A deeper look into ideology
This humbug that somehow there is a link between
atheism and communism is more prominent than most people who reject that idea
may think; it has been the root cause for much discrimination against American
atheists. Fundamentalists like to equate Communism with atheism, Communism was
evil, and therefore atheists are evil. That type of logic doesn't work.
The altruistic morality of Christianity and
Communism
The morality of Christianity is altruistic,
meaning you must sacrifice for other people and for God. You must do so humbly
and painfully. It is moral for you to give your last piece of bread to your
neighbor than it is for you to eat it. Communism is this collective mysticism
endorsed politically, it has the same morality that you must sacrifice for the
good of the collective proletarian. There's no "individual" person
you are sacrificing for, it's this broad proletarian that they believe in, and
believe the sacrifice should be made for. If it benefited a single individual,
then it would be selfish. Christianity and Communism share this same faith
based, spiritual collective mysticism.
Why were the communists atheists?
Communism isn't inherently atheistic. You can be
a theist and still believe in Communism; in fact it may be easier for you. Just
as you can be an atheist and believe in the economic system of capitalism.
Christianity and capitalism have very little in common and their morality
doesn't mix well, but right wing Christians in America would believe otherwise,
simply because they don't understand the basis of their moral system.
Christianity demands a preferential option for the poor, it demands social
justice. It is the (Christian) collective's responsibility to help the poor
and create minimum standards of living and do so in an act of sacrificing your
own standards of living. It requires that, the morality of Christianity not
only says help the poor, but it also doesn't permit you to not be poor
yourself. If you doubt the morality of Christianity I would re-read the
passages in the Bible about what Jesus thought about rich people. (It's not
looking so good.) Atheism was a byproduct of Communism because they believed
spiritually in their leader, the only reason the church wasn't allowed is to
prevent taking away servitude to the leader and the collective society.
Does atheism motivate evil ideology?
It depends on your definition of evil, evil being
"Someone that doesn't believe in any gods." Then, yes. Atheists are
evil. If you mean evil in any rational moral sense, as in they are motivated to be communists, no. It is
difficult to be skeptical atheists and be convinced of communism because that
would require un-testable, unwavering, improvable faith in a mystical leader
and an invisible proletarian. Communism only took away the church to replace
God with their leader, which IS their God. Atheists don't have any gods.
What is the morality of Atheism?
The morality of Atheism can be different among every individual; however
the morality of why they are an atheist to begin with is simply this: Truth is
a virtue; truth is morally superior to a lie. The morality is that of objective
reason. It is the idea of basing what you accept to be true, on repeatable,
testable evidence. It is the belief that one should not make giant leaps of
assumptions about how the universe works or came to be. It is the acceptance of
the fact that humans cannot afford to be arrogant enough to do that, that human
beings have perceptional and patternicity faults in our brains that cause our
ability to reject things that we know to be fact and believe things that aren't
true. In that, the scientific method is the most effective way to rule out that
kind of human interference, to get the most accurate and factual explanation.
The answer is not about what the observer wants to be true, but rather, what is
actually the case. Atheists have morals and a sense of empathy and fairness
towards other people. It's motivated because they are human, not because a book
told them too. Arguably, the morality in Christianity outside of altruistic
behavior is mostly based on commandment, not reason or morality. If you were to
train your pet dog to sit and he listens to your command that does not make him
moral or immoral. It simply means he is doing what you've told him to do.
Similarly if your religious text tells you to do something and you do it
because of that, that act has nothing to do with morality and everything to do
with doing something, simply because you're told to. Morality is about the best
possible action in any given situation that would produce the fairest outcome
and least harm to someone else or yourself.
What is immoral about altruism?
(a reason based opinion)
Altruism,
the morality of self-sacrifice is immoral because it is suicidal. It is also
immoral because it is hypocritical, if you are forced to sacrifice yourself to
others it is immoral simply because you are a slave to an invisible and
mystical collective and if all of the individuals in that collective are also
sacrificing themselves then who is taking? If there is a taker, based on that
ideology, they too would be immoral, because they are taking that which you
sacrificed and not also sacrificing themselves. In Communism there is only one
winner and that is the proletarian leader, the loser is the entire
"collective" that the entire "collective" believes to be
serving. It is also not the same thing as charity and isn't for the same
reasons. Charity does not require self-sacrifice in order to make the dead
"moral". Only in altruism does the sacrificial element to charity have to exist for the "morality" of it to exist.
The Red
Scare (the second one)
The idea
that atheism and communism have a relationship with one another or directly
cause one another is a myth that was born during the second red scare. We were
so frightened of the communist ideology and communists were our sworn enemy.
The U.S. was afraid that the communists would influence the social lifestyle in
America as well as infiltrate the United States government or other political
factions and start a movement in America to overthrow the government. Was this
a good reason to be afraid? Yes. There were many soviet spies that infiltrated the
U.S. government and created many double agents that compromised secrets and
caused damage to our security. Communism has also influenced ideology in the
U.S. as well. There still exists today a small fraction of people who consider
themselves to be "The U.S. Communist Party" and would like to see the
American government overthrown and replaced with a leader to worship for the
good of others.
An Irrational Reaction
However, our response to that fear, creating the Christian
ideology of the family unit and social restrictions did not solve the Red
Scare, simply because Communists were not motivated by "a lack of
belief" or atheism but rather a belief in a different type of
"god". America saw fit to solve the problem by fighting it with
"Christian Values", creating this sort of broad definition of
Christianity that wasn't there before, before "Christianity" people
identified with their denomination, during this time those denominations merged
to fight a common enemy based on religion, and religious influenced and
infiltrated our government to an unsettling and unconstitutional degree. Our
dollar did not say "In God We Trust" before but because of the Red
Scare, "Christian Values" in the broad sense of social duty and
collective community also came about due to this as well. Altruism has always existed in the ideology of Christianity, however what I am talking about is the lack of separation of church and state in many areas that still exist today as a response to this fear that is unconstitutional. The issue is, we no
longer have to be afraid of Communism running rampant and taking over America,
yet our ideology that we gave birth to in a desperate attempt to fight the iron
curtain, the mysterious and what we thought to be "godless" enemy
still exists prominently in America today. That social ideology persists
without reason and is completely fear based in origin.
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