The biblical story of the Garden of Eden is fascinating.  I don't think it's exactly a cultural memory of the way humans were before civilization.  More likely it is the imagination of how the hunter gatherer lifestyle of pre civilized people must have been.  By the time it was a verbal history the tribal people we refer to as Isralites was probably already a multi thousand year culture of semi nomadic herders.  Herding and agriculture both require a change from the way even advanced hunter gatherers lived.  It's easy to imagine a place where nature provides everything in an almost garden-like environment.  Places like that exist today in the Amazon and some areas of Africa and Asia.  To herders tied to each other by the need to protect their flocks unrelentingly and to suffer under the hierarchy necessary to make that defense possible it would be easy to imagine a better alternative. The way of life of simple people living in a garden-like setting would seem as a paradise.  The reality of absolute poverty almost invisible to their imagination.

Humans evolved to live in that paradise lost.  Where nature provides everything.  Only a few eusocial animals actually produce their substance.  Most animals are subject almost entirely to vagaries of their environment.  Humans are not eusocial, we are social.  In the natural state we would be subject to nature's produce.  Resources would be free to gather.  Fairness would not be tied to productivity but to equal access.  Hierarchies would only be loosely tied to competence but the primary competence required for placement in the hierarchy would be skill at sex appeal, networking and grooming.

The most interesting line from the story of Eden is "eat from the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil".  That was the sin that cast mankind out of the garden.  It is a remarkable insight for those of us so far removed from a life without civilization.  What has to be understood to appreciate it is that nature is entirely amoral.  We see design in nature everywhere but that is a product of our civilized mind where design means survival.  Nature itself has no more purpose than the life Adam and Eve lived in the Garden.  With purpose comes responsibilities, flocks to tend, crops to cultivate.  Labor is the organized process of productivity.  Because the defense of that produce is so fragile, strict hierarchies of competence come into existence.  And unlike hunter and gathers where resources are widely distributed, defense of those concentrated resources is a matter of life and death.  Evil becomes anything that threatens those resources and the hierarchy that protects them.  Knowledge of the processes of production the greatest good.  Sin becomes nature and it's amorality.
Natural science is the greatest knowledge mankind has ever acquired but it comes with a dark side.  It is deterministic and naturalistic.  It takes us back to a time when fate or the produce of nature determined our destiny.  It's philosophical descendants reflect the amorality of nature. 

Without the knowledge of good and evil, the morality of civilization, hierarchies and social organization collapse into chaos.  The natural values of sex appeal, networking and grooming become the dominant determinants of placement in the hierarchy instead of competence.  From our perspective within the system it seems paradoxical that something so logical and organized as science could disrupt social order.  That is a result of our poor understanding of the nature of civilization.  It is not built on natural laws but on the abstractions that defy nature.  Science itself is a product of civilization, of the abstract tools we call languages. Central among them are logic and math.  Products of human imagination.  Science provides a highly accurate but abstract representation of nature.  It is not and cannot be the thing itself despite its pretenses to the contrary.
It should be obvious to anyone that if we tried to return to the Garden of Eden it would produce hell on earth.  Yet we try over and over to do so.  No better example exists in my mind than Marxism. 

Marxism would make us Gods able to produce without labor.  It's natural values of fairness and equality death to the hierarchies of competence that make civilization possible.  Like its namesake it is entirely amoral, a reflection of our instincts or emotions.  It has the innocence of nature.  The belief that  the knowledge of good and evil came be reversed.    

God is a concept, not a person. Story about killing is a morality tale. And true enough. We did not see mass murder on the scale of 20th century until nations became godless, but even more radical in their religion. If you pay attention you will notice that after new religions became prime ideology, starting with liberalism.... morality tales about hubris.... are missing from the mythology. There is mythology in all religions, but only the traditional religions have moral myths. This is because the new religions are too young and think they will live forever. Like a kid who thinks he knows everything.

.....................

“Humankind has long since become accustomed to the mass destruction of those identified as enemy combatants—and the enslavement of others taken in war. In the past, millions have been put to the sword arbitrarily, because of their ethnic origin or their religious convictions. But it was the twentieth century that managed to bring even more capriciousness and inhumanity to the mayhem. By the mid-twentieth century, mass murder came to typify an entire class of political regimes.

Even before the coming of the Second World War, millions of citizens were destroyed by those who governed, even though their rulers were nominally at peace with everyone. Untold numbers were threatened with ‘shunning,’ incarceration, expulsion, or death—because of membership in a proscribed class, ethnic, or religious community. However prepared those threatened might have been to abandon those identities—to become whatever they wished by those who ruled—that possibility was foreclosed. Those afflicted with ‘counterrevolutionary class consciousness’ could do little, if anything, to have themselves restored to good favor. Those so unfortunate as to have ‘bourgeois’—landlord or capitalist—backgrounds were denied schooling or employment, and were often marked for destruction. Rulers sometimes sentenced them to thankless labor, exiled them, transported them, incarcerated them, and frequently, if not always, killed them. Finally, those deemed members of a scorned race or despised class could do very little to earn tolerance, much less security. Minimally scheduled for abuse, many, if not most, were ultimately consigned to martyrdom.

In the twentieth century, hundreds of millions of human beings suffered unnatural deaths at the hands of those who governed them. Of course, mass murder has not been unique in history, but its sanction by public rationale—providing motives to rulers, and influencing the behavior of the masses—may well be. That such a rationale licenses the systematic destruction of entire groups within a community at peace, contributes to the enormity.

That such a homicidal public enterprise has behind it the persuasiveness of moral counsel, the force of law, and the power of the state, renders its enormity almost incomprehensible. In such instances, the murder of those the state is expected to protect is not random, but governed by principle, and facilitated by carefully contrived organization. Murder on such scale, supported by public endorsement, and employing public instrumentalities, must necessarily engage the overt or tacit participation of large segments of the community—so that virtually all are made complicit. In substance, in the twentieth, humanity has experienced a century in which governments have sponsored, sanctioned, and created special facilities for the mass destruction of innocent lives. It has engaged almost everyone in the doing. All of which makes the mass murders of the twentieth century perhaps unique in history.”

• Totalitarianism and Political Religion An Intellectual History, 2012 by A. James Gregor

.....................

Totalitarianism is best understood as any system of political ideas that is both thoroughly dictatorial and utopian, embodied in the state religion of Statism. The managerial State apparatus takes over the role of deity.

It is an ideal type of governing notion, and as such, it cannot be realised perfectly.

Faced with the brutal reality of paradigmatic cases like Stalin’s USSR and Nazi Germany, philosophers, political theorists and social scientists have felt not just intellectually motivated but morally compelled to explain the causes and implications of totalitarianism. This has been in part an attempt to explain the socio-political phenomenon in itself, as well to develop an intellectual tool in the arsenal of democracy.

Diverse philosophical perspectives have been employed. They share the important common denominator of an appeal to the value of human life, critical thought, and a pluralistic society. Many of the key figures among the anti-totalitarian thinkers discussed here were European Jewish refugees who escaped totalitarian systems. Many who work on this question have been motivated by a desire to come to grips, philosophically, with what is undoubtedly the greatest intellectual justification for mass murder in history: the twentieth century totalitarian state.

• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a peer-reviewed academic resource | [iep.utm.edu]

"Although there were important differences between . . . totalitarian regimes, they drew from a common well of enthusiasm, and shared such heretical goals (or rather temptations) as fashioning “new men” or establishing heaven on earth. They metabolised the religious instinct." —Michael Burleigh

Totalitarianism is a term employed by political scientists, especially those in the field of comparative politics, to describe modern regimes in which the state regulates nearly every aspect of public and private behavior. Totalitarianism emerged in the twentieth century because the means for total social control did not exist before that time. These systems moved beyond authoritarian control. They attempted to mold citizens into a certain desirable type, whether they be proletarian laborer or pure Aryan. In this regard, these new totalitarian systems represented a new political phenomena that moved beyond previous state ends.

[newworldencyclopedia.org]

Stalinism has been described as being synonymous with totalitarianism, or a tyrannical regime.

Maoism has been described as being synonymous with totalitarianism, or a tyrannical regime.

Cambodia became known as the site of the "The Killing Fields" genocide from 1975 to 1979, when range from 1.7 to 2.5 million out of a 1975 population of roughly 8 million, were murdered by or died under communist Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime. Some historians have compared Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge to Germany under Adolf Hitler, when the Nazis murdered six million Jews during the Holocaust.

Between 1939 and 1945, the SS, assisted by collaborationist governments and recruits from occupied countries, systematically killed about 11 million people, including about 6 million Jews, in concentration camps, ghettos, and mass executions, or through less systematic methods elsewhere. Besides being gassed to death, many also died of starvation and disease while working as slave laborers. Along with Jews, non-Jewish Poles (over 3 million of whom died), alleged communists, political opposition, members of resistance groups, resisting Roman Catholics and Protestants, homosexuals, Roma, the physically handicapped and mentally retarded, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah's Witnesses, anti-Nazi clergy, trade unionists, and psychiatric patients were killed. This industrial-scale genocide in Europe is referred to as the Holocaust (the term is also used by some authors in a narrower sense, to refer specifically to the unprecedented destruction of European Jewry in particular).

The massacres that led to the coining of the word "genocide" (the Endlösung der jüdischen Frage or "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" ) were planned and ordered by leading Nazis, with Heinrich Himmler playing a key role. While no specific order from Hitler authorizing the mass killing of the Jews has surfaced, there is documentation showing that he approved the Einsatzgruppen and the evidence also suggests that sometime in the fall of 1941, Himmler and Hitler agreed in principle on mass extermination by gassing. During interrogations by Soviet intelligence officers declassified over 50 years later, Hitler's valet Heinz Linge and his military aide Otto Gunsche said Hitler had "pored over the first blueprints of gas chambers."

To make for smoother intra-governmental cooperation in the implementation of this "Final Solution of the Jewish Question," the Wannsee Conference was held near Berlin on January 20, 1942, with 15 senior officials participating, led by Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann. The records of this meeting provide the clearest evidence of central planning for the Holocaust. Days later, on February 22, Hitler was recorded saying to his closest associates, "we shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew."
The term totalitarianism has been used to describe regimes that fight political dissent through violence, terror, imprisonment, and killings in an attempt to establish and maintain total control over the population. Not only is it physical, but it is also psychological. Typically, these repressive totalitarian methods are justified as necessary sacrifices for the greater good on the path to utopia. In this context, proven methods that worked can be found in various totalitarian regimes, justification is often the same story about greater good or sometimes called common good, but what represents utopia is particular to each regime. National Socialism, Communism, Technocracy etc.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions is a proverb or aphorism. An alternative form is "Hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works" The Nazi concentration camps were created to hold so-called "racially undesirable elements" of German society. The GULAG system was introduced in order to isolate disloyal elements not contributing to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The harm done is clearly seen, and acknowledged, but is written off as a 'price worth paying'.

.....................

Regarding atheism, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn declared "Men have forgotten God":

"Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened."

There is nothing more dangerous than atheist playing god. I am an atheists, but I do not consider myself a God, while communists do.

“Marxism was a simple substitute for Christianity. Replace God with Marx, Satan with the bourgeoisie, Heaven with a classless society, the Church with the Party,” ― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

"A belief in heaven is an assertion of the immortality of the soul, and the Moral Order of the universe. Without this faith, we'll never see heaven on earth. We're seeing hell instead." - Mike Stone, Restoring Belief in Heaven

“Marxism is supposed to be a social science designed to see through hypocrisies and denial, but Marxism ended up as a kind of earplug, guaranteed to deafen its disciples.” ― Paul Berman

"When God “died” in the 19th century, “social-ism” took the form of materialist scientism (hence the philosopher Eric Voegelin’s observation that under Marxism, “Christ the Redeemer is replaced by the steam engine as the promise of the realm to come&rdquo. It’s worth recalling that both Marx and Engels came to their socialism via their atheism, not the other way around.” ― Jonah Goldberg

“The influence that Marxism has achieved, far from being the result or proof of its scientific character, is almost entirely due to its prophetic, fantastic, and irrational elements. Marxism is a doctrine of blind confidence that a paradise of universal satisfaction is awaiting us just around the corner. Almost all the prophecies of Marx and his followers have already proved to be false, but this does not disturb the spiritual certainty of the faithful, any more than it did in the case of chiliastic sects.… In this sense Marxism performs the function of a religion, and its efficacy is of a religious character. But it is a caricature and a bogus form of religion, since it presents its temporal eschatology as a scientific system, which religious mythologies do not purport to be.” ― Leszek Kołakowski

“Marxism was a simple substitute for Christianity. Replace God with Marx, Satan with the bourgeoisie, Heaven with a classless society, the Church with the Party,” ― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“It is quite true that Marx said that religion is the opium of the people. But of course we now know that Marxism is the crack cocaine of the people.” ― Douglas Wilson

“In Christianity this evolution lasted centuries; in Bolshevism — only decades. If Lenin was the St. Paul of Marxism, who set out to transplant the movement from its original environment into new lands, Stalin was already its Constantine the Great. He was, to be sure, not the first Emperor to embrace Marxism, but the first Marxist revolutionary to become the autocratic ruler of a vast empire.” ― Isaac Deutscher, Russia After Stalin

“Interestingly, Marxism, Communism and its derivative, Socialism, when seen years later in practice, are nothing but state-capitalism and rule by a privileged minority, exercising despotic and total control over a majority which is left with virtually no property or legal rights.” ― Andrew Carrington Hitchcock, The Synagogue Of Satan - Updated, Expanded, And Uncensored

“Therein lies the true essence of Marxism. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ only ever works with a gun in your hand." ― Philip Kerr, Prussian Blue

“Marxism is not necessarily what Karl Marx wrote in Das Kapital, also called Capital. A Critique of Political Economy, but whatever it is that all the warring sects believe, who claim to be the faithful. From the gospels you cannot deduce the history of Christianity, nor from the Constitution the political history of America. It is Das Kapital as conceived, the gospels as preached and the preachment as understood, the Constitution as interpreted and administered, to which you have to go.” ― Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

“Hence a communist society would have a new ethical basis. It has been claimed – by Lenin among others – that Marxism is a scientific system, free from any ethical judgements or postulates. These are the essential points of ‘the first Marxism’. It is manifestly not a scientific enterprise in the sense in which we understand science today. Its theories are not derived from detailed factual studies, or subjected to controlled tests or observations.” ― Anonymous

"That Marxism is not a science is entirely clear to intelligent people in the Soviet Union. One would even feel awkward to refer to it as a science. Leaving aside the exact sciences, such as physics, mathematics, and the natural sciences, even the social sciences can predict an event—when, in what way and how an event might occur. Communism has never made any such forecasts. It has never said where, when, and precisely what is going to happen. Nothing but declamations. Rhetoric to the effect that the world proletariat will overthrow the world bourgeoisie and the most happy and radiant society will then arise.” ― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Warning to the West

“Kirk defined the ideologue as one who “thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature.” Unleashed during the most radical phase of the French Revolution, the spirit of ideology has metastasized over the past two centuries, wreaking horrors. Jacobinism, Anarchism, Marxism, Leninism, Fascism, Stalinism, Nazism, Maoism—all shared the fatal attraction to “political messianism”; all were “inverted religions.” Each of these ideologies preached a dogmatic approach to politics, economics, and culture. Each in its own way endeavored “to substitute secular goals and doctrines for religious goals and doctrines.” Thus did the ideologue promise “salvation in this world, hotly declaring that there exists no other realm of being.” ― Russell Kirk, The American Cause

A striking feature of Marx’s writing is his hostility to Christianity and religion. For example, in the preface to his ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ (1843) Marx wrote:

"‘Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world … It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions’."

Although Marxism has failed as a political and economic system, ironically it flourishes as a secular religion. Perhaps Marxism ought to be regarded as the crack cocaine of the Left.

“The appeal by twentieth-century pluralists to scientific method was also ideologically—and even messianically—driven. It ignored scientific data that interfered with environmentalist assumptions and misrepresented socialist faith as “scientific planning.” ― Paul Edward Gottfried

At its roots, Marxism-Leninism is atheistic and materialistic, but very much behaves as totalitarian religion of statism, where the communist party (The State apparatus) takes over the role of both Church and God. Often the figure of God is replaced by a supreme party leader, like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc. Resulting in the cult of personality figures and corresponding worship of that political figure as it was a supreme all mighty being and only protection against the perceived enemies of the people, that is to say of the state. In that state the atheist part is questionable? Clearly, the cult of personality attributes supernatural power to the ruler.

Today, rather than individual rules we tend to see managerial technocratic class.

"The dark horse of the New World Order is not Communism, Socialism or Fascism. It is Technocracy." says Patrick M. Wood