re: #2 sagehen

First, there is no “team atheist”. Just as there is no “team non-astrology”. Just people of all types who happen not to believe in God.

Atheists refusing to acknowledge that Stalin was an atheist is news to me.

Here’s Richard Dawkins, for example, doing just that, amid an excellent evisceration of Papal hypocrisy (h/t Thanos):

Youtube Video

What atheists rightly dispute is the idiotic notion that Stalin’s atrocities were somehow a natural expression of atheism.