Never thought of it that way before, but, yeah. Some Christians practice it literally, doing self-flagellation and wearing hair shirts and things.
Then again, so do some Hindus, including Buddha in his early stage.
Are there any other religions to which this applies?
Well, not always; the pagan Romans did it first. And the Japanese at the start of the Tokugawa era. And then there’s what happened to the followers of Taiping Rebellion, if they count as “Christian,” and if violently suppressing an armed political rebellion counts as “persecution” at all.
Just to add a counter point, I started a thread asking why we take creationists seriously a while back.
Responses, many from atheist posters, criticized my post, and its tone, and took me to task for posting it, some accusing me of labeling all Christians as ‘loopy’ rather than the creationist beliefs I was intending.
So, in my experience the responses on this board are fairly even handed.
That is just exactly what we’re talking about if you take “polite” out of it; and, GD forum rules do in fact require a certain minimum of politeness, at least that minimum which distinguishes Pit-material from not-Pit-material.
For comparison, check out the completely unmoderated Literotica General Board. They post shit there every day that you couldn’t get away with in the Pit. (It’s where I like to go slumming.)
Your post consisted of threads on a message board. Where you have full ability to reply and state your case. You aren’t singled out by moderators, and you have every right that anyone else on this board has.
So yes, asinine is, in my opinion, an accurate description for what you posted.
Certainly few are likely to support your position.
I don’t think that’s possible, if by “rules” you mean clear edicts enforced by moderators.
The only possible thing that could change it is a grass-roots type groundswell from the membership at large – a willingness to criticize political allies for the conduct. If the board’s membership reacted to every slur directed against a Christian with the same fervor it reacted to perceived racist or homophobic remarks, the problem would vanish.
Call me curious if enough people saying you’re not persecuted is itself persecution by the extremely low standard Bricker has set - after all, they’re all saying you’re wrong and that can start to feel like ill-treatment, wot?
It may – or may not – be accurate. What it is certainly NOT is debate. It’s simply a poisoning the well dismissal.
And I agree that few here are likely to support my position. That’s precisely what I am claiming. Every person reading this post knows you didn’t offer an argument for rebuttal. You offered instead a mean-spirited attack. But you’re on the correct side of the fence, so it goes unremarked.
No, as long as what they’re saying focuses on rebutting the facts or inferences I have offered, or offering their own.
But that’s not what happens here. See my exchange above with Lobohan for an illustration.
How do you figure? Racist and homophobic remarks haven’t vanished, certainly, or if the most blatant have, it was by moderator-set rules against hate speech and such.
Why does it constitute a problem?
Actually, on closer examination, I see a potential semantic issue - Bricker’s comment compares “every slur directed again a Christian” (emphasis added) to “perceived racist or homophobic remarks.” These are not precisely analogous - the latter is directed against large groups of people, while the former is directed against an individual. Heck, if the individual was gay and black (or someone thought he was) and was called a “nigger faggot”, it would still be a slur directed against a Christian if he also happened to be a Christian.
A more consistent wording would have compared slurs against Christianity to racist or homophobic remarks.
From the law review article:
The author acknowledges that a wide range of possible definitions exist for the term, and then he proposes that readers accept his more narrowly defined definition: "the illegitimate infliction of sufficiently severe harm.”
That seems to make my point more than yours, doesn’t it? Obviously accepting his proposal would rule out anything that could be done on a message board. But equally obviously, he would not need to propose a a rigorous definition if one already were widely accepted.
But I am nothing if not flexible.
Do you acknowledge that Christians on the SDMB get treated with less bonhomie than, let’s say, gay Democrats?
If so, what word or phrase best describes the ill treatment?
I guess I assumed that it was a problem.
Fine… Substitute “the phenomenon.”
No, they haven’t vanished…but the tone, the sense, the atmosphere of the board rallies against them. A target of a homophobic attack need never fight his battle alone on the SDMB. Others immediately leap to his aid.
That’s a great thing to see.
But it does not happen to anywhere near the same degree when attacks are leveled against Christianity.
Note the prior post. BrainGlutton asks why the attacks are a problem. No one demurs.
But that’s the nub of the book if I read the summary correctly. Many of the so-called persecutions by the Romans were cut out of whole cloth by later Christians. There were some certainly but nothing like the wholesale butchery described by Eusebius and other Christian historiographers. And I’m not denying that Christians have suffered elsewhere and at other times for their religion. But compared to Christian-on-Christian persecution all the others pale into insignificance. The bloodiest and most cruel persecutors of Christians have been Christians themselves.
He asked it, like, 15 minutes ago. Of course, I’m not really expecting a major backlash, I admit.
Besides, Christians who feel set-upon are not alone. Aren’t there a dozen or so active posters on this board who have commented on the same “phenomenon”? And “tone” is a conveniently vague thing to complain about, just like “persecution” is apparently a conveniently generalized thing to suggest.
I’ve talked about more in this thread. I was simply responding appropriately to a particularly banal post you made.
Erm, well, my point is that there’s a certain threshold before you can call something persecution (my post #40), and your position seems to be that there’s not (your post #68). This author says that there needs to be “sufficiently severe harm,” which, I can’t slice it any other way, implies a threshold. So no, I disagree that he makes your point more than mine. Unless you’re looking at it a different way.
Not to be disagreeable, but certainly someone CAN be persecuted on the internet – cyber-bullying to the point of suicide has happened, after all, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to include that sort of mental and emotional harm as “sufficiently severe.” Gay teenagers have certainly been persecuted on the internet*. I’m not sure I can say the same thing about Christians, but I may just be unfamiliar with cases of Christians being harassed to the point of suicide simply for being Christian.
If a new poster joins up and announces that they’re a Christian who votes democrat and doesn’t believe in the literal interpretation of the bible, I wouldn’t expect them to be treated any differently than a gay democrat.
Certainly fundamentalists get a lot of grief if they participate in threads with atheists, as well people who use their religion to defend their unpopular (by SDMB standards) political positions. I’ll agree with you as long as we’re talking about the former, and not the latter.
Ridiculed?
*edited to add: The wiki definition included the word “systemic.” While I think that’s OK in most cases, I would be fine with describing severe cyber-bullying as persecution. However, if it’s limited in scope to a handful of individuals, it’s not necessarily legitimate to use such persecution as evidence of “persecution in America,” or any grand title like that. If that makes sense.
I’d suggest “disrespected”, myself. By the anything-counts standard Bricker proposes, he himself has been persecuted in this thread.