Atheism - Joseph Stalin’s Godless 5-year plan of 1928

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You clearly implied that Stalin invented atheism in 1928.

I KNOW that you never mentioned Marxism. That was my point. You implied that atheism was Stalin's own idea when in fact atheism is part of Marxist ideology. If you talk about the topic you have to provide that as context.

If you were not saying that Stalin some how created atheism then...WTF ...IS your point?

Check out God’s supposed morals in this thread.

He’s apparently changeable AND killed many people if one takes the Bible as the true word of God.

His lack of intervention is concerning from a moral standpoint as well, going with the assumption that he exists for argument’s sake.

I didn't mean to imply at all that Stalin invented atheism. I find it insulting that you would think that I thought that.

The context was provided by the links I provided.

My post was largely based on the content of the provided link from the history.com article, with a few of my own comments mixed in to the summary of the content.

In my mind, the text gave a good example of how atheism can be a negative force in society. That was the point, if anything.

^ I'll add to the above post - I wrote in the OP:

"the seeds of official, state atheism were being sown long before the decline of Christianity in the western world, way back in the early 20th century – in the Soviet Union."

That comment clearly describes "official, state atheism", and not atheism in general or in and of itself.

Also, the decline of Christianity and the successful rise of mass secularism in Europe is a relatively new phenomenon, hence my mention of the decline of Christianity.

I think you can see how:

could reasonably be read as attempting to imply that the atheism practiced today has its roots in Stalinism. It's a bizarre comparison because the US does not have state atheism - there is constitutional separation of church and state.

Also a bit silly to suggest that atheists tend to think their beliefs are cool or edgy. In my experience, it isn't atheists trying to make themselves seem like oppressed plucky underdogs telling unpopular truths. Most atheists are simply motivated by the lack of a rational reason to believe in gods.

It's funny that on social media platforms such as X it seems like every second person is promoting atheism as if it's some new thing.

But the good thing about them is that they're all usually pro choice. But the irritating thing is that some of the women come off as being militant feminists.

I find that a bit of a turn off personally.

I think that a lot of women have experienced extensive sexism from religion, especially Abrahamic religion. There are many problematic scriptures as far as women are concerned in both the Bible and Qur’an which leads to a lot of issues in various Jewish, Christian, and Islamic sects. Perhaps people who are the most outspoken have experienced a significant amount of religious misogyny. Just a thought.

Even though most of the communist states practiced state-sanctioned atheism (which blitzkrieg is referring to), Albania, under Enver Hoxha, was the only one to have banned religion completely.

I guess that in real life its the religious that come at you to proselytize. Knocking on your door.

But online its the atheists who are the...Evangelicals...out to bring you the "good news".

I'm always quite polite to the jw folk when they knock on my door. I'm not into all that personally but I appreciate that for them it's a job. So I take their pamphlets, look at the pictures and then bin them.

I don't hate religious people or even religion. Its just not my thing.

I wouldn't even consider myself as an atheist because it's just another thing to believe in.

I suppose I just don't care about it all really. It holds nothing for me.

The intention of that part of my post and the thinking behind it, was to highlight the type of folk (in my mind) in the United States that seem to live in a vacuum of sorts and who think that atheism is something new, precisely because of the lack of experience of the world that a lot of people in the U.S.A have - i.e, it's a common trope for citizens of the U.S.A never to have travelled outside of the U.S.A or to Europe. I am not saying this applies to every last person in the U.S.A - obviously it does not.

In short, I was criticizing the ignorance of the Americans of the U.S.A & demonstrating an instance of why atheism is not new and why that would be the wrong to think that - precisely the opposite of what you & naturalplastic seemed to assume that I meant.

I suppose if two people thought the same thing then that may indicate a problem with the communication of the intention of my post. But I can assure you I do not think, and have never thought, that modern day atheism either originated from Stalin's Russia or is practiced today as an extension of that.

I wasn't claiming the U.S. has state atheism either. I was comparing general, cultural atheism (today) in the United States there with the state atheism of a different country almost a century ago. I apologize if that was unclear.

That is the type of person I was alluding to in my initial post. It is apparent on social media that there are a lot of people who seem to think atheism is some new thing, when it is clearly not.

I find militant feminists to be a turn off too, babybird. I am glad you agree!

Or they could just be trigger happy, young & ignorant folk on social media.

I am sure there are some jaded folk as you describe, however.

That's an interesting tidbit of information, Tim_Tex.

I totally agree with this.

Religious people seem to not be particularly outspoken online nowadays whereas atheists seem to be enthusiastic about their perceived, personal enlightenment or rationality as they may believe.

This is a perfectly reasonable thought process, babybird.