Atheism Looking Good!

[Confused Ape]

n't think Soviet Russia, North Korea, or Maoist China count as "atheist" either. All three of them were heavily religious in that they were/are based on "emperor worship" of the dear leader. Moreover, Communism was the sacred text, that noone was allowed to deviate from without severe consequences. These nations hardly encouraged free thought or rational inquiry, and were anti-freedom the same way many organized religions are.

That's pretty slick the way you managed to eliminate 90% of the world's atheists from your supposition.  I always get that - "They're communists.  They don't count. They're not really atheists."  Sounds like "no true Scotsman" to me.

These regimes were atheist regimes which adopted some of the methods of organised religion.  A cult of personality was substituted for worship of a deity  and ideological texts were substituted for religious texts etc.  An odd thing about our species is that many people have some kind of impulse to be blindly devoted to something even if it's only a movie star or football team. This made it easy to manipulate a good proportion of these regimes' populations.