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These state churches were allowed only under strict state guidelines and used as show places to obscure the brutality that was going on in the back ground against the true worshippers. I believe no children were allowed in these state churches. Correct me if I'm mistaken here.
While this is not exactly correct, it is close enough that I will give you this characterization for sake of argument. Except the thing about children, they were allowed in.
Unfortunately this does not undercut my argument. Whatever Stalin's intentions, he was using the power that religion has to manipulate public will. He recognized it worked better than asking people to do irrational things based on rationality. Faith is much better for that.
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These had no element of worship of the state. All they required was absolute authority and the obedience of the populace to them, as I understand it to have been.
The first sentence is in contradiction with the second. It is true that they did not depict the state a supernatural entity, or require typical practices which govern worship of supernatural entities. But those differences are cosmetic.
All of these countries created iconography to replace the icons of religious worship for public focus, taught that the state (or its leader) is above/greater than the individual, and sacrifice for this state or leader is the purpose of an individual's life.
Particularly the deification of State leaders is hard to differentiate from deification of religious leaders or entities by religious adherents.
IMO that is religion. It is secular religion. In a true atheist ideology a state can hold no higher purpose than an individual.
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After all, isn't TOE also in the same sense a state based imposition to be put upon all the state run educational institutions for the indoctrination of the people whether they want it or not as individuals? Aren't many converted by these imposed doctrines and creeds/theories away from the churches into agnosticism and atheism?
The answer to both of your questions is no. While the TOE does not support any current religion, neither does it support atheism (as an ideology). The only people who might have a problem with TOE are those that demand that any particular religious creation story be interpreted literally (if it conflicts with evidence).
And the public education system teaching what science has come up with as a model is not an imposition or an indoctrination. It is a statement of facts. Education is about teaching children what will be helpful to prepare them for the future (career and in life). Science is what has driven, and will continue to drive, the technology everyone uses.
If we are going to teach science, we need to teach its methods and what models it currently holds due to the evidence that has been gathered. Even if we grant for sake of argument that there are some questions about evolutionary models, the TOE as a general theory is the best model the scientific method can come up with. It is as a consequence, the most popular model for speciation.
I am unaware what reason there would be for ignoring this fact, if one is going to teach science.
You say people convert to atheism after learning the TOE? Then they either do not understand the TOE, or they never had faith. As an atheist (well agnostic-atheist) I was never convinced of atheism by the TOE. It makes no statement one way or the other on whether there is or are Gods.
Certainly there have been enough theists on this site which have said the TOE presents no problem with their faith. Show me a teacher telling kids that they should drop their religion because scientific evidence has come to model speciation as the TOE, and I'll gladly say that teacher is a bad one.
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I simply observed the fruits of godless secularist ideology imposed by these nations by law. If one dies like an animal, why worry about one's morality and actions while living. It becomes a dog eat dog cold brutal world.
There is no question that the nations you mentioned were bad and produced bad results. But I see no connection between secularism/atheism and the economic-social programs that they pushed on their populations.
They generally touted communism, and then replaced the concept of leadership under working class equality with an elite class or an elite individual leader that would tell all workers what they must do. In short, totalitarianism.
Why does believing in no God mean totalitarianism is the answer? Because it is a dog eat dog world? Uhm... Correct me if I am wrong but the whole concept of the world under Xtianity is that men are fallen and so prone to violence and destruction. In fact, this is why men must be ruled by extensive laws... God's laws.
Atheism says there is no god, and so men live as they will. They can be helpful and/or they can be hurtful. Just because I will die like any other animal, does not mean I cannot live like an intelligent, caring animal.
You are making a hidden assumption that one needs a god in order to have a morality. This is not the case.
And this still does nothing to undermine my counterargument that the regimes you discussed were cults of personality, or worship of the state.
I will add on this point that after Stalin's death the Soviet Union eventually came to denounce him as having deified himself. They viewed the purges as horrific, whether atheist or Xian.
holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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