Marxism is a prescribed system for society. Atheism is just about everything according to this and other threads.... For me, it is evolving from the need for superstition, but to someone else it is the theory of fish gill wave propagation, or the art of opening a tin of tuna.

Futwick, just before some of the more learned posters explain things, perhaps an idiot like me can help you here. Molecules to atoms to quarks to waves of probability to Heisenberg getting pissed off at Schrodinger.. You seem to be mistaking this for a belief system, whereas it is no more than making sense of theory and test. Religion would defend the fundamental aspects against any future testing, whereas science allows you to dismiss the ether, dismiss Greek four elements, dismiss many things Einstein held to be fact for many years in fact.

Religion has a habit of sustaining myth, hence it is dismissed at any intellectual level and has no place in discussions over how the universe works.

Oh, and I suppose it is the bloody Godbotherers who ensured B&Q was shut when I drove 8 miles to get some light fittings today. Hawking doesn't interfere with church services, clappy happy types shouldn't interfere with the rest of us.