Why would you invent something that at least at first, may make you uncomfortable and unable to relate to all those round you for whom it hasn't happened?

Newsflash to Anonymous: the majority of people are believers. I know that believers see themselves as a besieged minority, but it's simply not the case. The vast majority of people believe in some supernatural being(s).

And as for why would one invent something like a belief, it's for comfort, isn't it? A purposeless, undriven world is a cold and lonely place, makes you feel very small and insignificant -- but a belief in God creates purpose, meaning, and drive, so that's precisely why somebody would have belief.

Belief's the easy, comforting path, compared to atheism, no matter how many times it's portrayed the other way around. Suffering for a faith is especially exalted, while suffering for atheism sounds more like hubris, foolishness, and tragedy. Why suffer for nothing? But more importantly (on this ever-smaller world), the atheist asks: why inflict suffering for nothing?

While there are plenty of torturers and oppressors who did so for a belief, there are none who did it for a disbelief! That's why atheists are generally nice people, not "despite" their disbelief, but because of it.

"Live and let live" is an atheistic virtue, compared to "kill or be killed," the mantra of the fanatic. The first nuclear/biological terrorist will be a true believer, not an atheist.

Most frustrating for atheists is the presumption of morality on the part of believers, and the presumption of immorality ascribed to atheists and/or secularists.

Just because religion, particularly monotheistic religion, is preoccupied with morality doesn't mean it makes one moral -- if history is any guide, it's nearly always the opposite, by providing justification and context for wrongful action.

And they throw out "Well, where does morality come without God?" -- and I think morality, as we perceive it, is evolutionarily derived behavior that lends to our survival as a social species.

Maybe not as thunderingly obvious as "Thou Shalt Not Kill" -- but then, do believers really need that commandment to keep them from killing? Or, more pointedly, has it ever stopped the faithful from killing?

Or do we avoid killing because, as a species, we couldn't have survived if everybody was just out to murder each other at every opportunity? We're not made that way; people have to be taught to kill, have to have a justification and absolution for it, something religion, particularly monotheistic religion, all too often provides.

How about Stalin, was he also "most definitely religious"?

I would say he was -- revolutionaries are political missionaries. They seek to overturn an existing order in pursuit of an idea or cause, in the pursuit of justice. Jesus was not a Caesar; he was a revolutionary.

Stalin was a theological seminarian before he dropped out for the heretical faith that was Marxism. Although people like to say "godless communism" as an epithet, really, Marxism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, and Maoism are all political faiths -- they conform to the very same human mechanisms that religious faiths use: prophets, holy books, heretics, fanatics, crusades, inquisitions, and so on. They even have a vision of Paradise (the so-called "Worker's State" -- conveniently dangled out in front of the flock). The Party is very much like the Church -- the enforcement arm of the faith.

From a Christian theological (or American political/economic) perspective, it could be convincingly argued that they worshipped a false god (although the truth or falsehood of a divinity is surely a political and demographic game -- had Communism won the Cold War, it would be "capitalist imperialism" that would be the heresy, versus Marxism).

The ultimate god of a political faith is the State -- and nationalism and fascism follow these courses, too, just for a different set of beliefs, a different type of state.

Communism wasn't atheistic, not truly -- it merely substituted "State" where "God" had previously resided; it was so vigorously opposed by the US was because it presented a rival faith, challenging "our way of life" -- capitalism and God, probably in that order.

People hamstring themselves when they try to think of Communism or Nazism as an example of atheism in action -- both ideologies had true believers, most definitely, with typically ghastly outcomes -- just like the true believers in every religion, when faced with infidels.

It's probably testament to the inextricability of belief in human life that even so-called "godless" political ideologies simply switch out symbols and create their own counterfaith. I think there is some self-negation in faiths that drives people to flock to them, which is why martyrs are so treasured and necessary to them.

The atheistic individual asks "why is it noble to sacrifice yourself (or others) for your faith?" -- we see it as a tragedy, as senseless violence and waste of lives.

Hell, the Tsarist regimes in Russia, where Church and State were unified in the personage of the Tsar, where they ruthlessly ruled their populace (part of God's Russian Orthodox will for Russians), almost certainly paved the way for the USSR. Stalin was really just another Tsar, just serving a different God.

The ruthless authoritarianism of Bolshevism was probably a case of "best fit" given the culture of the Russians -- had the Russians been a society of atheists (instead of faithful, Orthodox Christians), they'd have likely told the Bolsheviks to blow it out their asses.