French critics of religions

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, US also ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism and phenomenology, and one of the leading figures in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. His work has also influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence these disciplines.

François-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), known by his nom de plume Voltaire (, ), was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his criticism of Christianity—especially the Roman Catholic Church—as well as his advocacy of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.

Michel Onfray (born 1 January 1959) is a French writer and philosopher. Having a hedonistic, epicurean and atheist world view, he is a highly prolific author on philosophy, having written more than 100 books. His philosophy is mainly influenced by such thinkers as Nietzsche, Epicurus, the Cynic and Cyrenaic schools, as well as French materialism.

Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte ( 19 January 1798 – 5 September 1857) was a French philosopher and writer who formulated the doctrine of positivism. He is often regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term. Comte's ideas were also fundamental to the development of sociology; indeed, he invented the term and treated that discipline as the crowning achievement of the sciences.

Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (8 December 1723 – 21 January 1789), known as d'Holbach, was a French-German philosopher, encyclopedist and writer, who was prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived and worked mainly in Paris, where he kept a salon. He helped in the dissemination of "Protestant and especially German thought", particularly in the field of the sciences, but was best known for his atheism and for his voluminous writings against religion, the most famous of them being The System of Nature (1770) and The Universal Morality (1776).

Denis Diderot (5 October 1713 – 31 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a prominent figure during the Age of Enlightenment.

Jean Coterau, was born on 27 October 1898 in the French city of Millau and died on 20 April 1979 in the same city. He was a politician and a militant secularist.

Gérard Biard (born 1958 or 1959) is a French journalist. He is the editor‑in‑chief of the satirical French news magazine, Charlie Hebdo.

Charlie Hebdo (French for 'Charlie Weekly') is a French satirical weekly magazine, featuring cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes. The publication has been described as anti-racist, sceptical, secular, libertarian and within the tradition of left-wing radicalism, publishing articles about the far-right (especially the French nationalist National Front party), religion (Catholicism, Islam and Judaism), politics and culture.

Raoul Adolphe Georges Rigault, born on 16 January 1846 in Paris, where he also died on 24 May 1871, was a journalist and French revolutionary, best known for his role during the Paris Commune of 1871.