(October 4, 2017 at 1:42 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(October 4, 2017 at 1:31 pm)Chad32 Wrote: Possibly not, but any religion that puts a priority on spreading its influence is going to invite conflict. Which can lead to war. As far as atheists killing massive numbers of people, all I can say is it's generally not done in the name of atheism. We don't have a sacred text that says to kill or oppress people with different views from us. So if Stalin or Mao were atheists, it doesn't really speak as badly on atheism as a whole, than it does some religious zealot commanding people be killed because their book plainly says to do such things somewhere in its pages.
But their motives still stem from opposition to religion. Stalin killed millions of religious folks in his attempt to eradicate religion and build an atheist society. So saying that atheism wasn't any sort of motive is not accurate.
Of course, this doesn't speak for all atheist people, whom are vastly decent people. Just as the crusades doesnt speak for all Christians. I'll agree with you there.
Eradicating religion wasn't the goal, it was one of the means by which Stalin consolidated power, which was the goal.
