's biography), I was sorry there was not more for me to read of that great life.

I put my personal vote on Alexander the Great for the spread of Hellenistic ideas, that moulded the West into what it is, even if most people haven't a clue what any of it is.

Aristotelian logic, physics, philosophy, mathematics, etc. were state-of-the-art for more than 1,500 years. He was probably the greatest mind in human history and created the foundation upon which the Enightenment rested. Aristotle provided the foundation for Newton, Descartes, Locke, and many, many others.

He gets my vote. I still don't like to read him, though. It's almost like reading lecture notes... ;)

Without Socrates, there would not have been an Aristotle! Woohah!

Yes, and there would have been no Plato without Socrates, no Aristotle without Plato. If you read the question that way, then the question is fairly meaningless. "The first organism on Planet Earth!" would seem to be the best answer if that's how you frame the question.

When I said that Aristotle build the foundation upon which other people's work rested, I meant just that: he built an incredible intellectual foundation that put Plato's (or any predecessor, for that matter) to shame. It was for this reason that I said Aristotle is the most influential.

This, to me, is a question of biology, not philosophy.

Easy, my vote goes to "Y-chromosome Adam" for the most influential man and "Mitochondrial Eve" as the most influential woman.
you can read about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Eve

My father: Without whom I would not have experienced anything. None of those other guys happened to give me life.

Hmm. If not him, I'd say the guy who figured out how to use fire. We'll call him Caveman Bob.

I vote for whoever the hell it was who started organized religion. What religion did was threaten the rich and powerful with eternal punishment if they misused their resources, and soothe the underpriveleged with promises of immortal paradise as long as they crossed their t's and dotted their i's. This kept enough people in line to avoid gluttonous annihilation, in my opinion.

Organized religion developed at a very crucial time of rapid human expansion and development, and I think it prevented everything from devolving into chaos. It became a de facto governmental body in most regions, providing essential public service in exchange for the tithe (in the Christian world). There was a time when virtually the only way to learn reading and writing was to become a man of the cloth, and what they produced and protected through dark times forms the basis of our understanding of the past. Thomas Cahill talks extensively of how Irish monks secreted away invaluable knowledge for hundreds of years while barbarians ravaged Europe.

There was a time when we didn't know a lot about the world and could largely be convinced of divinity. God was the rule against evil and the reward system for the good. The Koran and its brethren were also exhaustively detailed law books, and while much of it seems arbitrary now, it was the law and it was needed, even if it was only a leap of faith that sealed the deal.

Unfortunately, the organization of religion led to its own problems, like the Inquisition, witch hunts, an epidemic of pedophilia, institutionalized misogyny and homophobia, self-appointed divine conduits, and other symptoms of man's weakness towards the seduction of raw power.

Hate to be this guy but...
Gutenburg didn't invent the printing press. He discovered movable type, something the Chinese had already invented.

I would have to say the most influential man ever woul dhave to be Gavrilo Princip. He was the one who assasinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. Without this young guy and his assasination, there would be no WWI, WWII, or pretty much any of the wars that had happened since then. They all have been connected in some sort of way.

IT WAS LUCY! The athsrioapithicus (spelling, didnt bother). Her discovery has totaly changed everything we know, and broadens our understanding of our past, before Jesus, or abraham or Bill Gates, and also offers insight into what we will change into in the future.

Got to agree with a lot of others, adam. Adam was the father of everyone. Adam was (partially) responsible for the original sin, causing him to be cast from the garden, etc...

Well there's no way to know whether either of these things can be attributed to any one "man", but I'd like to suggest that the creation of language and of philosophy were the most influential "acts" in, or prior to, history.

Language can certainly not be attributed to one person, and even if the idea of language could be credited to a single "man" it's completion (for lack of a better term) must certainly be spread over a number of minds and over a number of years. I'm talking about spoken language, by the way, because in my opinion after spoken language, written language was an obvious eventuality. Language opened all sorts of doors for mankind. After all, what good is a brilliant idea if there's no way to communicate it? Which brings me to philosophy:

Now when I say philosophy, I don't mean anything nearly so complex or encompassing as Socratic or Platonic or Aristotilian philosophy. They were all great and significant thinkers, but I'm referring to the most rudimentary form of philosophy: simply asking "Why?". Why the sun rose and set, why the stars came out at night, why we were alive at all; questions that had never been asked before, questions that changed the way man lived. Again, I'm not saying that the first philosopher was necessarily one man, but it was these questions that led to the distinction between man and animal. It was these questions that led to morality and religion and laws and the formation of civilisation as we know it today.

I think the "ever" makes this subject too broad to be worthwhile in discussion.

Subjects that may have worked better may have been:

"Most influential person in the evolution of current Western culture"
"Most infuential person of the 20th century"
"Person who has influenced how you see the world the most"
"Person who was most scientifically influential"
"Person who has caused the most damage to human society"

I don't know about this "ever" thing...