Even if you support and endorse what Stalin did, you’re still not responsible for it.
And, indeed, themselves, too, for not living up to God’s standards. Beams and specks.
Meanwhile, Stalin really sucked, and state-mandated atheism is a really bad idea, not really preferable in any way to state-mandated religion.
(Mandatory state neutrality toward religion is a very, very good idea!)
Me, personally? I think the human race is retarded (literally) and will be muddled until atheism is the univerally accepted norm, unless we manage to destroy ourselves or the planet before that day. But I don’t think anyone is persuaded to change their beliefs, so we’ll just have to muddle through and hope we get lucky.
That’s fine. I think you and the relatively small number of Christians who spend any time being foolishly upset over atheism ought to go off on a retreat, somewhere, and hash it out so that the vast majority of those–believers and non-believers–who really are willing to live and let live would not have to listen to the noise.
I have never in my long life heard an anti-atheist rant in a church or at a church-related function. I am sure that some such Christians exist because I see them quoted on TV from time to time, but like the performers on “reality TV,” they don’t seem to be too connected to actual reality and their numbers are already steadily diminishing.
BUT WHAT ABOUT MY CAT???
MlSHA WANTS TO KNOW!!!
Have you ever read the “Great Debates” forum? You’ll be surprised by the frequency and vehemence of anti-atheist screeds there.
I saw a story recently that said the religiously unaffiliated are about 20%, and self-described atheists and agnostics are about 6% of the US population. That’s higher than Jews or lesbians, I think.
Stalin was always absolutely certain he was Right, and anyone who disagreed with him was Wrong, he demanded absolute obedience from all around him, and he cared nothing for how much destruction and suffering he had to cause to get or do what he wanted. What could be a better name for a cat?
They often do that, too, and have been doing it for centuries.
For at least the first 19 centuries of Christianity, Christians have denounced other Christians or at least others calling themselves Christians far more then atheists. Its only in the last few decades the Catholic/Protestant divide has died down in the US.
Well, except for all the others.
Not at all. Any more than I am surprised by the frequency and vehemence of anti-theist or anti-Christian screeds there. (Would you care to actually examine this forum and The BBQ Pit counting up the number of threads begun to support or oppose religious belief? Do you really think anti-atheist threads seriously outnumber anti-theist threads?)
This message board is hardly a microcosm of North American society and I see far more discussions about religious topics, (pro or con), here, in a month than I encounter in the outside world in a decade.
I’m sure that still holds true if you delete the word “religious” from that sentence.
I encounter many more arguments about insurance industry practices, agricultural price supports, appropriate dress for kids/teens/young adults, division of labor in a domestic situation and numerous other topics outside these fora than I do here.
Which of my two sentences were you responding to? 
I know for a fact I’m responsible for Disco. And I’m not apologizing for it
The second; I am not surprised by the number and vehemence of anti-atheist screeds–particularly as they are outnumbered by anti-theist screeds.
I slept on this, because I wanted to give your question the attention it deserves: upon reflection, I cannot see any way that your cat was not directly responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union.
Despite the blatant “let’s not denounce” bias prevalent in this thread, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say denouncing Stalin is a-ok in MY book. And Pol Pot too – what the fuck, a dick is a dick!
To be serious with you for a moment (almost always a mistake), it’s not so much WHAT or WHO should be denounced, as much as it is WHO has the responsiblity of doing the denouncing. For a right-winger to say that Stalin was a dick is no big whoop, but they should feel no responsibility for anything he stood for, because they endorse no part of his philosophy. It seems to me that lefties can and should show where Stalin fucked up, and remove themselves as far as possible from endorsing things that led to, caused, created those fuckups. That’s meaningful, as it’s meaningful for theists to show the specific errors committed by fundamentalists, evangelicals, Scientologists, and other religious nutters so they can distance themselves (if possible) from those creeds. Religious people criticizing atheists, like lefties criticizing TPers, is too easy and involves little personal self-examination.