did you know soviet russia killed and tortured Buddhist monks and christian priests? They even made people burn images of Jesus or any thing religious, why did they do this? is it because they wanted people to blindly follow the government?
Basically, yes. Fundamental political ideologies do not like religious ideologies competing with them.
Dude, they killed everybody that didn't fit in the system. Not just religious people. Atheists included. Your argument is thus rendered invalid.
The Chinese government promotes the same thing today. It's to make people subservient to a collectivist society instead of their own intellectual enrichment. The best slaves are the ones who don't realize that they are slaves.
Basically it's like this: Lets say you want to start a commie regime.. Religions always seem to conflict this regime.. It's hard to get religious people to go along with ideals that conflict their own religions, so it's better if religion is eradicated from the population that the dictator is trying to control.. It's kind of ironic because religion was once a method of control, but communist leaders tried to get rid of it rather than starting a new religion that went along with their ideals.. Just to be clear, not all atheists are commies..
Control. As another user said, they want the people to believe that the government is the highest power. And Creation Crusher, killing an atheist doesn't make you a theist. In fact, it's well known that the number one killers of atheists are other atheists. Communism is almost always synonymous with atheism. The only exceptions have been North Korea, where communism developed into Juche, which deifies the Kim family, and in certain northern Muslim countries where communism is combined with secular Islam. Otherwise, all communists are atheists.*
