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

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Whilst some modern atheists in the United States of America might think they are cool or edgy or somehow newly enlightened with their atheism, 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.

From 1928, with the help of the faction of the “league of militant atheists”, Joseph Stalin enacted a brutal regime of anti-religion, fanatically forcing the atheist faith onto Russia and eventually the societies are part of the different countries of the Soviet Union.

As someone who grew up with the church and who seemed to want to destroy it after being expelled from one seminary, it turned out Stalin seemed to want to replace Christianity orthodoxy in Russia with a human, socialist utopia.

The only problem with atheism and humanly constructed morals, some might argue, is that morals are changeable and can be overridden by anyone who takes a fancy to bending morals to their own will.
In the Soviet Union, as a means to an end of achieving a socialist, Godless utopia, Joseph Stalin killed many people.

Particularly religious folk. The executions of clergy were common, and imprisonment for church-goers was even more common. Church buildings were replaced with museums of atheism, whilst the league of militant atheists disseminated atheist propaganda.

Between the early 1900’s and 1939 at the beginning of world war two, the number of churches in the Soviet Union went from almost 50,000 to almost zero.

Under Stalin’s atheistic regime, tens of millions were victims of repression, many of them killed via starvation or being blacklisted from the economy or who faced deportation.

The moral of the story: Societal breakdown can and does happen in atheist regimes and under the leaders of countries who fill the power vacuum left by a lack of expressed belief in God, with which they often anoint themselves as self appointed saviours.

https://www.history.com/news/joseph-stalin-religion-atheism-ussr

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/04/world/major-soviet-paper-says-20-million-died-as-victims-of-stalin.html

Atheism is not a faith. It’s an absence of belief.

There’s nothing new or edgy about atheism. There were atheists in Ancient Greece. There were most likely atheists before belief systems were created.

Most of the people who claim that atheism is not a faith, but an absence of belief, are atheist themselves and I think this is wishful thinking.

Atheists for example, tend to believe, that the universe arose spontaneously via natural processes, which is ultimately unprovable, but which atheists tend to believe anyway.

I think agnosticism would be a closer to "absence of belief", since agnostics tend to believe that the existence of God is unknown, or unknowable, whereas atheism is often the active believe that no God exists.

There are different types of atheism of course. The type of atheism that is simply the absence of theistic belief is termed as implicit atheism, whereas explicit atheism rejects the concept of God, which is certainly a belief in itself.

There is also positive atheism which is more in line with militant atheism and those who assert that God does not exist (a belief), whereas negative atheism is more close to agnosticism in that there is an absence of theism as part of their belief system.

^ More often than not, atheists are comfortable saying “I don’t know” about stuff that is still unknown or unprovable. Most admit to not knowing what came before the Big Bang for example.

I’m technically an agnostic atheist. If I’m provided with sufficient evidence, I would believe in a deity although worshiping it is a separate issue.

You can’t prove that something doesn’t exist. I can’t prove that fairies, unicorns, or Nessie don’t exist. Even if the loch was drained and nothing was found, some would claim that Nessie fled through a portal to another dimension or something else farfetched and impossible to prove or disprove.

If sufficient evidence about fairies, unicorns, or Nessie turned up, I would believe. Until that happens, I wouldn’t say that I am agnostic about their existence. I’d just say that I don’t believe because it’s simpler. My stance is the same with God. I limit my beliefs to that which has clear evidence to support it. My beliefs can be changed with evidence.

As a thought experiment: I don’t believe that an all-powerful AND loving god can exist due to the existence of suffering - the Biblical reason as to why God allows suffering is NOT good enough for me, so I’m a firm atheist when it comes to the Abrahamic god unless he is completely different to how he is portrayed in scripture (i.e. isn’t all powerful AND loving).

But atheism is a belief. Just so happens to be a belief in the core conceptual rules that there is no creative entity known as God.

Beliefs and faith are two different things. I base my beliefs on evidence. Some people rely on faith.

I would say that my atheism is an absence of belief more than a belief system. I don’t have evidence which proves or disproves God.

Most people are atheists when it comes to most gods. Atheists just go one god further.

Science is split between faith and fact. Is why they use the terms "Scientific theory" (A faith that it is true) and "Scientific fact" which is proven to be true.

But we are swaying the thread into a different direction, even though the core meanings of religion and faith are fascinating by themselves and can be in themselves followed in many far reaching directions!

A scientific theory is not related to faith. It’s a common misconception based on the more secular use of the word “theory.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory

The original post is pure BS.

Stalin was a Marxist, and it was Marx who wrote that "religion is the opiate of the masses". Basically a tool to help keep the working classes down. That statement is open to interpretation but its usually interpreted to mean religion is the enemy of the working class rising up. So nonreligion was already a tenet of Marxism in the 19th Century. And the revolutionaries who put Marxism on the map in the early 20th century were not friendly to religion. Including Lenin and Stalin. So even within Marxism Stalin did not "invent" atheism.

And Marx didnt invent Atheism either. It existed forever before that.

And the most famous anti Marxist (and contemporary of Stalin) was Ayn Rand, who was also an atheist.

Christianity today is a lot stronger in the former Communist nations of Eastern Europe (which were ruled by Stalin) than in western Europe which was always free of Communist dictators.

Do not confuse fascism and atheism. They are two different things.

Also, you do not need religion to have good moral structure.

Religion has also caused societal breakdown. It's no panacea for society's problems.

I was thinking something similar the other day when I was looking at another thread. It was something along the lines of: would there be wars if there was no religion? I automatically thought of Russia and the war in Europe. I'm not really an expert in these matters tbh.

Also, I can't see why anyone would believe in god and I can fully understand why people do believe in god.

Nobody said anything about "fascism".

He was talking about Stalin.

Stalin wasnt (in theory at least) a fascist. He was a Communist (left wing dictator). Which is supposed to be the opposite of a fascist (rightwing dictator).

Granted that in the real world both fascism and Communism work out to being similar, and are more like each other than either is like middle of the road democracy. But ostensibly they are opposite. Stalin was out save everyone from fascism. And Hitler and Mussolini were out save us all from Communism.

You yourself are confused.

The word you are looking for is "totalitarianism".

Both kinds of European extreme dictatorships (fascist like Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler), and Communist (Stalin) were "totalitarian". The state had near total control of society.

But hostility to religion is rarely part of any fascist creed. Franco was allied to all conservative groups in Spain including the Catholic Church. And of course Iran has a faith based dictatorship right now.

Science is entirely based on theories. There's a reason why terms like rule and law are far less common in scientific fields these days.

Our understanding of how things like gravity, light, magnets, etc are nothing more than theories that can be freely challenged if a better understanding can be proposed.

In common usage theory is used interchangeably with hypothesis and that might be a big contributor to why so many people conflate the two in scientific contexts.

There do exist atheistic religions, such as Humanistic Buddhism, the Ethical Humanist Movement, and the Satanic Temple. Also, Marxism-Leninism could arguably be called a religion.

But atheism per se is not a religion.

Similarly, monotheism per se is not a religion, although there do exist specific monotheistic religions such as Judaism and Islam.

There also exist polytheistic religions, although polytheism per se is not a religion either.

In all these cases, a religion entails much more than just belief or non-belief in the existence of a God or Gods.

There are two main types of Atheism:

1. The people who say, "There are no 'gods'."

2. And the people who say, "I do not believe in any 'gods', whether or not they actually exist."

I have encountered both kinds, but mostly the latter.

Last edited by Fnord on 28 Oct 2023, 1:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

Where in my OP did I say that Stalin invented atheism? I merely mentioned the incidence of official, state atheism, which in the extremity of the case of the Soviet Union circa 1928, was a relatively novel occurrence.

I did not focus on Marxism in the OP, nor did I say anything against it, and you seem to be arguing against a strawman.

I never mentioned today - I am aware that in today's Russia even, Christianity has made somewhat of a comeback versus the militant atheism of the 1920's in Russia.