Communism and atheism not the same, help me make a coherent argument.

[Alexnvy]

So I herd a few people use the fact that I am a militant atheist to point out so were Communists (it's people who used urbandictionary after I announce that I am a militant atheist) and that fucking stumps me because I can't express fluidly that it wasn't even communism it was fucking Stalin, In fact I am a communist (it's a theory but an unreal solution) but yeah how would you put it in an eligant way, and any good anti-atheist rebuttals? (I hope this is a right section of the forum for this) u get wat I'm talking about right?



(Using an iPad so some words might be autofucked, ex i write go and this pies of shit rewrites it as good)

[PickelledEggs]

The only thing atheism is is lack of belief in god and lack of faith in religion. It's the only thing that atheists have in common. Stalin is a tricky topic for a lot of people trying to defend themselves as nonbelievers because he was an atheist.

The thing to remember is that his tyrannic mindset is more the characteristic of Catholicism (how he was raised). I wouldn't mention Catholicism though and him being raised catholic unless you do a good amount of your own research on it though. And I don't know enough about it to explain it myself.

Keep in mind and use what Steven Weinberg said.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion

[PickelledEggs]

And welcome to the forum! :)

[Mr.Obvious]

As PickelledEggs said, atheïsm is only the lack of belief in a God.

That being said, in the Western world most Atheïsts, higher then other groups, are in favor of secularization and anti totalitarian principles. Most atheïsts are in favor of a secularized democracy with a division of powers and no mandatory position on religion and an interest in educating the people as much as possible.

Joseph Stalin's communism, same North Korea for that matter, was none of that. He forced a religious position (atheïst) on their people, he changed the actual religion into a worship of him and the state (through indoctrination, mandatory praise, propaganda, depicting him wiht halo's, depicting his government as all-knowing and all-powerfull, ...) that some would call a 'state-religion', and tried to keep his people ignorant and dumb (another shared characteristic of both religion and 'state-religion'). If, as Hitchens noted, you can find a religious country that has been reformed into a secularized democracy and still been worse off, then you can come and claim the fault of most atheïsts, but you can't use Stalin's communism because it wasn't the implementation of most atheïst ideals, rather the glorification of one man's ego and power.

That being said, you might ask them; "but if I'm correct you think they committed these crimes, all these dead through communism and nazism and such, because they didn't believe in a God to explain themselves to after they died? I mean, I know Hitler was a catholic but most christians don't accept that. Truth is, these people died because the men leading the changes were sociopathic monsters or deranged nitwits with a total disregard for human life who were given too much power. But if God had commanded their slaying in the concentration camps or the gulags... would it still have been immoral? How many exterminations, enslavements and mutilations have been sanctioned by God? If you give your government God on it's side, there is no telling what evil behavior you may end up excusing. At least most of us atheïsts can look at Stalin and agree/admitt that there are fucked up people even in our camp, as wide as that term goes for atheïsts. When religious people look they exclaim the not-a-true-scotsman-fallacy or honor them. If those "in your camp" set the bad example, at least have the dignity to learn from that."

[stromboli]

Communism is both a political and economic doctrine. The reason that Communism is Russia was so harsh against Christians is because the Russian Orthodox Church was deeply imbedded in the leadership of the Czarists. Marx and Lenin both advocated the seizure of religious properties, and they were atheists. It had as much to do with the seizure of a considerable amount of church owned property as religious suppression.

There is, however, confusion because the Russian Communist revolution followed closely after the Pogroms of the Russian Orthodox Church against the Jews. It was a matter of only about 10 years between the end of one and the beginning of the other, and one of the reasons Russians were sympathetic to the Jewish cause during WW2. They liberated Auschwitz and Lublin death camps.

Communist tolerance varied widely from place to place and country to country, depending on the country's leadership and level of Soviet suppression. Josip Tito In Yugoslavia discouraged religion but wasn't punitive against it. Ironically, Islam did well inside Communist states and wasn't suppressed until much later, and then mostly after the breakup of the USSR.