Stop preaching about context and go read the news. Please support your ridiculous claim that atheists have no beliefs to try and impose. I have never seen a more zealous group of proselytizers than atheists. They are advertising on buses these days. They sue to stop any mention of God in public. They deface relgious monuments. All in the name of spreading their belief (against great evidence) that there is no higher power.

I think you were right to pick up on Andrew’s simplistic argument, but have you not made the same mistake yourself? I was agreeing with you until you tried to play down the role of non-belief in persecution of believers in Marxist societies. Non beleif played it’s role amongst a number of other factors, much as religion has done through various persecutions and conflicts down the ages. The communist and Marxist regimes killed for reasons more than just politics.

To use an obvious example, the Crusades were not simply about religion; clearly politics, economics, race and social factors played their part. To ignore any of those factors is not to understand the historical context; try and unpick one factor as more important than the next and you’ll have several lifetimes of work and speculation.

Andrew: I kind of agree with some of your piece though what I would argue is that people have never had any sense of the complexity of the past. People calling themselves Christian 100 years probably had the barest idea what that meant (and many today probably still don’t). The past has always been a simple place as far as people are concerned, and many find this comforting (nationalism, for example).

Phil: if the claim is that atheists have no beliefs to try and impose through persecution, it is only contingently true.

There are certainly atheists who do not think that religion matters at all either way and are perfectly happy for it to continue but they don’t tend to show up in the comment sections of the Guardian. Anyone who cares about atheism even enough to get into arguments about it online has a view on whether the world would be better without religion.

Very damn few atheists take the view that religious belief is false and harmless, especially when it comes to organised religion. On the contrary, they suppose that it is harmful and attempt act on this view.

As for the point that Stalin killed millions of people who weren’t believers—are you suggesting that this diminishes the murder of believers? We’re in danger of drifting into Godwin territory here, so I will pull back from the obvious examples of mixed genocide.

“I find it ironic therefore that you fail to understand the historical contexts used in your own argument.”

Instead of “… his own argument.”

Historical context and context in general, is vitally important. I find it ironic therefore that you fail to understand the historical contexts used in his own argument.

I haven’t read the “angry atheists” comments in the Guardian, so I can’t comment as to whether they appreciate context or not. However I was struck by your comment:

“So when our readers claim that atheists never persecute believers, this is in part an absolute ignorance of some of the basic facts of twentieth century history – what did they think was happening in Poland up until 1989?…”

This is a gross misinterpretation and over simplification of “the basic facts of twentieth century history”. And by taking a purely literal interpretation of the atheist’s statement “atheists never persecute believers” you are, I suspect, making a disingenuous argument.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but your argument goes something like this:

1. Fundamental Atheist’s claim: “atheists never persecute believers”
2. Marxist Communists are atheists
3. Under Communism religious believers were persecuted
4. Therefore the atheist’s claim in 1 is false.

However, if the comments could be read in context, I suspect that the atheist’s were actually trying to claim that “non belief” (i.e. atheism) has no propensity to encourage the persecution of people precisely because atheists have no beliefs to try and impose through persecution. Further, a more rigorous examination of the historical context is that it was the need to impose the wider fundamentalist beliefs of Marxism and Socialism that led to the persecution many groups of people; of which believers were but one.

When looked at in this context your argument is clearly illegitimate.