Richard Dawkins Fail...

by tenyearsafter 43 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse

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  adamah

  HB said:

  DawkinS agrees with contemporary moral views: "CONDEMN [it] AS I or anyone would TODAY." This has been quietly ignored by his critics.

  Notice the silly positions taken by his opponents (above):

  "Mr. Dawkins seems to think that because a crime was committed a long time ago we should judge it in a different way," Watt said. "But we know that the victims of sexual abuse suffer the same effects whether it was 50 years ago or yesterday."

  Fortunately, our laws are NOT retroactive, where some act can be declared a crime and those who carried it out are prosecuted and judged based on a law which wasn't even passed! Watt's argument is a FAIL, since laws often are passed AFTER some damaging effect is noted; hence why specific laws are needed.

  However, the rape victims of sexual abuse in Ancient Israel suffered "the same effects" , and forcing them to marry their rapist after he paid a dowry justified it HOW, exactly?

  Peter Saunders took the bait, and bit on it HARD:

  Peter Saunders, founder of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood and himself a victim of abuse, told The Times that Dawkins' comments were worrying and unhelpful, adding: "Abuse in all its forms has always been wrong. Evil is evil and we have to challenge it whenever and wherever it occurs."

  Presumably that includes condemning God for instituting the abusive and evil practice of slavery, with the whole "Curse of Ham"? Is it OK to challenge THAT civil-rights abuse, "whenever and wherever it occurs", then?

  Adam
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  DogGone

  Fantastic discussion. I thank Adamah and Hamsterbait for providing context on moral relativism. I find the arguments fascinating.

  Cofty, you are correct, it certainly was in The God Delusion that he made a similar comment about sexual abuse. If memory serves me, he was in Ireland and made a quip about how some of the sexual stuff was harmful, but likely not as harmful as being raised Catholic. He commented that he was pleasantly surprised the audience applauded. (Please note: this is from memory - my copy is in storage). That was just one example of how I found his approach in that book counter productive.
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  Comatose

  He was tweeting about it quite a bit today. It's all in the context and really understanding what he meant.
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  hamsterbait

  Another thing that has not been highlighted is that penetrative sex with a minor has been a crime since the middle ages.

  Men were sent to prison for this back in the 50s too.

  Caressing a child was not seen as permanently damaging. In Dawkins and his contemporaries case obviously not. Nowadays this is seen as inappropriate invasion of personal space, and recognised as such.

  Teachers of physical skills such as gymnastics or playing a musical instrument now have to say WHY and HOW they intend to touch a child, what this will accomplish, and then ask permission to do so. I think this is a big step forward, as it eliminates any ambiguity.

  An excellent novel dealing with this is called "The Abomination" I forget the author.
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  cofty

  "Nevertheless it is clearly unjust to visit upon all pedophiles a vengence appropriate to the tiny minority who are also murderers. All three of the boarding schools I attended employed teachers whose affection for small boys overstepped the bounds of propriety. That was indeed reprehensible. Nevertheless if, fifty years on, they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers, I should have felt obliged to come to their defense, even as the victim of one of them (an embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience)." - "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins p355
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  extractor

  Hmm... It almost seems as if Dawkins is a arrogant and heartless... there's a shocker.
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  tenyearsafter

  Adamah and HB...

  I think what bothers me, is that it would appear that we run a double standard when it comes to comparing secularists and religious people. I absoulutely find ANY type of molestation abhorrent, but I think we would be quick to tar and feather the WTS and individual JW's (or any other religious denomination) as condoning pedophilia even if it just involved "minor" groping. It just seems to me that some are more willing to be apologists for the "other side" by finding justification for their positions or statements.

  I get what RD says about times being different, but certain types of behavior are inappropriate and likely harmful no matter what the era or time might be. I doubt highly that he is saying it is ok to molest children, but I still don't understand why it is even necessary or relevant for him to open a discussion on the relativism of sexual abuse.

  Adamah, my mention of the judge differentiating on "types" of rape was more a reference to the "slippery slope" of assigning degrees to the crime rather than trying to make a direct comparison of rape versus molestation.

  I would hope that people who support RD are just as balanced and open as they expect opponents of him to be.
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  mP

  Now if only the same people criticizing Dawkins for what he said, actually critisized the Bible for what it says about rape, slavery, racism and religion for what they said and continue to say and what they did and continue do.

  Lets not forget that hero of supposed morality jesus , never condemned slavery, pedophilia but actually says things to help the masters of the former.
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  yadda yadda 2

  The bar needs to be raised very high on this issue, and especially in our current climate where paedophile is rampant and being fueled by the internet, and particularly with repulsive religious institutions like the JW's being the worst offenders. Dawkin's trying to make light of a teacher putting his hand in his pants all those years ago is obscene and he deserves all the condemnation he gets. For all the good the man does to condemn religion, he deserves no quarter for implicitly winking at child abuse in any form. No rationalisation of such things is to be tolerated. There are not 'degrees' of moral repulsiveness when it comes to child sexual abuse. Anything even smacking of apologetics for such things is utterly reprehensible and to be utterly censured.
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  cofty

  That was indeed reprehensible. - Richard Dawkins

  yadda are you saying that somebody who rapes and murders a child is no more reprehensible than Dawkin's teacher?