(March 22, 2010 at 11:50 am)RedFish Wrote: Wot about PolPot or Chairman Mao?
I do agree about sanctimonious bullshit though..
I'll elaborate a bit on Thor's point. There have been evil people on both sides of the fence of belief. However, the fact that belief can compel people to do arguably evil things as a direct result of doctrine. Atheism has no doctrine. What dictatorships often do is take away the rights of people, religion being one of them. It's not about trying to proselytize to people, it's directly telling people what to believe, and acting violently to those who oppose you. This is the problem.
Mao, Pol Pot, and Stalin were very politically charged and interested in retaining power and control, rather than promoting tenets of something which by definition, has no internal dogma, and isn't a worldview in the least.