Atheism not a belief system

Re: “What John Andrews got wrong about Islam and religion,” July 19 commentary

Krista Kafer quotes Steven Waldman: “Atheism’s historical track record has been no better. Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot all attempted to destroy religion, and in 50 years they killed more people than had died in all the religious wars of the previous millennia.”

Atheism is not a religion or belief system. It is merely a statement that a person has not yet seen convincing evidence about claims that supernatural gods exist. If you do not believe in fairies or the gods Zeus, Athena or Neptune, you are an atheist regarding these supernatural claims. Today’s atheists just go one god further.

Most people become atheists after practicing rational, evidence-based thinking and committing to intellectual honesty about claims that may be emotionally attractive, but consistently lack credible evidence. If atheists have any “belief system,” it is simply that.

None of the above-named dictators were despots from being excessively intellectually honest, or demanding too much evidence to support their ideologies. They fought against religion to prevent large numbers of people listening to religious leaders who might preach against their regimes. None of them made disbelief in god the center point of their ideologies. Their thinking was authoritarian and based on certainty of opinion, much like religion.

A fair reading of history shows there has never been a despotic government by intellectually honest people who excessively demanded rational, evidence-based answers. The claim that atheists were the cause of these holocausts is false. Richard Watkins, Longmont