ThinkDifferent

One of the successful group of atheists were communists. My questions are

1) Are most atheists also communists??
2) Are there atheists who oppose communism as much as they oppose religion(this is because communism is also accused of promoting dogma of a different kind)?

Vorkosigan

What does it mean to be a "successful" atheist? What standard are you proposing for "success?"

Big Spoon

I'm certainly not a communist and I'm pretty sure that the majority of atheists aren't communists either. I think the communism/atheism think is just coincidence.

ThinkDifferent

Wasn't it fantastically popular in almost half the globe sometime ago? Did they not successfully take on the church & religion in countries like the former USSR & China ? I don't see another example of non-believers doing so well. Isn't it true that everywhere politicians and religious heads complemented each other in keeping each other prosperous while keeping the majority oppressed??

BolshyFaker

Defining relgion purely as beleif in the supernatural, communists were rather successful atheists. Ive been to a cathedral in St Petersburg that was with the fall of Communism returned to the Orthordox Church, who unfortunately discontinued the cathedral's former use as a museum of atheism :notworthy What an idea...

Having said that, Communism is in my view itself a relgion. Its view in particular of the "inevitable" triumph of the working class is a faith of sorts, as is faith in conspicuously unsuccessful economic doctrines. Not that capitalism is not also a faith where beleif in its success goes in the face of evidence of its failures.

If you want to define religion as purely beleif in the supernatural then you can hold up all sorts of rather abhorrent regimes such as Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Soviet North Korea and others as "successful atheists". But on any account of faith that looks at its essential irratiuonality, such a view fails miserbaly.

Psycho Economist

Religion is religion
Communism is an political/economic system.

Marx and his followers insisted that religion was a tool the land-owners (and the church is a big land-owner) used to oppress the working class. Especially Christianity, but both eastern and western religions to different degrees, encourage their followers to accept their station in life with the hopes of fulfilling some greater good. In the case of Christianity, eternal life in paradise. Marx thought that without "the opiate of religion" peasants and industrial workers would take a more active part in improving their economic situation.

In practice, religion is a medium in which opposition to communism could organize, which is why totalitarians of all flavors endeavour to control the church for their own ends. The Soviets were wildly sucessful totalitarians, and oblitterating the Orthodox church was one of their means of control. China, on the other hand, has created its own shadow Catholicism to provide a safe alternative to religions it can't control, but is pursuing less heirarchical faiths with the same thoroughness the Soviets used on the Orthodox church. Cuba, another communist country, is very catholic.

BolshyFaker

If you disagree with me about communism being a relgion then what is it that makes some social phenomena a relgion at all? Why should it be faith in the supernatural rather than the irrational, and why shouldn't the communist notion of the "inevitable" triumph of the working class be thought of as supernatural?

Just because religion helped to organise against totalitarianism doesn't mean that a theocracy wouldn't be just as bad if in power, and that communists would be the ones working to end it!

Thats one of the other things about religion, they encourage fanatical devotion that can make people do great or terrible things.

Wiploc

No.

And, further, we are all born without theism and without communism.



Certainly. Most Americans are anti-communists, regardless of their religion. And I knew a Catholic communist once; the correlation you are looking for doesn't exist. It would make no more sense to infer communism from atheism than to infer that if something is gray it must be a cat after dark.
crc

themistocles

As far as I'm concerned, Communism and it's general sattelite of ideologies really has all the characteristics of a religion, for all practical purposes.

Frankly, the "false consciousness" that Marx writes about sounds very much like the worldview he articulates.

August Spies

I could just as easily point to any ideology and say it is a religion (I mean "the invisible hand of the market", come one)... the fact is ideologies and religions are seperate things. Though both are bad.