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Comment by kadendogthing | Hacker News Reader

>This is why it's frustrating when some make it seem that Christians are incapable of facing persecution,

Literally no one does this. Western Christians are incapable of facing persecution in the current social and economic climate. This is because Christians by and large make up every pillar of Western society. It has nothing to do with someone being a Christian else where in the world. The sentiment you are attempting to inaccurately portray is rooted in the fact that you have silly things like the "War on Christmas" and actual citizens (who are Christians) complaining that obeying the constitution and not imposing their religion on others is somehow equivalent to persecution.

Your conflation of the two is your own error, not others.

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I agree with you that the "war on Christmas" stuff is nonsense, but you'd be surprised at how many people write off Christian persecution, based solely on the fact that some of the most powerful nations in the world are "Christian nations".

I think you think people hold such opinions, not that they actually do. It's a really contrived point that comes up in these types of conversations.

Feel free to link any kind of substantial material backing up the frequency of such opinions.

The lack of awareness on display right now is astounding and borderline offensive, people just don't hold the "opinion" that Christians are persecuted around the world, they are pointing to actual current events of Christian persecution.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/egyptian-church-hit-by-bomb-bla...

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/29-coptic-christians-mu...

https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/18/mosuls-christians-say-g...

http://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/10032018

You have significantly misunderstood the context of the conversation.

No one has said that Christians aren't persecuted around the world. No one has even implied this was the case. Because people don't hold such opinions.

He is implying that people hold these opinions. I am asking for some kind of substantial material validating the frequency of such opinions.

It helps to respond to the actual conversation instead of contrived strawmans. You are very much proving my point.

+1 For self-awareness, it would have saved you writing out that post.

I am asking for some kind of substantial material validating the frequency of such opinions.

What are the odds that I could go to ten different blogs from ten different Joe's from across the internet saying how bad it is for Christians in the world, come back here, link them, that you'll backpedal more to say that the sources provided aren't authoritative enough?

The problem seems to be conflating the notion that Christians in the US/Western nations are persecuted with the capacity for any Christian or Christian group to be persecuted elsewhere.

Because it's a common response to things like the gay wedding cake and "happy holidays," etc. It's not surprising those things evoke such a dismissal.

But such a dismissal is not all inclusive. Because we don't see, say, gay marriage as a persecution of Christianity doesn't mean we believe Christians are intrinsically incapable of being persecuted.

The opinion he thinks people hold isn't common (or even a thing people hold as an idea in any capacity), it's a contrived straw-man designed to illicit a quick "gotchya" self win on the part of the OP. It belongs in a forwarded email, not in this forum.

The poll won't yield the results you want. The prattling grandstand isn't clever, it's just a rather annoyingly insecure flamebait after you fumbled your original reply to me with links to articles that were entirely irrelevant to what was being discussed.

No one believes Christians can't be persecuted. OP is conflating the dismissal of Western Christian "persecution" with somehow believing that people just don't think it can happen elsewhere. I am here to tell you that people are quite aware of the possibility of true persecution happening against any group of people, and most certainly the actual persecution of Christians elsewhere in the world. The error, however honest it may be, is his. And apparently yours too.

>Western Christians are incapable of facing persecution in the current social and economic climate. This is because Christians by and large make up every pillar of Western society.

This belies a grave misunderstanding of how human societies actually work. It doesn't matter how many of your team are out there in the world when you are one team blue in a room full of twenty team red. If a team has at least two members, then even in a society of billions it is possible for them to be the majority sometimes.

>It doesn't matter how many of your team are out there in the world when you are one team blue in a room full of twenty team red.

I mean if you're going to just go "big number greater than smaller number" and attribute that to a deep understanding of human societies and general political power structures how on earth are you going to explain the current geopolitical situation as it stands today? That's incredibly daft, and your attempt at labeling it as "grave misunderstanding of how human societies actually work" is absurd.

I love how "milktoast" you can see HN being right now. A bluntly factual statement gets flagged on HN. Can't imagine how the demographics of the "hacker" forum played into this.

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