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...