If my aunty had balls she'd be my uncle.
The point is that religion
has had so much influence over society, particularly it's morality, and this is why atheists like Marx, Lenin, Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Schopenhauer, etc. considered the implications of their belief that there was no God within their philosophies and moralities.
Our belief systems are as much comprised as what we reject or are against, as what we are in favour of. Believing there is no god is not an inert, monadic, belief that exists in a vacuum, but something that may forms
part of much broader worldview.
It's all very well documented if you care to actually use your 'questioning mind'...
It doesn't mean 'atheism is evil' (I'm an atheist after all), or "mere disbelief in god makes you kill people", it's just a very well documented historical fact that many people have long considered the philosophical implications of their belief that there is no god or higher power. Is that really so hard to grasp?
You are right, it was not about a 'lack of belief' but a very strong belief that there is no god. Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin et al did not have a 'lack of belief'.
Lenin: "
Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism"
Was he not explicit enough? Or are you saying you know more about Lenin's thoughts than Lenin did? Or are you saying it was just state propaganda? Or...?
NI Bukharin and E Preobrazhensky: The ABC of Communism: "Many weak-kneed communists reason as follows: 'Religion does not prevent my being a communist. I believe both in God and in communism. My faith in God does not hinder me from fighting for the cause of the proletarian revolution.'
This train of thought is radically false. Religion and communism are incompatible, both theoretically and practically."
Still too esoteric?
Marx (writing 70 years before the Russian Revolution in an unpublished philosophical text called 'Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right' thus obviously not state propaganda): "
The criticism of religion leads to the doctrine according to which man is, for man, the supreme being; therefore it reaches the categorical imperative of overthrowing all relationships in which man is a degraded, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being...
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo...
It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics."
QM: DisBeliEf iN GoD WasN't EssEntiAL tO tHe SyStEm
It wasn't just some sneaky ruse to reduce the power of a competitor, it was based on
one of the fundamental tenets of a philosophy articulated long before there was even a Communist Party, never mind an actual government. Again, it's not hard to grasp, they weren't exactly secretive about it.
If your mind is even remotely questioning, you might want to question why it is that so many of these key Marxist figures explicitly view disbelief in god as a fundamental
component of
their belief system while you insist it is purely incidental despite not being particularly well versed in the subject.
