This is a “no true Scotsman” argument.
Some religions do this. Not all, or even most. And if the history of the twentieth century teaches us anything at all, it teaches us that people will commit atrocities in the name of a secular political ideology just as quickly as they will in the name of a religion. The brutishness lies in human nature, not in ideology.
You’ve not been paying attention, Jim. A number of the more rabid atheists on this board have been trying to pass Maoism and Stalinism off as religion for ages, for the reasons cited in this thread - namely, wanting to shove off a genocidal ideology on the religious rather than accept it as one of their own.
This gets us to the ridiculous point where something can be defined as “religion” even though it not only denies the existence of a supreme being but punishes people who so believe with beatings, imprisonment or death. Still, as long as it doesn’t take sugar on its porridge, or something. :rolleyes:
Anything that’s not based on faith. It’s the reliance on faith that makes religion what it is.
And the idea that Communism is a religion is hardly unique to me. Rare, but I expect that’s because the Communists don’t want to admit that they follow a religion, and the official religions don’t want Communism associated with them.
Wait a minute. Aren’t you the same guy who’s been crashing into all the ID threads, going on about how science is like religion, and people treat it the same? And now you’re going to say communism is nothing more than an economic philosophy? Get real. Communists treat it as a religion, and you know it, so you stop spreading ignorance. You can’t have it both ways, and you know exactly what Der Trihs is talking about. Quit being disingenuous.
All religions do. It’s their nature. The nature of faith.
Communism is not atheism. Despite the many, many attempts by the relgious to smear unbelievers with the label.
Something plenty of religions do, as long as the supreme being in question has a different brand name. Communists persecuted Christians and such for the same reason Christians and Muslims and so on persecute each other; religion is intolerant of competition.
And since when has religion required belief in a supreme being, or gods at all ?
I disagree, **Liberal ** is wrong about Science being like religion (if he actually said this) and Communism is not a religion, just a terribly faultly political science experiment based on outmoded and dated concepts.
How do you get that communist treat communism like a religion, maybe many specific countries have a cult of personality, but that is not the same as religion, not even in the extreme cases like Kim Jong Il.
Jim
No, I’m the guy who keeps saying that science is NOT a religion, and that I wish people would stop treating it like one.
That is beyond idiotic. Have you actually read the Manifesto of the Communist Party?
Well, I guess this becomes a semantics argument. To me and I believe most people, religion deals with god(s) and supernatural belief. This is not something required or even particularly useful to trying to [del]get humans to act like ants[/del] communism.
Malacandra: I did miss this trend, though I doubt many atheist on this board want **Der Trihs ** on their side anymore than I as a Green want PETA called a Green organization.
Jim
I’m not interested in arguing whether or not Communism is a religion. But Liberal hasn’t got a leg to stand on, if he’s going to say science is like religion on the one hand, and then act like a jerk to** Der Trihs** for making a similar argument about communism. It’s either an ignorant argument, or it isn’t, and either way Liberal looks like an ass.
Communism, like Rand’s Objectivism, is used by many people to fill the same psychological needs that religion ordinarily fills, but that does not make it a religion. Again, you are employing a “no true Scotsman” argument. Someone has pointed out that secularism’s history is no less bloody than that of religion, and you don’t like that.
Okay, In a world without religion, who outside Mecca and Yathrib would have ever heard of Mohammed? How many sixth-century merchants can you name, off the top of your head? It would be a stupid thing to call a bear, kind of like naming a frog Herakleitos.
Not to argue against the main point here, which I support – but you did set the challenge! 
Sudan ≠ Islam.
Will you kindly stop speaking on my behalf? Because you’re either too stupid or too unscrupulous to get it right. Everybody BUT you can see what I reiterated in post #27, just above. A third grader can understand the difference between “people treat communism like a religion” and “communism is a religion”. You must have been absent that year.
FWIW, Heinlein maintained all his life that Soviet Communism (not necessarily pure Marxism, but what they professed to run the USSR by) was effectively the secular equivalent of a religion, and he used much the same arguments as Der Trihs, somewhat more cogently stated. See Expanded Universe for relevant articles.
Well, Poly, that sort of argument is unbounded. With it, one could argue that atheism is a religion.
Buddhism has nothing to say about a Supreme Being. Neither do a lot of other religions. Communism is a religion insofar as it is another belief system accepted on faith and which was used to justify appalling inhumanity. Neither it or Nazism had anything to do with atheism anyway, which is simply a lack of belief in gods, not a positive set of tenets accepted on faith (in defiance of rationality). Atheism does not have to explain away either form of totalitarianism.
The Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews was pretty much the culmination of centuries of christian demonisation and was carried out by the citizens of a christian nation.
Besides - I’m betting we can all damn well agree that Islam is a religion and sharia law Islamic Law. By my definition - religion is what is does - when a self-defined Islamic society does something dreadful because of Sharia Law I’m bypassing the ‘no true scotman’ defences and pitting Islam. If Al Gore and I had been alive during the Crusades I’d be pitting christianity on the interweb too.
And I frankly don’t care if some other bloody totalitarian hell-hole has a leader with an image obsession. I’m just pitting another example of a barbaric religion in practice and its barbaric religious legal code.
And neither Nazism or communism are ‘secularism’.
That is simply a belief that invisible pink unicorns and their ilk have no role in the institutions and organisation of societies. Totalitarian ideologies just replace God with the State as the object of veneration and the source of legitimacy.
What China, the ussr and fascism got up to is not in any way related to atheism and so are not ‘balancers’ when religion is righteously pitted.
No, it’s an argument that communism isn’t really atheism at all, but just another religion. Atheism has no ideology.
Name one Islamic state under whose conception of sharia law you’d be happy living if you’re a woman?
Iraq? No. Iran? No. Indonesia? No. Phillipines? No. how about Pakistan, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait? No? Maybe Nigeria them.
It’s funny how countries whose legal systems designate women second class citizens and prescribe barbaric punishments for lunatic offenses just happen to self identify as Islamic.
Total coincidence, move along, nothing to see here.
What Exit:
Not that I wish, G-d forbid, to detract from the perceived civilized-ness of the Jewish religion, but - it’s easy to get over the kind of insanities associated with religious authorities exerting temporal power when your religious authorities have no temporal power.