The End Game of Atheism

[Mister Agenda]

Mao was a man, not a god. Worshiping him as a god does not negate the fact that the Communist government of China was/is Atheistic.

No - you are missing the point. Atheists don't do worship. We don't worship Gods or men who behave like they are Gods (with the associated capricious lack of respect for human life). By definition therefore, China was not atheist. It merely replaced God with Mao and then ascribed to him all sorts of miraculous brave actions he almost certainly never did.

I think you're trying to make atheism do more work than it is capable of. Individual atheists can believe any kind of crazy, they just can't believe a supernatural deity is real. I know it's hard to take the Maoist or Stalinist thing on board because atheistic communists tended to have a radically different different mindset from most Western atheists, who tend to be secular humanists or at least rationalists. China was atheist. Communism as practiced in most communist countries is atheistic. You can fall prey to a cult of personality and still be an atheist. But the actions of Maoists are Stalinists are no more because of atheism than the actions of Al Qaeda are because of theism.

There is gray area when someone ascribes supernatural powers to a person, I would agree that if you worship a person you believe to have deific powers, you are not an atheist even if you choose to call yourself one. I don't think that describes most Chicoms. It may describe most North Koreans at this point, though.