Reply to Reza Aslan: Sam Harris and "New Atheists" aren't new, aren't even atheists

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Communism mandates atheism.

Communists commit murder on such a scale as to all but eliminate the value of life and to destroy the individual conscience in survivors.

In regimes that the Soviet Union created and supported—including those in Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia—the total number of victims is over 100 million. That makes communism, which has been mandated by force in all these countries, the greatest catastrophe in human history. It’s not a coincidence that these places are also atheistic.

The Soviet Union was an atheist state in which religion was largely discouraged and at times heavily persecuted. In the era of Stalin, two-thirds of the Soviet population were irreligious. About half the people, including members of the ruling Communist Party and high-level government officials, professed atheism. For the majority of Soviet citizens, religion seemed irrelevant. Prior to its collapse in late 1991, official figures on religion in the Soviet Union were not available. State atheism in the Soviet Union was known as gosateizm.

State atheism in the Soviet Union, which lasted for seven decades, was new in world history. The Communist Party engaged in diverse activities such as destroying places of worship, executing religious leaders, flooding schools and media with anti-religious propaganda, and propagated "scientific atheism". sought to make religion disappear by various means. Thus, the USSR became the first state to have as one objective of its official ideology the elimination of the existing religion, and the prevention of the future implanting of religious belief, with the goal of establishing state atheism.

China has adopted a policy of official state atheism. Art. 36 of the Chinese constitution guarantees freedom of religion but limits the right to practice religion to state sanctioned organisations. The government has promoted atheism throughout the country.  The People's Republic of China was established in 1949 and has maintained a hostile attitude toward religion. The Communist Party of China still remains explicitly atheist and religion is heavily regulated, with only specific state-operated churches, mosques and temples being allowed for worship.

Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge regime, suppressed Cambodia’s Buddhist religion as monks were defrocked; temples and artifacts, including statues of the Buddha, were destroyed; and people praying or expressing other religious sentiments were killed. The Christian and Muslim communities were among the most persecuted as well. The Roman Catholic cathedral of Phnom Penh was razed. The Khmer Rouge forced Muslims to eat pork, which they regard as an abomination. Many of those who refused were killed. Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed. A third of the nation's monasteries were destroyed along with numerous holy texts and items of high artistic quality. 25,000 Buddhist monks were massacred by the regime, which was officially an atheist state.

Until 1992, Cuba was officially an atheist state. Originally more tolerant of religion, the Cuban government began arresting many believers and shutting down religious schools after the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Cuba’s prisons were filled with clergy since the 1960s. In 1961, the Cuban government confiscated Catholic schools, including the Jesuit school that Fidel Castro had attended. In 1965 it exiled two hundred priests. In 1976, the Constitution of Cuba added a clause stating that the "socialist state...bases its activity on, and educates the people in, the scientific materialist concept of the universe". The Cuban government continued hostile actions against religious groups; in 2015 alone, the Castro regime ordered the closure or demolition of over 100 Pentecostal, Methodist, and Baptist parishes.

Eastern Germany practiced heavy secularization. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) generated antireligous regulations and promoted atheism for decades which impacted the growth of citizens affiliating with no religion from 7.6% in 1950 to 60% in 1986. It was in the 1950s that scientific atheism became official state policy when Soviet authorities were setting up a communist government.

The North Korean constitution states that freedom of religion is permitted.🤣 Conversely, the North Korean government's Juche ideology has been described as "state-sanctioned atheism" and atheism is the government's official position. According to a 2018 CIA report, free religious activities almost no longer exist.

The Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) propagated atheism until the 1960s. In the Mongolian People's Republic, after it was invaded by Japanese troops in 1936, the Soviet Union deployed its troops there in 1937, undertaking an offensive against the Buddhist religion. Parallel with this, a Soviet-style purge was launched in the People's Revolutionary Party and the Mongolian army. The Mongol leader at that time was Khorloogiin Choibalsan, a follower of Joseph Stalin, who emulated many of the policies that Stalin had previously implemented in the Soviet Union. The purge virtually succeeded in eliminating Tibetan Buddhism and cost an estimated thirty to thirty-five thousand lives.

Officially, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is an atheist state as declared by its communist government. The Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam formally allows religious freedom, however, government restrictions remain on organized activities of many religious groups. Religious groups encounter the greatest restrictions when they are perceived by the government as a challenge to its rule or to the authority of the Communist party. Limitations in religious practice in Vietnam include: Foreign missionaries are not legally allowed to proselytize or perform religious activities. No other religions than the eight   (Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Cao Đài, and Hòa Hảo) are allowed. Preachers and religious associations are prohibited to use religion to propagate ideologies that are opposed to the government. Many Vietnamese preachers who fled for America and other countries say that they were suppressed by the Communist government for no, unreasonable or ethnic reasons.

Religion is not a magic carpet ride to perfection. But State mandated atheism has been shown to be extremely destructive to the people unlucky enough to live in countries it had been implemented.

[/quote]

So Christian poster above continues to ignore facts presented in post on 06/21/2021 at 9:46AM re China being open to many religions, incl. Christianity.  Christian poster is a broken record re "state-mandated atheism".  Not all Christians are zealots, but this one is.

Then again, perhaps the poster is an atheist or liberal Christian posing as a fundamentalist. [/quote]

While China’s constitution allows religious belief, adherents across all religious organizations, from state-sanctioned to underground and banned groups, face intensifying persecution, repression, and pressure to adhere to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ideology, which is atheism.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/religion-china

One poster here commented that their tour guide in China was Christian. How does that prove anything?

Read the report from the Council on Foreign Relations for real facts. [/quote]

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