Re: [asa] Dawkins, religion, and children

Pim:

Do you make a regular habit of conviently ignoring uncomfortable facts that
are pointed out to you? I made an actual quote from Dawkins from an article

<http://www.arn.org/docs/williams/pw_atheismandchildabuse.htm#_ednref1>Richard
Dawkins, 'Religion's Real Child Abuse',
*Free Inquiry*, Fall 2002, Vol. 22, No. 4., p. 9.

where he... that is said Richard Dawkins said:

the *mental* abuse constituted by an unsubstantiated *threat* of violence
and terrible pain, if sincerely *believed* by the child, could easily be
more damaging than the physical actuality of sexual abuse. An extreme
threat of violence and pain is precisely what the doctrine of hell is.
[4]<http://www.arn.org/docs/williams/pw_atheismandchildabuse.htm#_edn4>

You've chosen to completely ignore this, and the rest of my posting and
substituted a different article. Is this an honest way to argue?? Please
address the article I quoted and respond to the rest of what I said.

Sexual abuse of children leaves far more than a "yuchy" feeling - evidently
you've never spoken to someone when they are in the middle of a "flashback"
during which they vividly re-experience all the nausea and pain of having
had oral sex or buggery forced upon them. If you had experienced having to
talk to someone while in the middle of such a desperate panic attack, and
you realised that the actions of the perpetrator had reduced the person to
this state, and also to a state of utter helplesness and self-loathing, the
you would perhaps agree that it is outrageous that Dawkins should use the
topic of sexual abuse of children to make a cheap point against religion.
But of course, Dawkins doesn't seem capable of wrong in your eyes. Well I
think he's acting in incredibly poor taste and making light of the results
of sexual abuse by saying it's just a "yuchy" feeling. I am shaking with
anger as I write this so I'll sign off.

Iain

On 4/28/07, PvM <pvm.pandas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/28/07, Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com> wrote:
> > From one of Ted's links, Dawkins is quoted:
> >
> >
> >
> > In a recent editorial for the secular humanist magazine Free Inquiry,
> > entitled 'Religion's Real Child Abuse', Richard Dawkins opined that:
> 'Odious
> > as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect
> that
> > it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of having been
> > brought up Catholic in the first place.'
>
> What Dawkins said
>
> <quote>
> In the wake of the current scandal over child abuse by priests , I
> have had a letter from an American woman in her mid forties who was
> brought up Roman Catholic. She has two strong recollections from when
> she was seven. She was sexually abused by her parish priest in his
> car. And around the same time a little schoolfriend of hers, who had
> tragically died, went to hell because she was a Protestant. Or so my
> correspondent was led to believe by the then official doctrine of her
> church. Her view now is that, of these two examples of Roman Catholic
> child abuse, the one physical and the other mental, the second was by
> far the worst. She writes:
>
> "Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression (from the mind
> of a 7 year old) as 'yuchy' while the memory of my friend going to
> hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of
> the priest ? but I spent many a night being terrified that the people
> I loved would go to Hell. It gave me nightmares."
> </quote>
> Read the rest at
>
> http://richarddawkins.net/article,118,Religions-Real-Child-Abuse,Richard-Dawkins
>

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