Pope calls Christians 'most persecuted religious' group.Follow

Actually, that's not true. An atheist, as an atheist, shuns all religious acts. Being forced to do any such an act is keeping him from living his non-religious life.

Furthermore, forcing someone to do a religious act is still a form of persecution.

And what the Christian and Jew are forbidden from doing is only what can be enforced--such as going to church or temple. An atheist can't really walk into his "There is no god" cocktail party. :/



Christians are one of the least persecuted religious groups. Seriously. 4 of the seven continents are nearly devoid of persecution against them. In most of Asia, they are only persecuted to the same degree as other religions. They only face real persecution in the mid-east and parts of Africa/polynesia. Muslims are persecuted WAY more than Christians (in terms of population AND percentage).

Furthermore, accusing someone of atheism is still a huge threat in many parts of the world. Like "stone to death" threat. There have been a few cases IN AMERICA in the past few years of people being killed because they were atheists--Larry Hooper is an example (feel free to google him).

In the rest of the world:

Algeria denies nearly all rights to atheists.
Iran executes atheists.
In May, a man was killed in Maldives for being an atheist.
Other islamic nations may execute atheists as apostates.

And this is only the state-sanctioned persecution. In many cases, people within the state are actually worse.

So why don't you do some fucking research for once?



That claim is actually retarded. Want to know why? Islam classifies atheists as "apostates." Pagans fall in this category too. The Koran orders the death of all apostates. Christians and Jews face horrible persecution in many countries, yes, but there are many where they can live without a direct risk of death from the state (if not the people). They are clearly encouraged to convert, but that's a different issue from the one you are making (I'd still call that prejudice). Atheists are believed to be irredeemable, where those of other religions are often seen as confused, and can face death.

[EDIT]


And your argument sucks. Persecution has to do with attacking groups of people. It doesn't have to have anything to do with singling them out. If America stripped the rights of all non-whites, do you REALLY think the proper word to use wouldn't be persecution. And, if you inexplicably do, I'd really like to know what word we SHOULD use in these cases.

Furthermore, I never said that requiring 1 was forbidding a single specific one. I'm saying that requiring one causes the state to persecute against ALL others.

Edited, Dec 17th 2010 10:11pm by idiggory

Um... And this is your first hint as to why Atheists are less persecuted. Their beliefs do not require actions which can easily be either detected nor prohibited. Until someone invents a mind reading device that can determine if someone is sufficiently sincere about their faith in a given religion, the Atheist is pretty darn safe from most forms of persecution out there.



You know this? Or you believe it and refuse to even consider that you might just be wrong?



And how about we count the populations of those 4 compared to the other 3?



False. Do you just make this stuff up? "Asia" includes the middle east, India, China, and Indonesia. While there are areas of Asia where there is little or no persecution of Christians (northern Asia is pretty much it and it's by far the least populated portion of Asia), the overwhelming majority of nations which engage in habitual and often violent persecution of Christians are in Asia.



Er? Ok. Making odd distinctions there. We're actually kinda ignoring Australia also. I'll point out that population issue again though.



Muslims are also being persecuted by other Muslims. Can we simply move to the conclusion that Islam is an incredibly intolerant religion?



Is that really the best you can do? One guy killed by a man who was found to be mentally ill.

That's not really persecution. He could just as easily been killed because he liked the wrong TV show or something.



Let's also observe that these are all Islamic countries, where similarly harsh things occur to Christians (and in massively greater numbers).



Um... Sure. To find the handful of people killed because they are Atheists? And in most of the cases, it's not that some guy who was an Atheist traveled to the country and was arrested, but some local who was raised Muslim denounced his faith. Often they're turned in by their own families. Not unlike what happens to those who convert to Christianity. That's not quite the same thing.



It also calls for the death of all infidels, which in many interpretations includes Christians and Jews. Surely you are seeing the pattern and perhaps the source of the problem by now?



I would argue that there are many many more countries in the world were an Atheist could live without fear for his life because of his Atheism than Jews or Christians can live without a similar fear. And I'd be right. You still keep missing the core point. In every one of those counties in which Atheists actually suffer persecution for being Atheists, Christians and Jews suffer the same persecution, in greater numbers, and usually with greater violence.

And in many more countries where Atheists are more or less left alone, Christians and Jews still have persecution in the form of laws which restrict their ability to worship, to build churches, to assemble, to own copies of the bible, or to own property, hold office, gain employment, etc.


It's just plain not a comparable situation, and I'm frankly stunned that anyone thinks it is.




You're still not getting it. If America stripped the rights of all non-whites, I'd would find it absurd for someone to argue that Blacks were more persecuted than Latinos. And if in addition to that, the US made it illegal to speak any language other than English, even in your own home, or to teach it to your children, I'd argue even more strongly against the idiot insisting that Black people were just as persecuted as Latinos.

Do you get it yet? We're arguing about degrees. Two posters argued that Atheists were more (or as much, I forget now) persecuted world wide than Christians. That's the absurdity I'm addressing.

They not persecuted "more". They are not persecuted "as much". They are not persecuted even a teeny tiny fraction as much.

[quote]Furthermore, I never said that requiring 1 was forbidding a single specific one. I'm saying that requiring one causes the state to persecute against ALL others.[/quote]

Great! Then why are you arguing with me about this? That's the same thing I've been saying all along.

Comparing the numbers of who ends up dead due to religious persecution is a really poor way of establishing a shorthand grasp of just how much of said persecution is going on. As I pointed out earlier, the numbers between who has Christians doesn't exactly add up evenly. Say one country who vehemently opposes your belief system, and you're in the extreme minority. Like say Somalia. Estimated to be a little over a thousand in a country of eight million. Or Saudi Arabia, where you can't be Christian and a citizen at the same time (The government mandates that those who convert are put to death.)

So take that scattering in Somalia. That million and a half in Saudi Arabia dancing next to the hangman's noose. Hell. Even toss in those handfuls from Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, Bangladesh, and all the crazy bastards still worshiping openly in China. Should easily come out to a hundred million or two with their nuts on the frying pan.

Compared to 2.66 billion adherents. We're getting in the single digit percentages here.

Now on the other hand, take persecution against the beloved Atheist. Much smaller number to work with. Encyclopedia Britannica states that in two separate studies, about 2.5% of the world professes to be Atheist, while 12% consider themselves 'non-religious'. So lets play with the Atheist number here a bit, since we all know the g-man likes semantics. this is all just hilariously rough estimates, but I'm not going for precision; 2.5% of six billion is 150 million. If that same (let's go middle ground and say between the one and two million from the list above) HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION just so happened to be Atheist...

When you have over two and a half billion comrades to back you up, especially when your fellow adherents pretty much control what we represent as the 'Free World', I think that's a pretty cushy seat to be in despite having more people persecuted than there are even Atheists.

Apologies in advance if things seem weird or my post even kind of doesn't even make a point. I ended up on TVTropes halfway through my segment...



Edited, Dec 17th 2010 11:50pm by Ninomori

Nin stole my response.

It's true, gbaji, that atheists are not dogmatically held to a routine. However, they're still just as subject to punishment for doing something that they aren't disallowed.

In Tennessee, it's technically illegal to take your left over pie home in a box. I wonder if they'd use that stupid *** law to stop an "undesirable" from running for office somehow.

People suck.

That's not what that statement says. It says that no person can be disqualified for belonging to the wrong religion.

If you actually allowed yourself to be knocked off a ballot for that reason, you're an idiot and had no place holding public office anyway since you can't even read the state constitution correctly. If anyone else tried to disqualify you on those grounds, you would have had an open and shut case based on your First Amendment rights.

Then again, if there was really that big a push to try and disqualify you in a town of six thousand people, I doubt you would have won the office anyway. In short, this sounds like a bullshit story.

Edited, Dec 18th 2010 8:53am by Jophiel

It's one of those stupid "dumb laws" that may or may not have had a reason to exist at one point. Either way, I was a little wrong, it's only Memphis that has that law.

If I were speaking falsely, I'd say I'd certainly not hope they didn't lie.

It's much more humiliating that way.

Edited, Dec 18th 2010 7:15pm by Kavekk

Eh, that's kind of what it says. It says that no person who believes in god and heaven/hell can be disqualified on the basis of which god or afterlife they believe in. Though it doesn't explicitly say that a person who doesn't acknowledge it can be disqualified, most reasonable people would read that it says so implicitly, and most stupid people would think that's EXACTLY what it says. If it's not a clause to say, "It's ok to run for office as long as you believe in god and the afterlife," then why even have such a clause? Why not say, "Shall not be disqualified on the basis of religion."

It reads to most people as, "AS LONG AS they believe in god and the afterlife, they can't be disqualified," though you're technically correct. I wouldn't be surprised if in a town of 6,000, no one was sharp enough to appreciate the distinction.

Also, all of ten seconds on Google told me that:

So, supposedly, for lack of caring enough to spend less time on the internet than it takes to make toast Ninomori let himself get kicked off a ballot for a misunderstood provision which, even as misunderstood, was completely unconstitutional.

I'd say his town of 6,000 dodged a real bullet there.

He said he was "nabbed" against his rights and taken off the ballot. Preventing being "nabbed" would have been very easy.

For someone who supposedly stood and fought against "every avenue [...] to discourage or disqualify me from running", he sure did fold fast when presented with a proven unconstitutional argument, probably the weakest possible method of getting him off the ballot.

It wasn't the state constitution that prevented him from running, it was him being stupid and lazy that prevented him from running. The town should have just wrote "Ninomori iz stuped n kant run 4 nuthin" on the town charter in crayon and it would have had more legal weight. More likely, he just made the whole story up.

I don't think most people are as stupid as you'd have to assume they are, to read it that way.