Most influential man ever?
 

Okay here is something I have been pondering for awhile. Who do you think the most influential man ever was? I personally think it is Abraham. I mean he started a religion that became one of the first great religons, Judaism, which over the roughly 4000 to 5000 (ish.. If someone knows a more exact time frame please do add) year time period it has been around has influenced billions of people both directly through the relgion and through its two daughter relgions of Christanity and Islam. Plus the fact his family line has become one of our main stay "races" , jews. If anyone wants to disagree feel free to please be prepared to give an answer to who you think more rightly deserves this place.

I assume by influential you mean someone who, by their actions has been able to change how people think and lead their lives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and the most influential person ever would presumably have effected the greatest number of lives . . . . so i reckon it has to be (and I hate to say this because they are not my personal faves) . . . Jesus . . . Bill Gates . . . or Elvis.

Love it or hate it, largest religion in the world == Christianity.

Jesus.

Yep, its cliched to say it, but Jesus really has had a greater impact upon the world than anyone else.

PS Why do we have to pick a man? Women do great things too.

I would vote for the Buddha or even Muhammad as most influential.

Time magazine, or one of those sort of things, had a huge article on Abraham a few months ago. It basically said that his break into monotheism (while not the first) was possibly the most influential move in human history.

Update:
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020930/
It was the cover story on Sept. 30, 2002. The above link will take you to where you can purchase it, but i figure you can just go to your local library and check it out.

Wow. I find that I really don't have any kind of opinion on this topic. My mind just can't wrap itself around that great a number of people, I guess. Weird.

Well I think I will break from religious slant and argue that Aristotole was that the most influential man ever. Aristitilian ideas were adopted by the early catholic church as well as the muslim religion. Although we may not consider Aristotole much today, the foundations that he laid in philosophy are the bases of much of our culture today. There is even some evidence that his work made it into asia and was influential there as well. Just playing devils advicate more than anything because it would nice to think that a philosopher was the most influential person.

Lebell,
If you are talking quantitative influence and answering with jesus, I submit that would be incorrect. Numerically, it's probably Confucious.

In any event, if these so-called "great religious leaders" are the world's most influential, then I would submit their influence has been overwhelmingly negative, as religion tops the list for inciting brutality, torture, and murder among human populations.

I would submit Moses in place of Abraham and Paul in place of Jesus.

The actual two people didn't change worldviews so much as the main authors of their biographies (in the case of Paul one could argue his history of early church thought supplants the particular life events of Jesus in regards to theological discourse).

But how could christianity exist without judaism?


*sigh* Lets not be moronically pc, thanks. You KNOW what I ment.

Some interesting points, Art.

Did you have a source regarding the relative numbers of believers Art? I was going from memory when I posted. And while I am an admirer of Confuscious, I'm still not sure that he has influenced more people, but it's an interesting thought.

As to your other point, it has merit. Do you think though that it is cause and effect or human nature? Certainly human brutality is not the sole perview of religion. Some (if not most) of the horrible events of the 20th century were perpetrated not under a religious guise, but under a political one.

We all know it couldn't but that wasn't the question. But I can agree with your logic that Abraham as the grandfather of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam could arguably be considered the most influential man in History.

But then again, from my own perspective, Abraham was a prophet, whereas Jesus was the Son of God in human form. Hence in my mind, Jesus gets the nod.

Aye. And let us not forgot that through history while many things were done and they said it was for religious reasons many of them were really just to gain money,land or power. We could just as easily say those things are evil too.

Lebell, the first point is simple population demographics, I believe.
A lot of time we don't consider the vast numbers of people who actually constitute the largest continuous culture the world has ever known. I'll check some numbers, although exact continuous population figures are hard to access from Asia circa 500 BC to the present.

The second point is more speculative, but it's not the first time it's been made. As to the reason; I'd say the nature of the human beast is more brutal, torturous, and murderous than any animal that has ever lived. (again a simple quantitative measure of acts of violence against our own and other species). Given that fact, any reason that would allow this to be justified on a cosmic scale seems like it would be just the thing to assuage the part of us that needs to "rationalize" our behavior. Grist for the forebrain's mill, as it were...

i vote for me. i wow the multitudes.

(honestly, i dunno. I wanna say Jesus but its not true, the world is a big place)

I diffently did not disregard asian culture when I was posing the original question to myself. And it is true that asian culture is the most non intertwined with other cultures even to this day. It is also true that asia makes up both the largest land mass but also population mass on earth. However, all the smaller ones combined (or mostly combined) outnumber it (in my non scientific opinon of course) considering you are looking at the americas, europe, the middle east and parts of africa.

There should be more studies into inviduals and there personal influence. More then just how many people they touched but to the degree that they did.

The current Jewish Year is 5764 which is from September 2003 through September 2004.

if i had to pick most influential man EVER thats a very difficult choice, so i will be simple and say Adam, the first man :p

since religion is brought up...
The monotheistic religions (having one god) are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Parsees, Sikhism, and the Bahai. Are all based on Judaism which was the first monotheistic religion; similarly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all have the same god, which is... God... that being said we might as well just say God is the most influential... man, being, whatever.


check out this page for religion stuff
http://www.krysstal.com/wgods.html
i dunno about the site but that page is a great overview and has a buncha stuff

Ok,

If God is in the running, I change my vote :D

Hmmm. I think for the sake of argument we should leave God out of it.

It starts to get ambiguous at a point,
and it's difficult to attribute which history is true
for those so far back.
I would rather mention someone who had done something verifiable & specific.

Such as Gutenberg, and his invention of movable type press.

This was probably the most significant product of the millennium
The Grandfather of the Information age.
This allowed information to be mass produced.
An incredible leap forward.

I would have said Jesus, but without abraham you couldn't have had Jesus, so my vote would be for Adam. If it wasn't for him we would all live in paradise, right?

I don't know for sure if some religious figures stated in this thread even existed.

Actually it would still just be Adam and Eve (if the story is true). They were immortal and (essentially) told not to have sex. When they did they were cast out...

I would have to say that Confucious or Aristotile are way up on the list...

I agree that while Jesus is an important figure, his cult would have died a slow death if not for Paul.

As for Abraham, Adam, etc. these are just characters in etiologies... there is no reason to suppose they were real people. So why attribute them this sort of significance? It might be better to say the person or persons that created these stories and characters is quite influential... or the person or persons upon which the myth of Abraham was created... but to say there was actually an Abraham seems a bit of a stretch (well for me anyway).

Hans Albrecht Bethe forever changed the way every man, woman and child on the planet thinks when he invented the atomic bomb. I doubt there is not a person on the planet that doesn't know what nukes are or what they can do. That's influence. It's anonymous influence, but that wasn't part of the original question as I read it.

He was the commencement speaker when I graduated college. Facinating guy.

edited as it was an incorrect answer.

Actully I have seen secular evidence for the existance of Abraham. He is ingenerally considered to have been a real person who did exist. Same for Moses. Adam less so. Jesus WAS a real person. As was Muhammad as was Siddhartha Gautama. I find it funny people who get to the point of hating religion so much they start to deny that the prophets that started it didn't really exist. I mean so far we have yet to deny Muhammad or Siddhartha Gautama but I have no doubts that in 1000 years there will be people with refer to Muhammad as a fictional charector just because they dislike the religion.

For the record... I didn't deny the existance of Jesus, Muhammad or Siddhartha. They were real men. Prophets if you will.

I didn't bring up either Muhammed or Budda as I didn't have a comment on them. As for Jesus my point was clear. I think his cult would have died out if not for Paul and his followers. Jesus was a seed and Paul was the farmer.

My arguement against characters leads more to Moses, Abraham and Adam. There may be some tenuous evidence of their existance (well except for Adam) but I find it too tenuous to consider valid.

The bible is too flawed a text to treat as a history. There have been way too many revisions and rewrites (and each and every one with a different bias or agenda) to trust it as a history.

If there was someone like Abraham then I would consider him in the top five most influential people to be certain. At this stage I prefer to put Abraham on the level of Adam. A very powerful character in the bible narrative.

But I did. And there was a reason why I did. Of course you don't deny them. They are more recent phenomenons Islam is only about 1500 years old which is real young in the religious world. Budhhism isn't much older. So we don't deny them. My question is why deny someone simply because it is older? I mean in 4000 years I bet people will be debating with there really WAS a Siddhartha Gautama. What I am saying is most everything I have read about Abraham(Most of which was from 100% secular sources) generally consider him, atleast most likely, a real person. And to deny he was real merely because he is a religious figure and from over 5000 years ago is ... I dunno. Not good.

Hmm, I think I'm going to break with the pack and suggest Johann Gutenberg. He invented the printing press, which brought knowledge to billions of people who wouldn't have had it before. That includes knowledge of the various religions mentioned in this thread. Bibles were very costly things before Gutenberg, and only the very wealthy had them.

I find it incredible how people can call Jesus a great man. Jesus can only be 3 things. 1. God, 2. a nut who claimed that he was God, 3. evil dude who calimed that he was god for own personal gain. So, lets cut the crap, if you don't beleive that Jesus is God then don't even mention his name....argh

Just wanted to point out that you are not breaking from the pack TO much considering that rouge allready pointed out Guttenberg. I defintly concur he had great influence. But one question is this. The printing press seems rather obvious (in retrospect aleast) so is it possible that it was inevitable and he just happened to be the one?

Oops, my apologies to rouge, I missed that part.

As to whether or not it was inevitable, you could say the same thing about any invention or philosophy. But the influential people are the ones that made it happen.

Mahatma Gandhi

My vote goes to Scorates.


Incorrect. Judaism was the first widely accepted monotheistic religion, but not the first monotheistic religion.

Adolf Hitler, although not a good influence he had a major influence on every person that has lived since the mid 1900's.

He changed the way an entire nation thought and had altered the mindset of the world forever. He could convert people on will and turned millions of people into mindless slaves.

Just to point out it Rogue , not rouge...big differance...

haha, your welcome rogue....

John Locke.

The first man (actually I should say among the first men, but certainly the most influential) to challenge the divine right of the ruler, a concept that had existed since the stone age.

Who doesn't know who Hitler is?

the individual who first harnessed fire. Deny that one.