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Huston Smith was an American religious studies scholar, whose work explored the world's religions and their impact on human consciousness.

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Amina Wadud is an American Islamic scholar who advocates for gender equity and progressive interpretations of Islam.

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Martin Luther King was an American civil rights leader and Baptist minister. He Promoted nonviolent activism and social change grounded in Christian principles.

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Karen Armstrong is a British author, religious historian, and former nun. Her work focuses on religious understanding, compassion, and interconnectedness. Her TED Talk was called, Karen Let's revive the Golden Rule

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Weil was a French philosopher, political and religious thinker. She was noted for her compassion towards others, and is also remarkable for her thoughts and opinions on Christianity and other religions.

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Singer was a Polish-American writer and Jewish thinker. He was strident in his view on language, only ever writing in Yiddish, and believed that it wasn’t possible to ‘know’ God.

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Sivananda was an Indian Hindu spiritual teacher and yoga expert. He gained a world-side following, and popularized the pastime of yoga, although for him, yoga was a means to achieve union with God.

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Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, poet, theologian, and social thinker. He is interesting to us as one of the first Existentialist thinkers, and for the way in which he combined philosophy with religious faith. He once said: “Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.”

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Henderson is the founder of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which he started up to parody the decision by the Kansas State Education Board to allow the teaching of creationism in science lessons alongside the theories of Darwin. He has much to say on causation and correlation – and pirates.

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Hazleton trained as a psychologist before becoming a reporter in the Middle East. She has written extensively on the nature and history of Islam, and the difference in terms of its reality, and how it is perceived. She is one of our knowledge heroes, appearing in the BQ lessons to help us to explore the role of doubt in producing knowledge about religion.

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Dawkins is probably the most famous biologist in the world, best known for his book The Selfish Gene. He has staunch opinions on superstition and religion, which he believes are actively harmful to society. He argues that one’s approach to life should be based on the scientific method.

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Hitchens was a British-American, left wing, privately educated, militantly atheist, pro-interventionist (for war in Iraq), writer, drinker, and smoker, whose life proved that people can be many things at the same time, and should never be pigeon-holed. His (critical) views on religion are probably the most interesting to us as TOK learners, for example, his assertion that belief in an omnipotent God leads to the totalitarian subjugation of the individual.