Atheism is a competing metaphysical worldview with a creed and assertions of belief that have real consequences for humanity just like any other religion.
Furthermore; atheists assemble, are evangelistic, celebrate over converts, are zealous for their cause, assert exclusivity of their metaphysical worldview, possess an us against them mentality, are concerned about their public image, function as a voting block, seek to fund their activities, etc... exercising their "
religious capital" just as ardent adherents of any religion do.
I would also add that they lack critical thinking, misrepresent opposing views, operate in denial of the truth, etc... based on my experience with them... lol.
Atheism should
be held to exactly the same standard as any religion for socio-political reasons and purposes. Trying to "get one over" on humanity by pretending to be neutral is disingenuous of atheists and atheists who engage in the practice are following in the footsteps of their Machiavellian 20th century predecessors who married the ideology of absolutist state atheism with communism.
They falsely believed atheism was the truth, absolutely, and would bring about the greatest human welfare and happiness. And they believed that power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, must be used to tear down and rebuild society and culture to conform to atheism to realize this utopia. Government was thus above God or any natural law. All institutions, cultural norms, traditions, and sentiments were expendable. And the people were as though lumber and bricks, to be used in building their new world.
Constructing this utopia was seen as though a war on poverty, exploitation, imperialism, and inequality. And for the greater good, as in a real war, people are killed. And thus this war for the communist utopia had its necessary enemy casualties, the clergy, the religious, the bourgeoisie, capitalists, wreckers, counterrevolutionaries, rightists, tyrants, rich, landlords, and noncombatants without respect for Imago Dei.
The cause of a state atheistic utopia justified all the deaths. The irony, of course, is that in practice (even after decades of total control) the lot of the average person did not improve but was usually worse than before. It was not by chance that the greatest famines occurred within the Soviet Union (about 5,000,000 dead during 1921-23 and 7,000,000 from 1932-3) and communist China (about 27,000,000 dead from 1959-61).
In total almost 55,000,000 people died in various communist famines and associated diseases, a little over 10,000,000 of them from democidal famine and something like 35,000,000 people fled state atheistic communist countries as refugees.
But they could not admit they were wrong. After all, their knowledge was scientific and based on historical materialism, an understanding of the dialectical process in nature and human society, and a materialist (and thus realistic) view of nature.
State atheists falsely posited a heaven on earth without God nor respect given to either natural law or Imago Dei. Atheism was a faith populated by fanatics who crusaded against "nonbelievers." Atheism had its revealed text and chief interpreters. It had its priests and their ritualistic prose with all the answers who asserted heaven on earth and the proper behavior to reach it.
As Dr. Rummel pointed out:
"What made this
secular religion so utterly lethal was its seizure of all the state's instrument of force and coercion and their immediate use to destroy or control all independent sources of power, such as the church, the professions, private businesses, schools, and, of course, the family. The result is what we see in
Table 1."
Nothing else in history has matched the ferocity of fanatical state atheism tied to modern technology. They accomplished more destruction in less than a century than the false religious worldview of Islam could cause over the centuries and their neo-pagan oriented fascist competitors put together.
What About Atrocities That Have Been Done in the Name of Religion
Of course, atheists simply excuse themselves from the consequences of their secular religion and point the finger at "religion" in general ignorantly and disingenuously mixing in every false religious system with an accurate exegesis of God's special revelation (e.g. Christian epistemology) which they also mistakenly blame for the excesses of political colonialism... something they do not understand or properly articulate (See Stark, Diamond, etc...).
I am sticking to my guns in asserting that a single non-belief, such as in the example of atheists who do no believe in an afterlife, do not count as religion.
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