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

[Statler Waldorf]

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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 remember seeing the passage in The God Delusion and didn't think much of it because A) Dawkins was talking about his own experience and B) that it wasn't molestation as in rape, but molestation in a milder form ("overstep the bounds of propriety"), to which Dawkins may have thought it an "embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience" for him not necessarily to anyone else. Read in context, it's not terribly shocking.

@ Statler: You exaggerate matters by claiming Dawkins thinks child molestation is "nothing more than an embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience." Dawkins didn't say "nothing more than." You did. Anyone who has watched Dawkins interviews, lectures or read the books could not come to the conclusion that he would condone or minimize child molestation or the psychological implications of it. He was speaking for himself here, not anyone else. Had I thought Dawkins was minimizing child molestation in any case but his own, I would stopped listening to the audio book then and there. This is a misreading on your part, and and an attempt to castigate a well known atheist and nothing more.

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I disagree. There is no such thing as a "mild" molestation, it's all a felony and for good reason. The fact that Dawkins does minimize it is apparent by his view that it is less harmful to a child than the teaching of religion (which of course is not a felony because it harms the child in no way). It's disgusting that someone would think that the sexual abuse of a child is better for a child than teaching them that they should love their neighbor and do unto others as they want done to themselves. If you can't see that then I don't know what to tell you.