religion, politics, violenceWe have heard of violent religious groups that attack people from other beliefs. Are there any groups that promote violence against religious people and proclaim themselves atheists?
Example: I have heard that some atheist governments do that, I don’t know if they admit it. In the case of governments their violence is relabeled as justice, and religious people call it persecution.
PS: Since some people don’t consider government justice as a form of violence, I would like to include as possible answers “every group whose enemy is religion and whose methods are physical repression.”
I know of no such groups. That does not mean that there aren’t a few small bands of nutjobs out there, and there have been a few individual atheists who have committed acts of violence and vandalism aimed at religious people and organization, but as far as I know, no organized groups of that nature exist.
I reject the idea that government repression of some religious groups would count here. The USSR discouraged religion, and directly suppressed only a few groups. Albania would be a case of explicit banning of religion altogether, and in a much more “vigorous” way. But in those cases, it was far more a case of the suppression of political opponents than a direct form of violence against an idea or ideology. The Communists viewed religion as a dangerous opponent, far more than a simple delusion. The potential for a religious group to become a source of sedition was the proximate reason for repression in most cases.
But a group directly targeting religious people due to atheism itself? No.
The USSR was certainly anti-religious. They called it “gosatheism”, which one might translate as “gov.atheism”. They were not massively violent towards “normal” religions, in relative terms1, but anything that resembled a cult was vigorously eliminated.
1They did, apparently, execute 1200 priests, but in the grand scheme of things this is only mild violence for USSR…
If you keep it simple and define the quesion narrowly, then no, there aren’t groups who specifically say or have said, we hate all gods and are violently going after all believers. If there ever was, it was small and didn’t last.
However, justifying violence is never simple. There are always many reasons, often unstated, at least not publicly. Take whatever group or government that you like and look back in it’s history and you will find some lies were used to justify killing. This includes lying about what you believe or don’t believe, or interpreting scripture to say it justifies violence, either to justify killing in the name of god, or justifying killing someone because their scripture says they are going to kill you if you don’t kill them first.
I don’t think you can ever sort that out enough to really answer this question.
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