Society of the Godless

[Gawdzilla Sama]

In Gog is not Great, Hitchens points out nicely that totalitarian regimes aren't godless. They merely replace a god-in-the-sky with a god-on-earth (i.e. the dictator). So the religion is replaced not with an atheism but a person-cult. All the key elements of religion are still maintained in totalitarinism (dogmatic devotion to an idol, control of the populus thought paths, ethics derived from authority - not from reasoning...)

And they frequently go over the top with that shit. One picture of Stalin was carried by two helicopters and was twenty five METERS high.

[Azathoth]

In Gog is not Great, Hitchens points out nicely that totalitarian regimes aren't godless. They merely replace a god-in-the-sky with a god-on-earth (i.e. the dictator). So the religion is replaced not with an atheism but a person-cult. All the key elements of religion are still maintained in totalitarinism (dogmatic devotion to an idol, control of the populus thought paths, ethics derived from authority - not from reasoning...)

And they frequently go over the top with that shit. One picture of Stalin was carried by two helicopters and was twenty five METERS high.

[Ironclad]

Thanks all.
I'd already gone over the Cult of Personality but when I read up on this Society of the Godless (wiki) I thought it looked pretty damning, at first.
The thread has gone rather quiet now. Lions win.

[jcmmanuel]

The death toll caused by communism, directly or indirectly, was 160 million (100 million if you exclude soldiers). This is much more than ever murdered by religious systems, ever. There's also the Nazi's, who had many inhumane 'scientific programs' (but the US had such ones too, decades ago, sterilizing handicaped people for instance). Yet, communism was not atheistic in nature - it used atheism. Big difference. Nazism was not religious nor atheistic per se - historians will tell us that the nazi's were anti-moralists. They were also, generally speaking, a *secular* ideology.

There's a lot of cherry-picking and loose blaming in this arena. Atheists like Dawkins and, for instane, Philip Pullman, say that in communism "there's still something religious". That's too easy, too cheap. You can blame everyone no matter the lack of evidence this way. Christians often point out that atheism was written in the manifesto's of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. I understand that especially if it is a reaction against cheap blaming as I just pointed out. Generally speaking however, we should be very careful and distinguish things properly. Historians usually have a more nuanced view on these matters. Let them speak.

Societies are hardly godless, by the way. Even the Scandinavian countries, where secularism is traditionally deeply rooted, there's still room for religion among 60 to 70 per cent of their inhabitants, on average. This part of the statistics is easily ignored. And in terms of culture, even Dawkins calls himself a 'cultural Christian'. When he's saying that, it is because he understands the reality. It is too easy to say 'godless societies'. I know atheists who believe in some sort of creator (they don't call him or 'it' the biblical god of course). There's a lot of nuances if we really start to look around at what we have here, both in our own preferred communities as well as 'on the other side'.

[jcmmanuel]

And in neither case did they call on people to believe in Darwin or die.

LOL... as if belief in evolution would require atheism. THAT is just the 'new atheist' idea, for sure.

[Santa_Claus]

Pol Pot had both a Budhist (aninism with a statue of a fat fuck) and catholic education. My guess is that he picked up more than a few ideas that later came in useful. as did Stalin from his religous education. and Hitler.

That's why religous grooming of children is a crime. About time was made illegal.