Re: [asa] New foray by the DISCOVER Institute

>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PvM [mailto:pvm.pandas@gmail.com]
> Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2007 12:04 AM
> To: John Walley
> Cc: j burg; asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: [asa] New foray by the DISCOVER Institute
>
>
> and
>
> '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. 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.
>

I have already shown that this is complete nonsense from my own empirical
experience, but Pim either never listens to a contrary position or is
unwilling to learn.

I will state it again. In my experience of manning a telephone support line
for the suicidal, there are many many instances of people in severe
emotional distress because of actual physical sexual abuse that was
inflicted on them, either as a child, or a teenager, or as a grown up in the
case of victims of violent rape. The responses can be as severe as
flashbacks where the victim will re-experience physically the pain, taste
and nausea of the experience, for example of being forced to have oral sex.

Compared to that, I have had NO examples of people who are emotionally or
mentally disturbed because of what their religion told them as a child. As
the poet Philip Larkin put it in "High Windows" about his own generation of
non-believers "no more sweating in the dark about hell and that". When
people reject religion, the fear of hell goes away. But for victims of
sexual abuse the fear never goes away. They do continue to sweat in the
dark, have panic attacks, vomit, inflict self-harm etc. I get to listen to
the results of this. Dawkins really doesn't know what he's talking about
here, and in continuing to quote this part of Dawkins's book, Pim is showing
absolutely no respect for such people and the suffering they continue to
endure.

Iain

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Received on Sun Dec 23 07:23:41 2007