When you get right down to it, "Atheist" is a stupid word.

[thucythucy]

57. I think there has to be a distinction made

between "religion" and "faith" or "belief."

I suspect that belief in deities--that is, some sort of active intelligence behind natural forces--predates anything like organized society, much less organized religion. There is evidence of ritual burials, for instance, dating before Neolithic times.

I think the use of organized religion to "control population" came much later.

Joseph Campbell, in the first volume of "The Masks of God" lays out the notion that homo sapiens are in essence hard wired to have religious beliefs, to see some sort of structure and intelligence to a universe that science tells us is in fact highly random. Melvin Lerner further defines this in his writing about "the just world" theory of how the universe works--the idea that good and bad things happen to people for a reason as a way of trying to assert some control over the uncontrollable.

I think as progressives we make a mistake to ignore this basic fact of human "reasoning." It's something like trying to pretend people don't like sweets.

I agree with your characterization of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as more religious than science based.

Any system that defines itself as immune to questioning or dissent is inherently dangerous.