and I think it is really important to acknowledge that what animated the atheist Communists was hatred of organised religion and a desire to wipe it out by killing its leaders and terrifying its followers.
that's true. But that doesn't mean atheism motivated them. It was communism. Communism has a lot in it about silencing dissent.
What baloney. You can be an atheist and hate religion enough to want to murder religious people and destroy the fabric of the church. Hakluyt, you are woefully misinformed and dreadfully confused.
No it's not baloney. What such an atheist is motivated by is hatred of the other. it's exactly like sectarian violence. How can you be motivated by atheism? All it says is that evidence for god is slim to none. That's it. there isn't any more to it. Atheism neither supports or forbids violence.
Your definition of atheism is so limited and narrow that it is almost meaningless. It is actually meaningless, since atheism is actually whatever any given atheist says it is.
No, that wasn't Hakluyt's definition of atheism, that is actually the definition of atheism. When you say communist atheist, the modifier communist is very important. The definition atheist is incredibly narrow.
Atheism is NOT whatever a given atheist says it is. If an atheist says atheism is not lack of belief in God, then they are wrong. The one and only thing that binds all atheists together is lack of belief in God. Some of us are assholes, some of us do non-stop charity work, some of us watch television all day, and some of us are mass murderers. The only common link is lack of belief in God. That's it.
This is pretty pathetic, therefore.
(referring to my post)
Actually, the only pathetic thing is not being able to follow this simple logic. Every example you have given about atheists being bad is of the form atheist (where the adjective is usually communist). We have all conceded that atheists can be horrible (in particular, communists), the question is whether someone was motivated by atheism.
I dare you to find someone, anyone, who said, "there is likely no god, therefore I did..." and even if someone said that it wouldn't make any sense. if that made any sense, then the statement "there are no leprauchaun therefore I did..." should make as much sense.
extreme orthodox jews or koran-thumping muslims are the representatives of their religions to prove your point, then you deserve to get one of the most extreme militant atheists to represent you.
there are some bad things that religious people do that have nothing to do with their religion. If a muslim robs a store and swipes a bottle of whiskey while he's at it, of course that has nothing to do with islam. That's just an asshole robber who happens to be muslim. Islam is completely irrelevant in this case. But when a muslim kills an apostate, and points to the verses in the Koran that support this by some plausible interpretation of those verses, than yes in those cases Islam has something to do with it.