Thread:User talk:WaitingforGodot/Trying to prevent RationalWiki judging Christianity too harshly/reply (40)

Well, because persecution and discrimination are typically based on a person'r membership in a targeted group. If the "group" as such doesn't really exist, then they can't be discriminated against as such, right?

Of course, the way around this is to argue that the group does exist in the mind of the persecutors, and, when the rubber meets the road, that's what matters. Case in point--there were no witches. But witches existed in the minds of certain people, and so "witches" were persecuted on the basis of their membership in a group that only existed in the minds of the bad guys.

But at the end of the day, I need a lot more than what people have demonstrated here to take seriously the existence of a real problem of persecution or discrimination against atheists. There needs to be something more in terms of structure, frequency, and history for me to go and get my panties in a knot.