Richard Dawkins downplays childhood abuse

[Mister Mister]

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/10/richard_dawkins_defends_mild_pedophilia_says_it_does_not_cause_lasting_harm/This is really a bizarre story, it almost sounds like a joke.  What do y'all make of it?

[MarkIX]

“mild pedophilia,” which, he says, he personally experienced as a young child and does not believe causes “lasting harm.”

[Pepin]

I don't think it is surprising, Dawkins is a person, and these sorts of rationalizations tend to happen to most people. If you look at the personal lives of so many great scientists, you will get similar or worse stories. I think there is less of a reason to be outraged at this, and more of a reason to show that this normalization occurs no matter your intelligence.

[Wuzzums]

The title is disingenuous. He said he experienced mild pedophilia and it did not cause lasting harm on him. He mentions the incident in one of his books, can't remember which, in the context of child abuse by the church or something like that. It's quite obvious he tells of the incident as anecdotal evidence and does not want his arguments against religion to be taken in account just because he was a victim. 

 

"Oooh, he was abused as a child therefore that's why he's against religion, not because he brings logic and empirical evidence to the table."

 

I also find it quite funny how "critics" of him only now seem to put forth this ghastly tale as "news" even though they would've known years in advance about it had they actually read some of his works.

[PatrickC]

Yes he suffered much the same fate i did in private school Britain. Which only began to break out of that pattern until the mid 80's. Touching up boys and canning was rife back then. Maybe not with every teacher or every pupil, but it was ubiquitous frankly.

 

So I can see why he normalises it, because I did too, in fact everyone did. He is a big exponent against child abuse in almost every other situation. In this particular instance he is in denial of course.

 

But the Left rather predictably want to paint him as a victim blamer, which is their stock & trade response to things like this. Rather than saying, 'I'm sorry that happened to you Richard, but you are wrong for these reasons'.

[Ruben Zandstra]

It's totally hypocritical.

Journalists have not been reporting about child abuse in schools for decades, not when the public education they were so big on was put in place.

In the same vein they are not seeing it going on right now ( the epidemical outsourcing and drugging of children).

And even when they do report about it, they are ... downplaying the abuse.

 

I am sorry this happened to you, Xelent.

[Mike Fleming]

I heard an interview with Dawkins about this.

 

He said that it was maybe a minute or so of being felt up.    He acknowledges it was wrong but that one minute of time hasn't adversely affected his life.

 

I honestly don't see what's wrong with his position.   He isn't saying it's OK, he's just saying that it didn't make him personally a victim.  

 

I think Girl Writes What has a similar position on her rape, which sounds like a more severe event than the Dawkins incident.  She didn't allow it to make her a victim.

 

They both acknowledged it, have publicly said what happened to them and that it was wrong, are willing to talk about it, but haven't let it turn them into victims.

 

Willing to hear counter views but that's my take on it.  Personally, I have never experienced anything remotely like either so I don't have personal experience.

[PatrickC]

He said that it was maybe a minute or so of being felt up.    He acknowledges it was wrong but that one minute of time hasn't adversely affected his life.

 

I think you make a good point here. Personally I believe this is just the left attempting to sniper him, as they always do to people that attempt to undermine their ideology, which he has done on several occasions.

[LovePrevails]

“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.

 

 

There is all you need to read. He's a relativist.

This doesn't surprise me at all because in my experience "skeptic society" type people have a tendency to be very emotionally stunted

ie. All up in their heads

 

its like a lot of them go to skepticism out of an obsession with thinking rather than genuine passion for truth

that's why they are so hard to reason with when it comes to suff like statism

 

that's been my experience of the community

[PatrickC]

"… I cannot know for certain that my companions’ experiences with the same teacher were are brief as mine, and theirs may have been recurrent where mine was not. That’s why I said only “I don’t think he did any of us lasting damage”. We discussed it among ourselves on many occasions, especially after his suicide, and there was indeed general agreement that his gassing himself was far more upsetting than his sexual depredations had been. If I am wrong about any particular individual; if any of my companions really was traumatised by the abuse long after it happened; if, perhaps it happened many times and amounted to more than the single disagreeable but brief fondling that I endured, I apologise."

Richard Dawkins

 

This was Richards further thoughts on the topic and whilst it stlll shows his personal denial, he clearly explains that he has no idea how it effected others. Whilst statism is rarely challenged amongst skeptics, leftism often is. There is clearly a war that is going on in this regard, between leftists and those that consider themselves apolitical, albeit being statist (for the most part).

 

Not sure you can call Dawkins a relativist. When it comes to religion, he is a fairly outspoken absolutist in this regard. Which is why certain degenerate quarters of the left (Owen Jones) are branding him an Islamaphobe.

[Mike Fleming]

9 That's interesting, because I certainly don't agree with his statement  that you've quoted there.  Hearing him talk in the personal interview he didn't really say that.  

 

I don't want to make excuses for him, but I've certainly said things before that I've later thought were a poor choice of words.   If I could personally interview him I'd want him to explain exactly what he means by mild pedophilia and I'd grill him on the racism issue because even back then there were people who knew it was wrong even if "society" thought it was OK.   

 

I do agree with you that the atheist community is generally unsatisfying and that they aren't as consistently skeptical as they make themselves out to be.

[Hannibal]

 

“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.

 

 

There is all you need to read. He's a relativist.

This doesn't surprise me at all because in my experience "skeptic society" type people have a tendency to be very emotionally stunted

ie. All up in their heads

 

its like a lot of them go to skepticism out of an obsession with thinking rather than genuine passion for truth

that's why they are so hard to reason with when it comes to suff like statism

 

that's been my experience of the community

 

 

I think you should bear in mind, though, that back then the world was a much smaller place. Knowledge was much less freely available, and I'm not sure I could blame a person in those days for honestly thinking that africans, for examplle, were less than human. Now it seems silly to think like that because we all have access to books, tv, radio, and for most of us personal experience, which shows us that they are just people with dark skin. But for a person who's never even seen a black man, back in the late 18th century, reading stories about them, maybe getting a glimpse once in a while, it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to suppose that they were less than men. 

 

Remember we're talking about racism, not abuse. If all you know is that black men live in huts and have primitive cultures, then you might reasonably suppose that they are inherently stupid, or whatever. We have the luxury of knowing otherwise.

 

I thought, until recently, that peanuts/monkeynuts grew on trees when infact they grow underground. How am i supposed to know? I used my experience of life to decide that they probably grew on trees. 18th century people may have used their experience of life to decide that black men were inherently uncivilised.

 

Long winded way of saying that I'm not sure you can condemn him as a relativist on that basis alone.

 

I do though agree very strongly with your assessment of skeptics and the whole skeptic movement.