Am I an Anarchist?

[Angrboda]

I am contemptuous of the state and its institutions, but feel that it is a design flaw, and the solution is to have a less omnipresent state with very limited functions. Though this ideal is conceivable in societies that fundamentally cherish individual freedom and possess the nerve to fight for it, even if that entails considerable inconvenience.

That would make you more of a libertarian than an anarchist. Anarchists want no state at all. Libertarians want a state that is limited to policing illicit coercion.

Please stop supersizing your text.

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Indeed a state of anarchy is far more tolerable than an Orwellian state.

That may be true, but since those aren't the only two options, your point is moot.

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The point is I absolutely hate any kind of authoritarianism.

Do you hate authoritarianism, or do you simply hate authority?

As for atheists, to each his own, but it must be admitted that the Soviet Union and now China have been the bastions of state sponsored atheism and persecute religious groups. The concentration camps in Xiangjiang province and the condition of Uighurs and Kazakhs is an outright example of atheist persecution of a religious community right now as we approach the year 2019.

The Constitution of the People's Republic of China guarantees "freedom of religion." The reasons behind the situation in China are complex, but it has little if anything to do with atheism and state atheism.

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Atheism is intrinsically prone to politically authoritarian and collectivist ideologies. That is because atheism is colorless, it doesn’t understand the human condition as religion does, particularly Semitic religions, and it is from the latter that we get concept like civil disobedience and the morality of defying the state and the law when the state or law is unjust and tyrannical.

I'm going to leave your comment about atheism being colorless alone, as it's not particularly relevant and seems to do nothing more than express a prejudice. Atheism is not intrinsically prone to politically authoritarian and collectivist ideologies. Atheism is not a political system or worldview. It's possible that atheists themselves are prone to politically authoritarian and collectivist ideologies, but I see no obvious reason why this might be true, and lacking any actual documentation of your assertion, I'm inclined to dismiss it as ipse dixit. It is possible that atheists are attracted to socialism and communism preferentially, but even if so, that would seem to do more with a set of common political and social values having nothing to do with their atheism, so I don't see why you even bring it up.

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Like I said, when atheists persecute the religious it may not be in the name of a deity (obviously) but why does it have to be in the name of anything? Persecution is persecution regardless of motivation. When atheists persecute the religious it is simply because the atheists don't like religion and having contempt for the religious.

That may be true, and that may provide them a motive for persecuting religion. However, in that case, it would be their hatred of religion that is motivating their persecution of religion, not their atheism. As the humanist movement shows, there are plenty of atheists who aren't motivated by a hatred of religion, so your claim that atheism is responsible for religious persecution is sheer bollocks. Moreover one would need to show that hatred of religion, by atheists, is causing religious persecution. Typically the religious see persecution where none exists, or attribute to atheism what is being done for other reasons, such as in China. In neither case is atheism the cause of religious persecution.

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And this last point, I'm going to supersize because it may deserve it.

In the past, when governments had less power than they do now, people were less free than they are now in the modern state. Even today, where law and order breaks down, scores of petty warlords and other would-be kings explode like wildfire, undermining the plausibility of your Jeffersonian view that if people simply were free of authority they would be largely good. We don't need to imagine what would happen in a lawless state. We can see it happening today.