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Do atheists believe in anything or is it like people who just don’t have a religion and don’t worship?
Good question. Just about everybody believes in lots of things (and just how boring do you have to get to get by in life without believing in anything?) so the fast answer is, atheists believe in things too.
As I hope readers of my postings may have noticed, this atheist loves knowing how things actually are, from history and science to philosophy and society and politics, so that choices on other issues can be made based on a fair assessment of the facts, and not prejudice or dogma. So curiosity and love of reason tends to be a pretty common thread among atheists and freethinkers (Richard Dawkins certainly makes a big deal of that in his lectures, and gets a ready reception for it among his freethinking listeners). Most will be more politically and socially liberal than, say, the average visitor to Ken Ham’s Creation Museum or follower of Tony Perkin’s Family Research Council, so you’ll find acceptance of gay marriage and contraception and abortion choice much higher than you would for some religious believers. I would say most atheists get exercised over people anywhere getting persecuted, so affirmation of freedom of conscience runs pretty strong in our bunch (and ought to do so for people of faith too, though alas that is not always the case).
What should be clear though is that a lot of the things atheists hold dear are things common (or ought to be) to being a decent caring human being.
Weren’t Lenin & Marx atheists?
Yes indeed, Lenin and Marx were atheists, and you can toss in Stalin and Pol Pot and presumably the current leadership of North Korea while you’re about it. I was responding though about current atheists as a group, and tried to assess the tenor of them based on my experience and study. Whether a Marx or Lenin would believe or act differently if they were apprised of today’s conditions, or if they were plucked by time machine to live today rather than carrying the baggage of 19th century religious culture, is impossible to say, much as if one were to perform the same thought experiment for people of faith. One would hope Martin Luther might backpedal some on his anti-Semitism, for instance.
Insofar as atheists I know do not approve of persecuting people based on belief, the “atheism” of Lenin and Stalin and company would definitely fail to make the cut. I’d say much the same about the paranoid wingnuts who ran the French Revolution. And on these issues I think atheists and religionists can (and should) find lots of common ground.