Comment by adrian_b

No, there are tremendous differences between secularism and Christianity, while Christianity and Communism have identical consequences for the life of a typical citizen.

Communism, Christianity, and also the other monotheist religions, are extremely intolerant against the believers of any other religion.

Secularism is the opposite, at most you could say that secularism is like many polytheistic religions, where it was considered normal that everyone believes in their own gods and for the other people it does not matter which are those gods.

The life of a normal citizen of a communist country was very similar, for example, to the life in Italy or Spain 600 years ago, when the Church was more powerful. It might have actually been worse, because the Communist Party might have been more powerful than the Catholic Church ever was.

Permanently you had to be very careful with everything you said, because if you ever contradicted some dogma written in the Holy Communist Scriptures or some interpretation given by a High Communist Priest, you could be singled out as an heretic and be excommunicated, with very bad consequences.

Regarding the Communist dogmas, everything was based on "have faith and do not doubt". It was absolutely impossible to have any discussion about communism based on rational arguments or on experiment results.

Like Christianity, Communism blocked any kind of scientific research that could contradict in any way its Holy Scriptures. To make progress in any career, you had to either be or simulate that you are a true believer and you had to display frequently your faith in the Communist religion.

It does not matter what words are used by Christianity or Communism, wherever any of them succeeded to control the state institutions, the consequences were the same for the citizens, no freedom of speech and severe discrimination between believers and non-believers.

Secularism was precisely the reaction against this, having the purpose of allowing the freedom of speech and religion.