Stargatemunky

"That would be using a collectivist way of thinking and anyone who appreciates the conservative values knows better than being a collectivist and favours individualism and meritocracy instead." I see no definition of liberalism or conservatism that isolates collectivism as being unique to one or the other. Collectivism is a psychological trait of humans and has no bearing on which politics you choose to believe in. Equally as others have pointed out. By not qualifying the statement and claiming it's unique to liberalism or atheism, you're effectively stating Stefan believes atheism to be all and everything to do with liberalism and thus is using the same fallacy you're accusing others of. "Atheism gained momentum with the expansion of communist ideals even before the Sixties" Atheism gained momentum in the Greek era around Epicurus's time when he tried to address the issue of mortality and the moral argument for the belief in God/gods. It's been around a lot longer than Stalinist communism which was a government enforced joining of church and state. I don't see many if ANY well known atheists these days supporting the idea that the government should have explicit control of church and state. Even in the UK where the church is integrated through tradition there is nowhere near that level of control. Again it's rather disappointing people use the Stalinist examples as if that is what is happening today. Atheism exists primarily in the world today because of the Enlightenment. It has nothing to do with communism and everything to do with the Freethinkers like Thomas Paine. Stalinism was instigated to achieve political control by Stalins sheer paranoia over his need to feel in power. You can see that quite clearly from the fact that modern day atheism promotes critical and independent thought as much as it does the dictionary definition of "non-belief in a deity" that it has nothing to do with that culturally or politically. If you don't know what the enlightenment is then you should probably look that up before you consider carrying on with the communist/atheist rhetoric.