Yes I always love the communist atheist tie in, Marx never killed anyone actually, Stalin, well state and goverment was the religion, however with that said he wasn't exactly opposed to using the church to get what he wanted as well and the church was happy to oblige, as for Mao....again communist dogma, last time I checked RRS is again these types of dogmas. But hey, they were atheists and all atheists are exactly alike.....what a wanker.

What are you talking about? Stalin and Marx killed people because they have moustaches and people with moustaches are evil...... everybody knows that. I am sure we could find many, many things that Stalin, Marx and Mao have in common and blame what they did on that.  If you abandon logic and look at facts you can make up all kinds of crazy shit. You are just drawing conclusions based on incomplete evidence.  Maybe all three of them had ingrown nails, we certainly won’t blame ingrown nails for their actions. However blaming ingrown nails makes jsut as much sense as blaming their lack of belief in a God.

Also the amount of deaths you associate to these people is completely false and has no basis in history or fact.

My second and perhaps much more important point is the fact that Christians are guilty of genocide too. Look no further than George Bush, he is a strong Christian and he has the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent people on his hands. Countless civilians die in Iraq daily, women, babies, kids slaughtered like cattle. It is estimated that since the war begun over 750,000 civilians have died. Sure they don't show it on television but hundreds of civilians are killed daily by America because of a war started by Bush. 

How about ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian war? The genocide perpetrated by the Christians massacring Muslims indiscriminately, men, women, and children. Muslims done the same to thousands of Christians.

Hitler was a Christian and he is responsible for the death of near 6 million Jewish people. Beyond that the war he started lead to the deaths of close to 50 million people.

The crusades lead to an estimated 1.5 million deaths and they were fought for religion.

Do you want me to continue? I could go to Africa and totally fuck your argument up beyond repair. Genocide in Africa is still occurring on a daily basis and it is driven in part by religion.

Here is a novel idea, pick up a fucking history book before you make a complete idiot of yourself.

I tend to think we shouldn't call Communism a religion. It's an idea, a philosophy, a political position. Perhaps yes it has many traits in common with religion but to call it a religion just doesn't sit well with me.

person A: What religion are you?

person B: Communist.

Doesn't really make sense.

I think the sensible answer is to say that any person or group that seizes state power and erects a dictatorship will inevitably do nasty shit. It doesn't matter what its in the name of, it's the fact they have a monopoly on power. So in the case of Marxist-Lenninists/Stalinists/Maoists it's their belief (and implementation) that all property should belong to a highly centralized government that was the problem, not their atheism.

Sam Harris addressed this issue best in reference to North Korea.

"The problem with fascism and communism was not that they are too critical of religion, it's that they are too much like religions...is too much skeptical inquiery what is wrong (with North Korea)?"

I think people make the mistake since we talk in their realm so much, that it's only "us vs. Christians."  The religious discussion is a big part of it, but at the core of most of what we're about is rooting out this irrational shit anywhere.   Skeptical inquiry is also a sticky opponent of quack medicine, astrology, and really any other bullshit that people believe without good reason.  Religion happens to be a big one, but retarded governments on any basis are right up there.

Being a Communist is about as much as a religion as being a Democrat or Republican.

Communism is a political stance, not a religious one.

Religion is a belief in God, now you may say Stalin or Mao was the God of the state, but last I checked nobody thought neither created the universe nor did they do anything that would really qualify them as 'Gods'.

You said that  it has 'religious dogmas' which implies that Religion is the only source of Dogma.

Communism does have dogmas, but they extend to political stances, not religious ones. It's a political viewpoint, not a religious one.

You can be a Communist and an atheist, Christian, whatever.....

One's a political stance (Communism..) and the other is the Religious one (Christian etc...)

[edit: clarity]

What I don't understand is ' to the point of religiousness'.

It seems to me that it's a false equivocation akin to 'Joe watches the Toronto Maple Leafs religiously'

I believe the word for something that constitutes dogma is called an ideology.

I think at root here are different ideas about what exactly constitutes a religion, and whether it is necessary for a religion to express supernatural claims. I don't think this is the case, even though I would argue that most religions do. I consider communism to be extremely similar to, if not, a religion, in the sense that religion is about the practice of worship. In the case of communism, the object of worship is the state (theoretically) or a charismatic leader (historically). In the latter sense, it is quite similar to a cult.