Dawkins Pedophilia Remarks - Derail from For Reason & Science

[Azathoth]

WTF Dickie? I think he really has lost the plot

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."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/0 ... 95514.html

[Xamonas Chegwé]

WTF Dickie? I think he really has lost the plot

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."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/0 ... 95514.html

To be fair, he did go to public school - and a boarding school at that! Anything short of aggravated gang-buggery is counted as trivial in such places.

[klr]

He said something very similar in The God Delusion in 2006, arguing that it was less damaging than brainwashing a child with religion. So he's not exactly breaking new ground on this one. However, the general public is probably even less forgiving now of child abuse than it was back then.

[Audley Strange]

WTF Dickie? I think he really has lost the plot

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."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/0 ... 95514.html

To be fair, he was putting it in a similar context as some here did about the celebrity paedophilia "fings was different in them days." He explained essentially that while the current narrative sees paedophilia through the lens of a hysterical media in which paedophilia is linked to pathological loners who rape and murder children, such as Sidney Cooke and Ian Huntley, in his youth it was not.

There is something to that I think. I'm not defending the molestation of children at all, it's a vile unthinkable thing to me, yet it is certainly, sadly, common as a behaviour of our species. In the past we dealt with it differently than we do now. However our current narratives all seem to be raw nerve, knee jerk scorched earth policies towards that which we currently assume to be culturally inappropriate. There is a zero tolerance, not even open for discussion, opinion as FACT theme that runs through this zeitgeist and it seems worst from those who should know better than to think they know better.

We always tell ourselves the current narrative is the correct one and mostly always find out later we were wrong, usually after some pretty and actually horrific behaviour towards a scapegoat group.

[Hermit]

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."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/0 ... 95514.html

To be fair, he was putting it in a similar context as some here did about the celebrity paedophilia "fings was different in them days." He explained essentially that while the current narrative sees paedophilia through the lens of a hysterical media in which paedophilia is linked to pathological loners who rape and murder children, such as Sidney Cooke and Ian Huntley, in his youth it was not.

There is something to that I think. I'm not defending the molestation of children at all, it's a vile unthinkable thing to me, yet it is certainly, sadly, common as a behaviour of our species.

Normalisation is not an acceptable argument with which to downplay the reprehensibility of paedophilia.

[Audley Strange]

No, but neither I nor I think Dawkins was making that argument at all.

[charlou]

I don't read it that way either.

[Bella Fortuna]

Nor me.

It's in Salon now too: http://www.salon.com/2013/09/10/richard ... ting_harm/

[DaveDodo007]

Nor me.

It's in Salon now too: http://www.salon.com/2013/09/10/richard ... ting_harm/

Quotemining and no link to the original article, Salon shows once again that it is nothing but a propaganda sheet. I don't even know what they are up to here, are they telling Richard how he should feel about his own personal experiences.

[Animavore]

Gretha Christina is all over this. Calls on Facebook for him to retract.

[Bella Fortuna]

Context: http://www.richarddawkins.net/news_arti ... -the-times#

[charlou]

So he's a cultural relativist ... but I would ask if he would, then, take a less harsh view of the mores of currently existing cultures that have not progressed so far with human rights as the West has largely done. My impression is that he doesn't, at least not where extremist religious beliefs and values play a part.

[PsychoSerenity]

So he's a cultural relativist ... but I would ask if he would, then, take a less harsh view of the mores of currently existing cultures that have not progressed so far with human rights as the West has largely done. My impression is that he doesn't, at least not where extremist religious beliefs and values play a part.

Well it's only a matter of cultural relativism so far as our past culture is one that we have no possibility of interacting with. If we could alter the past I have no doubt there would be plenty said to try and raise that culture to our current standards. Cultural relativism always breaks down when and where cultures interact, - it's only when they are truly separate that relativism is meaningful.

[charlou]

I agree.

Is that what RD means, though? I ask only because it's not clear from what I've just read.

I can understand people thinking he's downplaying the lasting effects of abuse, which, by the way, exists beyond past culture, and plays into current culture.

ETA, and the different ways people are affected by abuse too, actually .. What is mild for some may be profoundly disturbing for others, for example .. and vice versa.

[charlou]

I've arrived at a bigger picture, rationalist approach to my past experiences of abuse too, which enabled my recovery from the effects of them, so I can understand advocating taking a bigger picture, rationalist view of abuse ..

.. but I also know that view can't be imposed on people, and we can't dismiss how other individuals are affected and respond.

OTOH, I think the opposite extreme of over-indulging or exploiting the negative effects of abuse is unhealthy, and counter productive.