I don’t agree it’s derailing the thread.
So I will decline your invitation to stop replaying to anyone who still wants to discuss the meaning of the word “persecution.”
The tenor of this conversation (these posts were from a four-year-old thread on this very subject):
They provide a collection of citations to prior works that support their definition of “abiogenesis.” Tell me exactly why they’re wrong?
^ I already did.
Bricker: I think you’re really really missing the point, perhaps quite obtusely. I don’t really care which of two definitions of “persecuted” is the more common and correct one. I have a strong OPINION about that topic, based on living my life and using the English language and having a brain, but I don’t really care to get into a dictionary-citing competition. Because it’s 100% clearly to me that IN THE CONTEXT OF THIS THREAD, and IN THE CONTEXT OF THIS TOPIC, the definition that everyone but you started out using is much more similar to the lengthy Wikipedia definition than the google dictionary definition you dug up.
That is, when Christians complain about being persecuted in America, they do not just mean “hey, sometimes people say mean things to us”. And when liberals say that Christians are crazy for those complaints, they aren’t thinking “no one ever says mean things to Christians”. Rather, Christians are complaining about treatment that they claim is:
(a) systematic/systemic/widespread
(b) based on, and related to, their Christianity
© substantive and harmful
and liberals are claiming that those claims are hooey.
If Christians got on their pulpits and said “hey, there’s this one guy, his name is Der Trihs, and he says really mean and unfair things about us”, we’d all say “yeah, he’s kind of a douche”. If they said “thousands of Christians are flipped off every day” we’d agree, purely based on statistics. If they even said “Most American Christians have at some point in their life encountered someone who has said something rude and disparaging to them based on their being Christian” then we’d probably agree. But that is patently obviously NOT what they are saying. They are saying that their beliefs are being violated. They are comparing themselves to “persecuted minorities”, a phrase that in the context of American history makes us think of Blacks in the 1950s and the Irish back in the 1800s and American Indians pretty much always. They are NOT comparing themselves to, say, CEOs. CEOs are a minority. And people insult them a lot. But that sure as f*** doesn’t make them a “persecuted minority”.
Well, you appear to be getting close to left wing political correctness here, telling members of some group that they are damn well persecuted, whatever they feel about it.
Excellent! That’s exactly the argument.
First, this isn’t a useful argument at all. To some extent it is persecution of God, by calling him names. But it does lead to another interesting point. How close does an attack have to be to count as persecution? Is the Tea Party persecuting Obama by calling him a socialist, which isn’t even remotely correct? IIRC, and this was back when I subscribed to National Review, Bill Buckley got sued by someone for calling him a Communist. Buckley’s defense was that Communism is no longer a deadly insult and in any case it was clearly hyperbole and not an actual accusation. (My memory is hazy.) Was WFB persecuting this guy?
The relevance is that a theist in no way confuses his god with a sky pixy, so the insult should bounce right off with zero harm. I guess someone with a very shallow faith might be affected, but not most.
Link? Post number?
Funny you should bring that up, since some people are indeed saying that the 1% are a persecuted minority, no doubt taking a cue from the claims about Christians being such. Of course in terms of headcount they are a minority - not just in terms of money or power.
If only French royalty and the tsar had thought of this argument!
Post 228.
[QUOTE=buddha_david]
Then why don’t these people merely reject their faith, and quit going to church? It’s not the same as creed, color, or sexual orientation – religion is a choice, and while I’d never condone prejudice of any kind, there’s a very simple way to avoid harassment.
After all, I’ve done it (rejected prior faith, that is) – it’s not that difficult. Or do Christian minorities in other nations feel the same sense of self-hatred that American fundies do?
[/QUOTE]
<sigh> I often think serious atheists understand us religious fanatics better than casual believers do. Rhetorical question only: if atheists are being persecuted for not going to church, then why don’t they just shut up and go to church?
Yeesh! 270 posts and nobody has yet mentioned the obvious:
Christ complex!
I think this story from Salon puts how ridiculous this is in perspective:
Because gay people wanting equal protection under the law is anti-Christian persecution. :smack:
He already quoted a select definition that encompasses any and all “hostility” or “ill-treatment”, regardless of the normal factors (e.g. severity, lack of justification) that give the word its actual meaning.
Brings back memories of the times my teachers persecuted me by taking points off when I made the occasional error of grammar, usage, and logic…
One obvious reason is that it’s a useful negotiation ploy (unless you’re dealing with people, such as this crowd, who don’t cotton to bullshit). If you can con the rubes into letting you elevate petty butthurt to the stature of “persecution”, it becomes possible to obtain concessions that would otherwise be instantly recognized as outrageous and absurd.
Do minor accidents incidentally related to, but not actually caused by, someone’s actions count as “ill treatment”? If so, his usual failure to post a coffee-and-cats warning before each new contortion of pseudo-logic would qualify.
Haven’t you heard? Saying mean things about the one percent is tantamount to Krystallnacht!
And if that example of the hallucinatory landscape he’s headed into doesn’t cure Bricker of his tendency to take vocabulary lessons from Humpty Dumpty, I don’t know what will.
Here’s Post 228:
Are you aware that the paper mentioned at your link, “Defining Persecution,” has been discussed in this thread? And that the paper acknowledges there are multiple definitions and uses of the term, and it seeks to remedy that by proposing a single, agreed-upon standard? That may be a fine idea, but the very fact that a paper needs to propose acceptance of a single standard is good evidence that the single standard does not yet exist. Right?
So let’s talk abiogenesis.
The OED entry to which you object (and which you quote) says:
That’s wrong, you say, because the word actually means, “…the natural process by which life arose from non-living matter such as simple organic compounds.”
Question: are those simple organic compounds, that non-living matter – are those “animate?”
Because the OED says:
Do we need to have a discussion about the meaning of the function word “or,” that indicates a disjunctive alternative?
What the hell, Bricker? This isn’t a court of law, and you’re not Melvin Belli. The fact of the matter is that the definition of “persecution” that you keep trying to shoehorn into this conversation is one of several valid definitions, but it is not the one that is valid for, or pertains to, the conversation at hand.
You’re right on part one - are you sure about part two? 