Saw this scene while flipping channels, so had to track down the clip and .gif it…
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To segue off on a tangent here: I’ve always said that no one was likely more surprised than Hoxha when he briefly became the embodiment of True Marxist-Leninist Communism.
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At least for 8916 more posts… 
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That shouldn’t be too tough to hit. I’ll start.
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[quote=“khepra, post:1083, topic:71023”]
A culture or people can exist and have existed without religion.[/quote]
Not that I know of. Can you name a culture or people that provably (not theoretically) existed without religion? The Soviet Union and Maoist China both failed to stamp out religion.
Esoterically, pantheism is a religion that can exist without culture, people, or even sentience. It doesn’t require rituals or recognition or any other manifestation other than simple existence. There’s no reason birds, whales, patent leather beetles or pine trees can’t be pantheists. One need only be in order to participate.
A little less esoterically, primatologists like de Waal and Goodall suspect they’ve seen evidence of religiosity in non-human primates.
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The Soviet Union didn’t have a hope since the place was just too big, and leadership vacillated on whether to purge or not to purge. Mao tried really hard during the Cultural Revolution’s assault on the Four Olds, but again the place was just too big to have any chance. Mao still did a ton of damage, though, the destruction of temples, texts, and various religious/cultural artifacts was a horrible, horrible loss.
The closest I know of was Communist Albania under Hoxha. Hoxha started with purges to imprison and execute religious leaders, and after 1967 all religions were forbidden, all churches or mosques they could find had been closed, any clergy that could be found were persecuted and imprisoned, and the state was officially atheist. It didn’t last, and today atheists are around 2% of the population.
Still, the problem is that “religion” is a really loose label. Some people are non-religious but still believe in gods and things, and some religious people adhere to non-theistic religions - the term’s a fuzzy blob. Since it’s so fuzzy, it’s easy to imagine a nation without religion so long as you define it in a way that works for your fantasy.
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He tried fairly hard in the initial years of the People’s Republic as well, with about as much success.
Of course, one could argue that his personality cult—with songs to him, the “Red Line of Mao Zedong Thought”, and constant quoting of his words and writings—was at the time a nascent religion in and of itself.
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Religions are created by people.
https://www.tamu.edu/faculty/choudhury/culture.html
Note in the following source:
Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, "RELIGION ", notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions…
…" acquired by a group of “PEOPLE” in the course of generations through individual and group striving."
CULTURE
SOME DEFINITIONS
Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.
Culture is communication, communication is culture.
Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior; that is the totality of a person’s learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behavior through social learning.
A culture is a way of life of a group of people–the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.
Culture is symbolic communication. Some of its symbols include a group’s skills, knowledge, attitudes, values, and motives. The meanings of the symbols are learned and deliberately perpetuated in a society through its institutions.
Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning influences upon further action.
Culture is the sum of total of the learned behavior of a group of people that are generally considered to be the tradition of that people and are transmitted from generation to generation.
Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another
noun
1 the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits, etc.
2 that which is excellent in the arts, manners, etc.
3 a particular form or stage of civilization, as that of a certain nation or period:
Greek culture.
4development or improvement of the mind by education or training.
5 the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group:
I don’t think that’s quite what Emerson meant when he wrote “When they me fly, I am the wings;”. 
(Who am I kidding? That’s probably exactly what he meant.)
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So is soylent green.
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Religions are created by people–period–full stop!
Unless of course, one believes in some fairy tale, Santa Claus, Peter Pan or Superman like, fictional, mythological and self-created–supreme creator god.
Name a religion that created itself i.e., was self-creating?
Name a culture of people, that existed without actual people?
Note the words culture and people (in the 1st paragraph and sentence) from the earlier source I linked.
https://www.tamu.edu/faculty/choudhury/culture.html
CULTURE
SOME DEFINITIONS
Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.
Religions are created by people. Some adherents might argue against that, but I’m pretty sure you’re not going to find anyone here arguing that. I have no idea why you’d even imagine any of the people in this thread would given the things we’ve all said, esp. me.
That still doesn’t address the trans-cultural aspect of religions, though. There are African, Chinese, Korean, American, British, etc. Christians with distinct cultures. If you have a Canadian Anglican, and a Canadian Buddhist they could both be culturally Canadian but have different religions.
Religions can’t exist without people (who will have inevitably be part of a culture), but that’s like saying art, culture, science, or pie can’t exist without people - it’s self-evident. Was that all you were aiming at?
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You posted:
“That still doesn’t address the trans-cultural aspect of religions, though. There are African, Chinese, Korean, American, British, etc. Christians with distinct cultures. If you have a Canadian Anglican, and a Canadian Buddhist they could both be culturally Canadian but have different religions.”
Trans-cultural aspects of religions are not the point of debate.
Your next post is directly on point and true:
“Religions can’t exist without people (who will have inevitably be part of a culture)”
Religions cannot exist without people, on this we agree. 
So just to help understand what you’re trying to say, when you said:
Do you mean some culture does exist without religion(s) or just that theoretically that might happen?
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Are the following five religions more insane or dangerous, compared to and given the sexist, homophobic, discriminatory and violent history of dominant and mainstream mythical religions like Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam–or a religion like Mormonism?
All religions are nothing but cults; that become mainstream, then become called religions.
https://curiousmatic.com/5-insane-religious-cults-active-today/
There’s always someone who has to take things a little too far.
From Jim Jones to the Manson family, cults evoke the frightening image of glassy-eyed followers willing to kill or be killed at the whim of their leader.
These fanatical organizations aren’t just relics of the recent past, however. Here are five modern-day cults you might not have heard about
You don’t need a human created and mythical religion for a culture to exist.
Do you believe that in order for a culture to exist, the people of that culture must have a human created and mythical religion?
Here’s a interesting article:
Imagine a place where almost no one ever goes to church, the majority of people do not believe in God, and among those who do, their belief is fairly watery and thin. Imagine a society where people see Jesus as perhaps a nice man who taught some nice things, but was certainly not a miracle-performing son of any god.
Try to conceive of a modern corner of the world where religion has virtually no place in politics, almost everyone accepts the evidence supporting evolution, almost everyone knows that the Bible was written by humans and not the divine, and nearly everyone understands that morals and values exist independently of religion. In such a culture, religion is so weak, marginal, and downright quaint that people aren’t even anti-religious. They’re just indifferent and perhaps uninterested…
…Third, and maybe most importantly, people can be upstanding, decent, and just without religious faith. Denmark is not only one of the safest places on earth, but it is also one of the most moral and ethically conscious cultures in the modern world. Children are well taken care of, as are the elderly, as are the physically and mentally challenged, as are orphans, and the sick, and the afflicted. Equality, freedom, democracy — these things are not only highly valued but successfully realized. And all without much concern for an eternity of heavenly bliss or torturous hellfire.
The thing that the crazies in religion do that makes them horrible people is decide to identify with their religion/sect as a kind of tribal ingroup, with a big outgroup of everyone else that they dehumanize. Try not to make your irreligion a tribal ingroup.
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He refused to fight in the Vietnam War; citing religious objections. He was stripped of his heavyweight championship because of his refusal to be drafted and his religious stance against the Vietnam War. He risked going to prison for holding to his religious beliefs against the Vietnam War. He was ultimately vindicated by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Peace, comfort and safety to your spirit Muhammad Ali–“The Greatest of All Time”
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