Is it true that communism was founded by atheists? How many have died in the name of communism?

Answer 1

>Go to bed. Does your mother know you're up?

Such a nonsensical comment must come from someone in USA or Australia, where it is night at this moment. But, like the other comments made by ateisths, it has nothing to do with the topic. OF COURSE COMMUNISM IS ATHEISTIC AND IT KILLED MORE PEOPLE THAN ANYTHING ELSE. Atheists, go to the library before posting any comment.

Answer 2

Karl Marx was the founder of communism. While he was raised in a religious environment he did become an Atheist himself.

I am not sure how many people have died as a result of communism.

Fortunately, unlike what most people would like to believe, Atheism is not a belief structure it only means a lack of belief in a Deity. Atheism is not Communism.

Answer 3

How many MORE have died in the name of religion? Or because they were the wrong religion? Just off the top, let's start with the estimated 30 million Native Americans (North, Central and South) who were slaughtered because they refused to be Catholic. And the 6 million who were slaughtered because they were Jewish (Hitler was Catholic, don't forget). Then there were the Crusades, the Inquisition, Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia... the list is almost endless.
You need to read the history books written by historians, not Christian ministers.

Answer 4

No, the father of Communism is Karl Marx, he was not athiest,


Karl Heinrich Marx was born as the third child of seven children of a Jewish family in Trier, in the Rhineland region of Germany. His father Heinrich (1777-1838), who had descended from a long line of rabbis, converted to Christianity, despite his many deistic tendencies and his admiration of such Enlightenment figures as Voltaire and Rousseau. Marx's father was actually born Herschel Mordechai, but when the Prussian authorities would not allow him to continue practicing law as a Jew, he joined the official denomination of the Prussian state, Lutheranism, which accorded him advantages, as one of a small minority of Lutherans in a predominantly Roman Catholic region. His mother was Henrietta (née Presborck; 1788-1863); his siblings were Sophie, Hermann, Henriette, Louise (m. Juta), Emilie and Caroline. The Marx household hosted many visiting intellectuals.

Answer 5

How many died under the Roman Church in the Dark Ages in the name of religion? How many died in the Crusades?

Answer 6

Myth:
How many people in Communist Russia and China have been killed because of atheism and secularism?

Response:
None, probably.

How can that be? After all, millions and millions of people died in Russia and China under communist governments — and those governments were both secular and atheistic, right? So weren't all of those people killed because of atheism — indeed, in the name of atheism and secularism?

No, that conclusion does not follow. Atheism itself isn't a principle, cause, philosophy, or belief system which people fight, die, or kill for. Being killed by an atheist is no more being killed in the name of atheism than being killed by a tall person is being killed in the name of tallness.

People were killed in communist nations for a lot of different reasons.
Some were communists who disagreed with those in power and were killed because of that. Some were anti-communists opposed the government and were killed for that. Some were simply in the way or inconvenient and were killed for that. These are political disagreements that people were being killed over, not murder in the name of atheism.

But weren't a lot of people killed because they were Christian? Certainly — but not simply because they were Christian. Communists typically regarded religious organizations as a hinderance towards the creation of a worker's paradise. Some religious groups also opposed the communists. Once again, we are generally looking at political issues, not a question of atheism.

Even if some people were killed simply because they followed a religion, it does not follow that they were killed in the name of atheism. Why? Because atheism is not inherently opposed to religion: it is possible to be both an atheist and religious and some religions are themselves atheistic. Atheism also isn't a belief system or ideology which can, by itself, inspire people to do things — good or bad.

To understand this better, consider times in the past when religion has been involved with violence — the Inquisition would be good. How many people were killed during the Inquisition in the name of theism? None. Those doing the killing acted not because of theism, but rather because of Christian doctrines. The belief system is what inspired people to act (sometimes for good, sometimes for ill). The single belief of theism, however, did not.

Similarly, communism certainly inspired people to act and gave them motivations to do certain things, but atheism — which is the absence of a belief and not even a belief itself — did not. The assumption that people in Russia and China were killed merely on account of atheism is based upon two other myths: first, that atheism is itself some sort of philosophy or belief system which can motivate people, and second that atheism is somehow interchangeable with the actual belief system of communism. It also pretends that all the various elements of communist totalitarianism were irrelevant to what happened — which is utter nonsense.

The aforementioned parallel explains why this response is not one which religious theists can use to deny their religion's responsibility for violence in the past. Atheism and theism may not themselves be sufficient to justify violence and murder (or good behavior, for that matter), but belief systems which incorporate them are more than sufficient. Communism (or at least certain forms of it) can be blamed for communist violence; Christianity (or at least certain forms of it) can also be blamed for Christian violence. As a belief system with specific doctrines that were openly held up as justifying or sanctioning violence, religion must be held responsible for the violence committed in its name.

Whether theism can be slightly more culpable than atheism is a matter of dispute. Not being any belief at all, atheism can't motivate anyone in any direction to do anything. Theism is a belief, however, so at least the potential for some sort of motivation in some direction exists. It's been argued, for example, that monotheism is inherently more prone to violence because of the way it tends to be exclusivist — unlike polytheism, which tends to be more tolerant of cultural and religious differences.

It's difficult to say, though, how many of these problems are really inherent in the type of theism and how many are cultural products of the religious belief systems that incorporate them. Whatever culpability theism itself might have, it's likely small enough to dismiss, allowing us to treat it and atheism as functionally equal in this context.

Answer 7

Indeed, communism is atheistic. The number of the victims of communism is of several scores of millions. According to the following website, Stalin killed 20,000,000 people, Mao Tse Dong 40,000,000 people:

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Stalin
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#ww2ussr

The website gives a very minute account of the victims of the 20th century:

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat2.htm
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat2.htm#Armenian

Answer 8

Hitler was not Catholic at all, nazism was an atheist doctrine. They killed Jews not because of their religion but on racist grounds.

Answer 9

Go to bed. Does your mother know you're up?

Answer 10

Good question. I'm sure there are many.