Yes I pick on all religions.

[Anomalocaris]

And leave Elvis out of it too. Everyone knows the King is God!

---

The thing that really annoys me about religions is the way they discriminate against women and minorities. I don't care what rubbish they believe in but they should leave people alone.

He was a great performer, had a great voice, but he was not a great musician or song writer. He played guitar well enough as anyone else but most of his songs were copies or written for him.

Nice presentation, no originality, that means Elvis shares the common quality of all gods.

[Lucanus]

Sure, Stalin and his minions used guns and starvation. And Mao Zedong treated all people of religion with respect, did he? The great atheist experiments. Yeah, right. Wonderful. No thank you. It truly beggars belief that people fall for that sort of T-shirt, not recognising the blatant twisting of a dreadful and shameful period in the history of atheist thought and rule.
(...)
That T-shirt is a huge and embarrassing own goal for anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the history of atheist thought and power. I think people must either be either incredibly ignorant, or have absolutely no regard for the facts of history, to wear it.

You know, I have been reading your posts for a while and I thought you were a pretty cool guy, surely more rational than the average theist on this board.
But alas, this time you have demonstrated to be on par with the fundies. Stalin and Mao did not kill people in the name of atheism. They might have been atheists as a side effect of their ideology, but the atrocities they committed were not in the name of a lack of belief in god(s).

They killed that many people because of their own dogmatic and totalitarian ideology, communism, and also because they were extremely paranoid in their quest to eradicate any form of opposition. I personally think that communists, while rejecting the old religions, made their own ideology a religion by another name (and look at North Korea, where they worship Kim Il Sung almost as a god).

The point of Min's T-shirt was not that "Atheists have never killed anybody"; it was that "Atheists have never killed anybody in the name of atheism itself". Whilst religious people kill in the name of their own religion all the time.

[naimless]

Big man, Brian. Big man.

[Mr Greene]

And predictably the apologist springs into action with a couple of examples of revolutionary republics that became paranoid dictatorships...
But of course that couldn't possibly be the reason, it just wouldn't fit with his predetermined conclusion...

[JesusHChrist]

And where is the book of atheist dogma commanding its followers to kill?

Must have missed that somewhere.

[Michael]

And where is the book of atheist dogma commanding its followers to kill?

Must have missed that somewhere.

With respect, I suggest you read a little into the history of the 1920/30s persecution of Christians by Stalin. Marx himself did not strongly advocate suppression of religion*, but Lenin, building on the political views of Marx and Engels, very much thought that atheism must be adopted and spread. Lenin believed that the ideological battle against faith, religion, and the Church must be won through strong active atheist propaganda and campaigning. This did not meet with large success, so Stalin in the late 1920s and early 1930s started on a much more aggressive persecution of Christians with the express aim of replacing religion with atheism. To say that the persecutions under Stalin had nothing to do with atheism is simply burying one's head in the sand and saying the sun can't be shining because you can't see it. You might as well say that the inquisitions had nothing to do with the religious beliefs of the Spanish church and monarchy. We all, atheists and theists alike, need to acknowledge when our ideologies have led to dark places; only in doing that can we work to prevent a repeat of the terrible atrocities of the past.

*Marxism itself is open to a Christian form, that of 'liberation theology', which was prominent in South America in the last century. Catholic theologians in South America found strong links between Marxism and Jesus's call to care for the poor. It was Lenin and then Stalin that took Marxism down a much stronger atheistic and anti-religious path.

[Brian37]

Um religion never left the Soviet Union, Russian Orthodox Christianity was still the pet of the USSR as long as it didn't challenge the state.

Really no different than idiots claiming Hitler hated Christianity. You can find plenty of quotes where he talks about god and plenty of pictures of him with Clergy.

But no matter how much you want to claim the old atheists were responsible for fascism what both God and fascism have in common is the idea of blind loyalty and blind worship. No westernized atheist I would consider moral would do that or should desire to do that.

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Even if all 7 billion of us were atheists we would still have greed and different ideas of economics and different classes.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Hitchens made the very salient point that ALL totalitarian societies are structured along religious lines. Destruction of the established church, eliminating the clergy and making traditional worship a punishable crime are simply replaced by slavish (literally) adoration of the Leader and the cult of personality.

Anyone who doesn't think that Stalinist Russia or the nightmare that North Korea has been for the last few decades aren't religious societies is accepting the short end of a bet.

Boru

[Brian37]

Hitchens made the very salient point that ALL totalitarian societies are structured along religious lines. Destruction of the established church, eliminating the clergy and making traditional worship a punishable crime are simply replaced by slavish (literally) adoration of the Leader and the cult of personality.

Anyone who doesn't think that Stalinist Russia or the nightmare that North Korea has been for the last few decades aren't religious societies is accepting the short end of a bet.

Boru

Did you read my prior posts. It is a myth that either Germany or the USSR got rid of all religion. They kept their one pet sect on a leash and allowed it to exist as long as it did not get out of line.

There issue was not god belief itself, their issue was ANY challenge to the state. Any type of one party rule will do that. They still had Churches in both Nazi Germany and the USSR.

[Michael]

For those that deny the oppression of the Church and the persecution of Christians by Stalin, the demolition in 1931 of the Moscow Cathedral (it was rebuilt in the 1990s).

http://youtu.be/YFlx55OANg8

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And for those still in doubt that this was an atheist regime that had long been absolutely committed to the eradication of faith and religion, it is worth reading Lenin's own polemic on the subject (and Lenin's actions were moderate in comparison to Stalin's)...

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/wo...may/13.htm

And here is a well referenced summary of the persecutions which, according to peer-reviewed academic sources, led to 12-20 million Christian victims. Perhaps now you might see why I was so appalled and angered by the amazing ignorance (I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that it wasn't a deliberate attempt to cover up some of the worst atrocities in the history of atheism) of that stupid T-shirt.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecuti...viet_Union

But I'll end here. The history, and the absolutely clear link to atheist ideology, as laid out by Lenin, is out there for all who have eyes to see. And to those people who are prepared to see, I would just make the plea to never forget or feel the need to cover things up. We all, Christians and atheists alike, need to own the atrocities of the past, as we are the ones who can help prevent them from ever occurring again (or, at the very least, ensure that we are never part of anything that contributes to these dreadful crimes against our fellow man).