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>I see where you are coming from. That is not the meaning that I get from that statement (although it is a perfectly acceptable meaning).

Oh, I don't doubt that the intended meaning from the original statement was an unfair insinuation against Christianity. I simply don't believe that the truth of the statement itself validates the conclusion.

However, if you take a look at Nazism and Communism, they were not only advancing a political agenda, they were also advancing an economic and "moral" (i.e. belief system) one as well.

Actually, I'd say that their economic and "moral" system was tied with their political agenda. Semantic difference, I suppose, I won't dispute the nature of their agenda.

One of the first things that they try to do when taking over a country is to stomp out all other beliefs other than theirs.

Again, I won't dispute that this happens often (though not always; IIRC Alexander the Great and Hammurabi were lenient in allowing, to some extent, the previous religious beliefs of the peoples of conquered lands.). I simply dispute that atheism, in and of itself, is the primary motivation for what happened in the USSR or Nazi Germany. The battles fought and the people killed happened because of a political agenda, just like most wars throughout history. The only difference is that (in the case of Communism at least; Hitler often appealed to duty to God) the conquerers didn't use the guise of religion to "prove" their moral superiority.

It appears that you are saying that atheism is not a belief system. IMHO, if you don't believe in diety, then you are either athiestic or agnostic. Neither Nazism nor Communism was agnostic, since agnosticism admits to only a lack of knowledge of God. &nbspOTOH, athiesm denies Diety's very existance. This was one of the key underpinnings of both Nazism and Communism. Their almost fanatical desire to remove these "superstitions" from the human race.

At this point, the supernatural God is replaced with the state God, and all attempts are made to squash anyone believing anything differently.

Communism as an economic theory doesn't hold water, since it has never been practiced on a large scale - even by communists. It has been about control of people and their beliefs, otherwise why have the worst atrocities committed by communists been perpetrated against their own peoples.

So, 100,000,000+ communist citizens killed by communists, 30,000,000+ nazi citizens killed by nazis in this century alone. Contrast that to 300,000 christians killed by christian nations (for witchcraft) over a 3-century period and perhaps 2 - 3 million (I am guestimating here. I don't know the actual figure) during the 30 years war (the nearest thing to an internecine religious war the christians have ever had). Throw in the 3 or 4 millions killed in christian vs islamic wars in various parts of the world in the 20th century, and the hundreds of thousands killed during the intermittent wars between christians and islam during the last thousand years and we see that the religious wars still don't come up to the level of killing done in the 20th century by communists and nazis.