Atheism has been a component of every Marxist government. If you continue to maintain that there is no link between the far left and atheism I will quickly judge you to be either a fraud or a fool, ok? :-)
To charge atheism with responsibility for "irreligious genocide" is to say that these mass murders are being carried out in accordance with the (non-existent) tenets of atheism simply because there is no religious motivation behind them.
You are correct, there is no religious motivation driving these madmen, it's all about power. Religion is but one of the guises the artful can take to decieve.
One could very well suggest -- with much greater validity -- that state-worship is a form of religion and chalk up the victims of Mao, Hitler, and Stalin to the theists.
You really like those guys, don't you?
The real murderer is not religion or non-religion: it is the fanatical belief of certain groups of individuals (the chosen) in their "right" and "duty" to use forceful means to mold society into a form of their liking.
Uh-huh, we've always called those people Democrats, or liberals.
Just because the word “atheism” ends with an “-ism” does not mean that it is some coherent doctrine that can be somehow incorporated into another set of beliefs such as Marxism. Atheism does not itself have any positive elements that would dictate actions that should or should not be taken; it is simply a denial of theism. The anti-religious elements that appear in totalitarian regimes do not stem from atheism per se, but rather from the idea that loyalty to a church or a faith other than that offered by the state (die Volk, the rule of the proletariat, etc.) stands in opposition to loyalty to the state. In essence, these regimes consider religious belief heretical to the state orthodoxy.
You really like those guys, don't you?
Yep, got little busts of them sitting on my desk at work. Joking aside, I despise them and their statism as much as anyone else.
Uh-huh, we've always called those people Democrats, or liberals
I’ve always called them politicians. The Democrats and Republicans share the view that the power of the state can and should be used to compel people to act in accordance with their particular social goals; they only differ in the areas in which they feel such force should be used.