Where did I claim different?.

Oh I see. I didn't say "Atheist ideology", I said "an Atheist ideology". But, feel free to exchange the word 'ideology' for whatever you think makes sense to not make it an attack on Atheism like you seem to think it is.

"The great historic service rendered by materialist philosophy is that it helped man … blah blah

Hardly!

Lets look at these two individuals

Marx, according to his acolytes, his fabulous theories have never been implemented, instead what happened was they were corrupted by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ceausescu, Pol-Pot & Co

So we still have to experience the ethereal beauty of Marxism in its intended form (cobblers, it just don’t work)

Lenin claimed to be an atheist but observation of history would suggest he and his successors, rather than developing a God free society, imposed by government statute, prison and death

They expected to replace God with themselves.

It is all about power, power of the state and the ones who control the apparatus of the state, harnessing the power previous exerted by the church, to play God over everyone else

And the result of their divine reigns was

Rather than Gods of peace and love,

Gods of starvation, torture and mass murder.

Now as a mere libertarian capitalist, I would contend, you are free to follow the faith of your choosing on one condition

Your faith will tolerate me following the faith of my choosing.

That is my single expectation and anything short of that is not negotiable

You demand the right to impose a creed or values set (including agnosticism and atheism) on me, even if it represents values I might agree with, we are all in trouble.

So rather than debate the piffling theories of Marx, Lenin or any other third grade bum-wipe

You would all be better off considering your future without a powerful state machine there to hold your hand from cradle to grave.

Imagine a community where you were free to be your best, unfettered by the leveling hands of taxation and arbitrary regulation.

Sure the safety net will have wider gaps and some of you will fall them, but others will also escape and soar to new heights of personal growth

You see, the safety nets of socialism do not just stop you from falling

They also discourage you from excelling

StG

I am going to try once more to understand you. I have asked you for examples of what you mean. I think you are saying that the philosophy of Marx is an atheist ideology.

While I am not as well versed as Foxy in study of Marx, I do understand that his philosophy was written in response to religion and to inequity, which is often abetted by religion but which also stems from feudalism and resides in laissez-faire capitalism today.

His quote: "Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions."

People cannot be said to be free to be happy if that happiness is created by illusion. Such as the religious illusion of suffering being good for character - may be, but it is GREAT to keep the poor in sufferance. Or the capitalist illusion of money creating happiness.

Not believing in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism does not result in an ideology such as Marxism. Had neither religion nor inequity ever existed, I doubt that we would be (attempting) discussing Marx right now.

Well I misread StG. I thought it was an attack on atheism, given the comment about "storing boxes of ammo".

Not sure if the thread is about Marxism or atheism, two quite different topics.

Dear Severin,

From my understanding Karl Marx wrote
on subjects as broad and diverse as
philosophy,, economics, political science,
and history.

His influence has been immense. Millions
of people accept his theories with almost
religious fervor, and modern socialist and
communist movements owe their inspiration
directly to him. It's important to realize,
however,, that Marxism is not the same as
communism. Marx would probably be dismayed
at many of the practices of communist
movements, and he can't be held responsible
for policies pursued in his name a century
after his death. Even in his own lifetime,
he was so appalled at the various
interpretations of his ideas by competing
factions that he declared, "I am not a Marxist!"

The key to history, he believed,
is class conflict - the bitter struggle between
those who own the means of producing wealth and
those who do not. Marx saw religion as a form of
false consciousness and as a tool of the powerful
in the struggles between competing social classes.

To Marx, belief in religion was a profound form of
human alienation, the situation in which people
lose their control over the social world they have
created, with the result that they find themselves
"alien" in a hostile environment. Therefore people
create systems of government, law, marriage,
feudalism, industrialism, or slavery, then lose the
sense of their authorship of these products, taking
them for granted as though they were part of an
unchanging natural order.

Nowhere is this process more poignant than in the field
of religion: people create gods, lose their awareness
that they have done so, and then worship or fear the
very gods they created.