Oh, Thank you, Your Ass-Holiness....

[Statler Waldorf]

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Not only will I kindly give you the page number, I will also kindly give you the quote, and also kindly put it in bold for you. Somehow I have the feeling you will not kindly admit that I was right though...just a hunch. You'll find a way to justify DickDawk's views on the subject since he has become a Christ figure to the Atheistic religion.

Chapter 9, on page 316 of "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins

"Nevertheless, it is clearly unjust to visit upon all pedophiles a vengeance appropriate to the tiny minority who are also murderers. All three of the boarding schools I attended employed teachers whose affection for small boys overstepped the bounds of propriety. That was indeed reprehensible. Nevertheless if, fifty years on, they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers, I should have felt obliged to come to their defense, even as the victim of one of them (an embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience)."

Alright, I found it on p. 355 in my copy. You're right in the sense that this quote exists. What Dawkins seems to be saying is that child murder, including sexually-motivated murder, is a worse crime than molestation. I assume most people would agree with that. Child molesters are despicable people, but compared to the horrific rape and murder of an 8-year old girl that he describes just prior to this quote, I'd say the rapist-murderer is at least slightly more despicable.

I'm surprised to hear Dawkins describe molestation as 'embarrassing but otherwise harmless.' Maybe if the inappropriate contact is extremely mild... There's a difference between having a priest slap your ass briefly on one occasion, and being brutally raped on an ongoing basis. But if you want to consider molestation in general, I would disagree with Dawkins on that point. I would never consider sexual abuse to be 'harmless.' The physical harm is temporary, but the psychological harm can last a lifetime and can be devastating. Some people never get over it.

I don't understand why you, like a lot of religious people, assume atheists see Dawkins as a Christ figure. Obviously he's just a human being. He has some excellent things to say on a lot of subjects, but that doesn't mean I would swallow The God Delusion whole as if it were a bible or something. As an atheist, I question things, and if I don't agree with something, I don't find some delusional way to justify it just because the person who said it is also an atheist.

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Yeah I corrected the page number above. I don't think anyone disputes the fact that murder is a more serious crime than molestation (even though both are evil in my eyes). I think the problem with Dawkin's view is the "embarrassing but otherwise harmless" approach to molestation. I have heard some make the case that he is not talking about molestation, but I feel he actually is because he is speaking of pedophiles and their victims. If he was not indeed talking about molestation then he just worded the passage very poorly and should clarify. I think the biggest problem for him is how inconsistent it makes him look. Here he is trying to go after the Pope for "crimes against humanity", but according to his book all the pope was doing was covering up "embarrassing but otherwise harmless" activities. So which is it?

I was not saying that you necessarily view Dawkins as a Christ figure- especially not that you at least admit that the quote seems way off base. However, I have had discussions with many atheists who engage in mental gymnastics to protect Dawkin’s as somewhat of a hero. Though I think we both know that if the pope had said something about molestation being only an "embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience" atheists around the globe would be outraged (and for good reason I think). I just

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Don't waste your time trying to explain "context" to an idiot who thinks the earth is 6,000 years old.

How are my views on the age of the Earth in anyway relevant to this discussion? Nice non-sequitur. I am not surprised you’d go to bat for Dawkin’s on this, even though we all know you wouldn’t defend the Pope if he had said the very same thing.