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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.

>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.

Atheism is the absence of property theism. Agnosticism is the belief that the existence of deities is unprovable -- but it does not preclude faith (or lack thereof) that deities exist. Atheism doesn't mean not denying the existence of $DEITYNAME, but it isn't defined as such, because it would require knowing the defined natures of every deity in the whole of human history to carry any meaning -- otherwise how could they be denied?

This was one of the key underpinnings of both Nazism and Communism. Their almost fanatical desire to remove these "superstitions" from the human race.

Nazism was about more than wiping "superstitions" from the human race -- it was about genocide, it was about control and it was about the superiority of specific human traits. It wasn't about removing religion altogether, it was about removing religions that 1) prevented people from pledging alliegance to the Nazi state or 2) were the convenient scapegoat for all of the problems plaguing Germany at the time.
Communism's goal -- well, the "communism" practiced by Lenin and Stalin -- was establishing itself as the only authority to whom its citizens would obey. That does mean stamping out religion, but again that's a function of communism, not atheism itself.

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.

This is getting onto a bit of a tangent, but I disagree on the nature of communism. Communism isn't inherently oppressive, but the so-called communistic governments oppress their people because it's the only way to keep them in line. Communism actually works well if you are dealing with a small isolated village; it falls apart when you try to expand it to an entire nation.
Communism doesn't fail because it's oppressive. It becomes oppressive because it will fail otherwise.

[snip some numbers, my posts are too long as it is] 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.

The problem is that in the end, most of the slaughter throughout history are done for political reasons with religion being used by the leaders as justification. They may be pushing atheism or Christianty with a sword as a means to an end, but it's rare that their goal is to remove/enforce religious belief. Stalin just managed to replace duty to and fear of God with duty to and fear of The State.

My whole point, which seems to fill up an entire screen in IE because I never know when to shut up, is that "atheism" itself has been no more a motivator of slaughter and violence in human history than Christianity or religion in general.