Wow...hard to believe anyone would openly make this kind of comment...
Richard Dawkins Fail...
by tenyearsafter 43 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse
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tenyearsafter
From The Huffington Post
Religion News Service | By Trevor Grundy Posted: 09/09/2013 3:31 pm EDT | Updated: 09/09/2013 4:23 pm EDT
Richard Dawkins Pedophilia Remarks Provoke Outrage
CANTERBURY, England (RNS) Richard Dawkins, one of the world's best-known and outspoken atheists, has provoked outrage among child protection agencies and experts after suggesting that recent child abuse scandals have been overblown.
In an interview in The Times magazine on Saturday (Sept. 7), Dawkins, 72, he said he was unable to condemn what he called "the mild pedophilia" he experienced at an English school when he was a child in the 1950s.
Referring to his early days at a boarding school in Salisbury, he recalled how one of the (unnamed) masters "pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts."
He said other children in his school peer group had been molested by the same teacher but concluded: "I don't think he did any of us lasting harm."
"I am very conscious that you can't condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours. Just as we don't look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as we would condemn a modern person for racism, I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can't find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today," he said.
He said the most notorious cases of pedophilia involve rape and even murder and should not be bracketed with what he called "just mild touching up."
Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and the interview was released on the eve of the publication of his autobiography, An Appetite for Wonder, on Thursday.
Peter Watt, director of child protection at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, called Dawkins' remarks "a terrible slight" on those who have been abused and suffered the effects for decades.
"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."
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."
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Julia Orwell
Maybe he became a pedo himself and thus trivialises it. That's not right. And thinks he's so enlightened.
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prologos
may be he just wants the publicity like the students at two Canadian Universities, east: Halifax NS, west: Vancouver BC that incorporated
Pedophile approving chants in this years' commencenment rituals.
A wrong trend among the young and old.
but they might be speaking from experience.
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mP
Julia
I dont know the full situation or context, but pedophilia is not new. Evils like pedophilia, rape, slavery have always existed. The only diference is now they are hated. I think what RD is trying to say is pedophilia was also common and he might have seen it. Things overall are better, we do live in a kinda society, but he often i think gets himself into mud by not speaking effectively.
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Julia Orwell
I know that mP, sheesh! I don't think he should have called it a minor matter though. Maybe he means in comparison to penetration and all that, but he seems to have made a gaffe of it.
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zound
It certainly sounds bad. but I'd be interested to read the Times article it got the quotes from - just notice this at the top of the article > Religion News Service | By Trevor Grundy
It is possible this is out of context quotes attempting to blacken Dawkins name considering he's religion's worse enemy. Maybe not, but worth keeping that in mind, especially considering this goes right against the grain of Dawkins vocal statements against child abuse.
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prologos
yes, perhaps RD compares what he directly describes as the teachers' action, with
what goes on in both "one gender only" BOARDING schools, dormitaries, showers among the students.
It seems okay between peers, even according to the law, so the damage perceived is not the happening itself but the setting.
RD should know, as he does, so many things that are evolving.
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Phizzy
I think his broad point, that we do not, or perhaps should not, judge people from a previous age by the standards we hold to now is correct.
We often on here condemn slavery in earlier times, and of course slavery is wrong, but we should not perhaps judge Paul's advice to Philemon too harshly, looking at it through 21st century goggles.
Having said that, I think Dawkins is totally wrong about what he calls "mild paedophilia", or "touching up". The effect on the child/under age person is not known or measureable by Dawkins, he does not have the knowledge or expertise to evaluate such a thing.
To speak as he did, even of his own subjective view, from a position of ignorance is foolish in the extreme for such a public figure.
The child in question has had its natural aversion to such an occurance taken away by the perpetrator, and thus is more vulnerable in the future, the child learns that a position of authority can be abused, that in itself is a good lesson, but the abused individual may use that knowledge and become a paedophile themselves in the future, plus a host of other problems that may arise from what Dawkins sees as of little import.
The saddest thing of all about this foolish statement is that opposers to his views on other matters, Evolution etc, will use this , especially JW's :
"Oh you can't take any notice of him, he ........"
Think hard before you speak Richard.
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doofdaddy
Controversy is always good just before a book release, as there's no such thing as bad press.
He is clearly being inflammatory. Despite all the jokes about private schools in the UK over the decades, I would imagine if this teacher had been outed for playing with little boy's penises in the 1950's he would have had a bleak (and limited) future. And of course what pedo stops at this stage of grooming? I'm sure there were dozens of poor kids who copped worse.