I'd be interested in hearing what sort of society would form in a purely atheistic state. That is that only Atheists are allowed in the state. I'm wondering how the dynamics between Nihilists, atheist that take on non objective meanings, and Atheist that are not strict naturalists ( believe in spirits). Will they ground their societal values in pure scientific evidence, or will there be constraints of the conclusions of science wherin it infringes with societal cohesion. It would be very interesting to virtually see what system it forms.
The main issue for that is whether an Atheist state could regulate religion in isolation or would have to regulate thought as a whole.
If you could achieve the former, then it may not be that different from what we have today as it would be a modification of the status quo. Society has ways of self-regulating which ideas are dominant, so one day religion could be like the flat earth society- everyone thinks its obviously absurd and uses it as the butt of the joke for ridicule (even if it has a much longer history and set of traditions as a struggle for scientific knowledge that require more serious academic interest). We have free thought, free speech and free press but tolerance is not unlimited and certain ideas are kept highly marginalised (e.g. Fascism, Communism, Anarchism, etc). At the more extreme end, it could probably look like the McCarthy era in that you still have "constitutional" government which professes free thought for the majority but there is a witch-hunt to ensure conformity to "correct" ideas and eliminate "subversives". Going to Church, wearing a crucifix and owning a bible becomes an "Un-American" activity.
More likely you end up with what happens at Christmas or Easter: the religious origins of the holidays have become largely irrelevant to people in a secular society and they do things on those day that have only very tenuous relationships to the religious traditions. e.g. The Resurrection of Jesus has nothing to do with Easter Bunny's and Chocolate Eggs, nor does the Birth of Jesus have anything to do with Christmas Trees, or a man in a red suit going on an international crime spree delivering presents to children by mass burglary (its just weird if you stop and think about it
). So you could have a
relatively free, but still deeply conformist, society in which Atheism has become simply the dominant belief system. You got get there simply by Atheism becoming more and more popular without much violence or much changes to the legal rights people have.
Then, there is the "thought-control" model and your solidly in to totalitarian territory and it would look like the USSR. You'd have to control
everything and enforce Atheism as an official worldview and persecute (or persuade) the proponents of a "religious" worldview. Churches are closed, bibles banned, priests persecuted, believers forced to worship underground away from the gaze of spies and informers. Needless to say, its not a good idea to have people persecuted
simply for believing something that government doesn't agree with, but to some extent its a debate over methods: if you could achieve an atheist society without violence or loss of rights that would be great.
But, that means convincing the 90-95% of people who still have some form of religious belief as well as all the agnostics who are sitting on the fence.
That would be a major cultural revolution however you approach it. It really depends on whether you can have a free society without organised religion, or if organised religion preserves a set of powerful elites (i.e. capitalists) that make "free" society possible. That gets on to bigger questions as to whether Secularism, Liberalism or Capitalism are essentially still religious for originating from Christianity in the Enlightenment and rely on widespread religious belief to maintain themselves by people believing in "natural rights" as a basis for individual freedom. Take that out and you'll get a form of social Darwinism which means the dominant belief systems are the product of social evolution and are about who has power and can justify it by getting everyone to accept the system of government as an inescapable product of reality. If there is no god, there is no higher power to lay down a morality "above" the laws we create and have a basis to judge that the state is wrong. The state could torture, kill and do pretty much what ever it wants because no-one can say "that's wrong" as "political power comes out of the barrel of a gun" and "might makes right". When "the party" is the most powerful organisation in society and no-one can challenge it, "the party is always right". They can just re-write the history to make it look like they were right all along. Pretty scary really.
Edit: this is more of a personal speculation than anything, and what you come up with depends on many assumptions you make. It depends on how effective persuasion or persecution are as methods to get people to change their minds and whether they are more ways of achieving that goal (assuming an atheist society is "better" or more "rational" in some ways). Other Atheists will probably come up with different views assuming they've even considered what a world without religion would look like.
