everyone (else) seems to be hating on atheists

[Creed of Heresy]

No I don't remember saying that actually, and if I did (quote me?) I misspoke and I apologize. I did say that there were no atheists killed during the Inquisition and that there were never mass persecutions of atheists like what many Christians have gone through throughout history (including, in living memory, in those atheist states in which tens of thousands of Christians were killed).

But I do know of Łyszczyński, though he denied being atheist so eh. I'll admit that he's the only state-sponsored killing I know of throughout all of history, and then I know of one (maaaybe 2) more who was the victim of a hate crime.

Well of COURSE he denied it; admission to guilt never brought about any mercy from the church. People who confessed under torture still were executed in horrible, excruciating ways, and people who confessed first? Ditto. I get the impression he was lying. A circumstantial claim, mind you, but the man WAS writing a book about atheism. A priest told him to stop writing his book before he could write the part where the catholic WINS the debate?? "No, don't let the catholic win, that would make this book be found FAVORABLY by the church! I'm a priest, by the way." Hohohohoidontbuythatforasecond. Clearly, neither did the church.

Now if by state-sponsored you mean church-sponsored? And I assume you meant to add "atheist," so church-sponsored killing of an atheist. State-sponsored would mean it was the king who ordered it, and it seems that, actually, the king tried to assist him, to no avail [what? The church usurp the secular power? NEVER. Where would you get such an idea?].

The king, who was very far from countenancing such enormities, attempted to save the unfortunate Lyszczynski, by ordering that he should be judged at Vilna; but nothing could shelter the unfortunate man against the fanatical rage of the clergy represented by the two bishops; and the first privilege of a Polish noble, that he could not be imprisoned before his condemnation, and which had theretofore been sacredly observed even with the greatest criminals, was violated.

So the church judged that an atheist was worse than the greatest criminals of Poland in their pursuit of him...interesting...

I'm just largely pointing out this case because you say there was no mass-persecutions. I can imagine that that is true...but again I hold that this has nothing to do with the fact that atheists did not exist. This guy got caught because he wrote some shit about it. The literate in those times were very privileged [there was no such thing as publicly funded education in this time]. Simply being able to read and write to a minor extent usually put someone in a sort of "middle class" of the time, being someone capable of writing an entire book meant you had gold, and plenty of it. Now I insert the fact that the church pretty much could and would usurp the secular powers of the kings, such was their power. Add in that the kings of that time based their authority in Divine Right and as such had a vested interest in keeping their populations believers. And finally, there was clearly precedent to where if you were an atheist, you experienced a horrible death by having your tongue pulled out with a burning iron, your hands were burned over a slow fire, and you were finally beheaded [a death where you are still actually alive and aware for a short time after the decapitation].

All this basically explains why it seems there were no atheists as we know of them in those times: Those with the means to make their opinions known were smart enough to know that to even suggest you were an atheist was very much against your own individual well-being, and those too poor or uneducated to make such opinions known were often of no consequence and if found out probably did not even warrant a trial [there will always be more field-hands]...or were simply too ignorant to even disbelieve. After all, we see this in the modern world with the rank and file of Islamic terrorists. They're poor, illiterate sods who basically just take it from the Imams that they're supposed to blow themselves up to kill someone that apparently is really evil, they can't read so they can't really judge for themselves anyway, and hell, apparently afterwards they spend an eternity in total rapturous bliss, and the terrorists in charge are often delusional ultra-fanatics who have their own interpretation of their holy book and are clearly not alone in their beliefs, thus giving themselves reassurance and credence to their understandings, oftentimes from the appointed Imams and Ayatollahs and Mullahs.

And then we notice with the rise of the Renaissance came a sudden surge of freethinkers and the beginnings of what we would know as modern atheism. They call it the "Enlightenment" for a reason, after all; lots of people started getting an education and started thinking for themselves.

So, was there ever a mass-persecution of atheists? Maybe not, but there was a CONTINUAL persecution of them. But the worse crime was that people were never allowed to even come to the conclusion to begin with; a crime that can be laid at the feet of all religions, one that Islam is currently the biggest perpetrator of, but is by far not the only one, and certainly wasn't always the biggest.

And again, tens of thousands of christians were killed alongside quite a few atheists as well. Again, christians were never a sole target; any threat to the totalitarian governments involved were all briefly united in one singular, horrible way: Killed for their beliefs or disbeliefs, en mass, christian, atheist, jew, muslim, all sharing the same grave.

I could go into an argument about time of oppression [basically it would go from the start of the catholic church to modern times; several centuries, as compared with so-called "atheist states" whose own suppression was limited to decades, instead] but that's a murky point to make, though I WILL leave its suggestion up for consideration.