In God We Must

[Malthus]

I think Dawkins may be onto something there.

Yep. He's not saying that teaching kids religion is mental abuse, he's saying teaching kids a doctrine that there is an eternal hell is abusive. He's correct.

I'd say he is incorrect, and particularly bigoted and offensive in comparing Catholic theology unfavourably to pedophile attacks, but that is really irrelevant to the point - which is whether he said it at all.

Raz's summary was "You[r] theology is as harmful as child abuse". This was attacked as " gross slander and misrepresentation of Dawkins". It isn't an answer to say that, well, if Dawkins really did say it, he was right.

[Martinus]

Why is it "bigoted" to consider someone else's worldview in raising kids harmful?

Is one a "bigot" if one considers parents who feed their children only chicken nuggerts harmful?

[garbon]

Why is it "bigoted" to consider someone else's worldview in raising kids harmful?

Is one a "bigot" if one considers parents who feed their children only chicken nuggerts harmful?

Analogies? Really?

[Eddie Teach]

Catholicism may not be *quite* as bad, but growing up Calvinist thinking that there's a hell and it's ultimately beyond my power to avoid it was pretty fucking scary.

[Ideologue]

Yeah, it's a dumb analogy, but why is it wrong to bash what is, ultimately, a mutable characteristic and an ideological position?

[Viking]

"could be" /= is

for academics there is a big difference between "could be" and is. To paraphrase Dawkins

- The mental anguish caused by threats of eternal torture and hellfire could be as harmful as actual sexual abuse.

and

- To label a child born of catholic or muslim parents a catholic or muslim child is child abuse.

one is a conditional statement from a person outside the field speculating on the issue referring to a third party claiming as fact what Dawkins suggests we consider. The gross misrepresentation is first of all in mixing the two together to get a resulting idea which the speaker does not hold. I called it gross slander and misrepresentation because that's how Dawkins has responded to the same claim repeatedly.

Dawkins did not say that and Raz removing any caveats changing the 'could be' to 'is' and picking and choosing adejctives and adverbs can't make it so. Malthus is referring to an article where Dawkins refers to the many suits against he Catholic Church for sexual abuse which the mental abuse involved in the physical abuse is part of the suit, wonders why the mental abuse of the threat of eternal torture in hell is not being treated the same way and then he says

"I am not advocating this course of action. [...] All I am doing is calling attention to an anomaly."

The specific misrepresentation perpetrated by Raz here is to take a speculation about the consequence of a minority practice within one religion and generalizing it into a definitive statement about all practices of all religions.

[Viking]

Sounds like simply bringing them up Catholic is mental abuse.  I didn't see the word "Hell' in there at all.  Of course Hell is part of Catholic theology, so perhaps you have a point.  If it is abusive then it follows that it should be banned.  Unless Dawkins is cool with child abuse.  The only conclusion I can make is that either Child abuse shouldn't be a crime, or teaching religion to children should be.  If there is a third way to interpret it, please tell me.

From the article.

It will be said that the Catholic Church no longer preaches hell fire in its full horror. That depends on how upmarket is your area and how progressive your priest . But eternal punishment certainly was the normal doctrine dished out to congregations, including terrified children, back in the time when many of the priests now facing expulsion or prosecution committed their physical abuses. Most of the victims bringing or supporting lawsuits are now in their middle years. They therefore, along with many others who were never physically abused, probably experienced mental terrorism of the hell fire type. The long retrospect of the law entitles middle-aged victims to lucrative redress, decades after they suffered physically. Nobody thinks the physical injuries of sexual abuse could possibly last decades , so the damages now being claimed have to be the mental consequences of the original physical abuse. A typical claimant, now 54, said that his "life was marred by inexplicable confusions, anger, depression and lost faith." (Parenthetically, one can't help marvelling at the idea of a life being marred by lost faith. Perhaps it would get the sympathy of a jury.) But the point is this. If you can sue for the long-term mental damage caused by physical child abuse, why should you not sue for the long-term mental damage caused by mental child abuse? Only a minority of priests abuse the bodies of the children in their care. But how many priests abuse their minds? Why aren't Catholics and ex-Catholics lining up to sue the church into the ground, for a lifetime of psychological damage?

[jimmy olsen]

Still a stupid thing to say. Dawkins is an agitating self-righteous dick.


And before you go that route, I'm an atheist.

The difference between what he actually says and what people say he says is quite staggering. Chistopher Hitchens might have been a aggitating self-righteous dick, Dawkins is not. He doesn't knock on doors and he only speaks when invited, which is much more than you can say about the randomly picked preacher.

Eh? People liked Hitchens alot more than they do Dawkins.

[Viking]

The difference between what he actually says and what people say he says is quite staggering. Chistopher Hitchens might have been a aggitating self-righteous dick, Dawkins is not. He doesn't knock on doors and he only speaks when invited, which is much more than you can say about the randomly picked preacher.

Eh? People liked Hitchens alot more than they do Dawkins.

You're probably still wondering why all the girls you liked in high school preferred arrogant shitheads as boyfriends. People liked Hitchens more because he was basically harrassing and humiliating the indoctrinated idiots who didn't have the mental facilities to realize they were outmatched and humiliated. He made us atheists feel good when "our team" was winning. He was also tolerated by even theists because he fit their view of what an lapsed believer that is angry at god is. Hitchens was a bully and acted like a bully and anybody who knew their 2 Timothy would know that good christians will be persecuted.

Dawkins doesn't fit that mold, he boils every question down to if a statement is true or not and what evidence backs it up. Hitchens is making the arguments of 100 years ago, the arguments of Ingersol. Dawkins is making the arguments of Huxley. In a sense Dawkins tests while Hitchens mocks.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I have also not been granted the "grace" of having voices in my head telling me to kill the president but I am not going to apologize for that.

If the president were Hitler and you let him stay President you probably should.

[garbon]

Talking to Viking about Atheism...why bother?

[Razgovory]

"could be" /= is

for academics there is a big difference between "could be" and is. To paraphrase Dawkins

- The mental anguish caused by threats of eternal torture and hellfire could be as harmful as actual sexual abuse.

and

- To label a child born of catholic or muslim parents a catholic or muslim child is child abuse.

one is a conditional statement from a person outside the field speculating on the issue referring to a third party claiming as fact what Dawkins suggests we consider. The gross misrepresentation is first of all in mixing the two together to get a resulting idea which the speaker does not hold. I called it gross slander and misrepresentation because that's how Dawkins has responded to the same claim repeatedly.

Dawkins did not say that and Raz removing any caveats changing the 'could be' to 'is' and picking and choosing adejctives and adverbs can't make it so. Malthus is referring to an article where Dawkins refers to the many suits against he Catholic Church for sexual abuse which the mental abuse involved in the physical abuse is part of the suit, wonders why the mental abuse of the threat of eternal torture in hell is not being treated the same way and then he says

"I am not advocating this course of action. [...] All I am doing is calling attention to an anomaly."

The specific misrepresentation perpetrated by Raz here is to take a speculation about the consequence of a minority practice within one religion and generalizing it into a definitive statement about all practices of all religions.

  You are quibbling.  He was saying "Could be more" not "Could be less".  Dawkins is only pointing out an anomaly because if he pursues this line of thinking any further it paints him into a corner as either an enabler of child abuse or a totalitarian nut.  He over stepped, and realized that he had shown to much of his true colors, and felt the need to step back.  Of course this isn't the first time he's equated child abuse with religion

My colleague the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey used the "sticks and stones" proverb in introducing his Amnesty Lecture in Oxford in 1997. Humphrey began his lecture by arguing that the proverb is not always true, citing the case of Haitian Voodoo believers who die, apparently from some psychosomatic effect of terror, within days of having a malign "spell" cast upon them. He then asked whether Amnesty International, the beneficiary of the lecture series to which he was contributing, should campaign against hurtful or damaging speeches or publications. His answer was a resounding no to such censorship in general: "Freedom of speech is too precious a freedom to be meddled with." But he then went on to shock his liberal self by advocating one important exception: to argue in favour of censorship for the special case of children ... "... moral and religious education, and especially the education a child receives at home, where parents are allowed – even expected – to determine for their children what counts as truth and falsehood, right and wrong. Children, I'll argue, have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people's bad ideas – no matter who these other people are. Parents, correspondingly, have no God-given licence to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose: no right to limit the horizons of their children's knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith. In short, children have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense, and we as a society have a duty to protect them from it. So we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children's teeth out or lock them in a dungeon." [pp. 325-326

From his "God Delusion".

Apperently Mr. Dawkins signed some sort of petition that banned religious teaching to children

In order to encourage free thinking, children should not be subjected to any regular religious teaching or be allowed to be defined as belonging to a particular religious group based on the views of their parents or guardians. At the age of 16, as with other laws, they would then be considered old enough and educated enough to form their own opinion and follow any particular religion (or none at all) through free thought.

He seemed to have it on his site, but later dropped it claimed he hadn't read it properly and no longer supports it ( I can't seem to find the whole petition online).  So either he sign things without reading or he has totalitarian leanings and has to step back when he is called on them.  I see a pattern for the second one.

[Razgovory]

Talking to Viking about Atheism...why bother?

It's what he likes to talk about.  It's like Slargos and Jews.

[Razgovory]

You're probably still wondering why all the girls you liked in high school preferred arrogant shitheads as boyfriends. People liked Hitchens more because he was basically harrassing and humiliating the indoctrinated idiots who didn't have the mental facilities to realize they were outmatched and humiliated. He made us atheists feel good when "our team" was winning. He was also tolerated by even theists because he fit their view of what an lapsed believer that is angry at god is. Hitchens was a bully and acted like a bully and anybody who knew their 2 Timothy would know that good christians will be persecuted.

Dawkins doesn't fit that mold, he boils every question down to if a statement is true or not and what evidence backs it up. Hitchens is making the arguments of 100 years ago, the arguments of Ingersol. Dawkins is making the arguments of Huxley. In a sense Dawkins tests while Hitchens mocks.

Yeah, that it.  Everyone is simply stupid.  That's why they don't agree with Hitchens.  I certainly hope Dawkins isn't making the arguments of Huxley.  Huxley wasn't even a confirmed Darwinist.  Well, he did have some Social Darwinist tendencies.

[garbon]

Talking to Viking about Atheism...why bother?

It's what he likes to talk about.  It's like Slargos and Jews.

Indeed and notice that I don't encourage Slargos to talk about Muslims (his real bugbear).