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Originally Posted by PINeely
Interesting, considering that I have been an atheist for some time now and I have never once done any of these things in the name of atheism, much more than can be said about religion of any kind.
Now, pick anyone famous for being a piece of shit and look for the religion in their backgrounds. Jihadist Terrorists, Hitler, Kim Jong-il, Westboro Baptist Church, etc.
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Conveniently, you left out the single biggest mass murderer in history, who happened to be Atheist.
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Stalin's role in the fortunes of the Russian Orthodox Church is complex. Continuous persecution in the 1930s resulted in its near-extinction as a public institution: by 1939, active parishes numbered in the low hundreds (down from 54,000 in 1917), many churches had been leveled, and tens of thousands of priests, monks and nuns were persecuted and killed. Over 100,000 were shot during the purges of 1937–1938.[78] During World War II, the Church was allowed a revival as a patriotic organization, after the NKVD had recruited the new metropolitan, the first after the revolution, as a secret agent. Thousands of parishes were reactivated until a further round of suppression in Khrushchev's time. The Russian Orthodox Church Synod's recognition of the Soviet government and of Stalin personally led to a schism with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.
Just days before Stalin's death, certain religious sects were outlawed and persecuted. Many religions popular in the ethnic regions of the Soviet Union including the Roman Catholic Church, Uniats, Baptists, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, etc. underwent ordeals similar to the Orthodox churches in other parts: thousands of monks were persecuted, and hundreds of churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, sacred monuments, monasteries and other religious buildings were razed.
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You were saying? You could say that he did it for the "state" instead of atheism. However, considering the state adopted stance on religion was atheism/secularism, his views and the views of the state were one and the same. That is, the religion wasn't to be tolerated. He waffled on those views a few times however.
If you view Muslims killing for a Muslim state as killing in the name of God, then Stalin killing theists as a means to an atheist state is surely killing in the name of atheism.