Richard Dawkins: ‘Being Raised Catholic is Worse than Child Abuse’
December 22, 2012 11 Comments
Raising your children as Roman Catholics is worse than child abuse, according to militant atheist Richard Dawkins.
In typically incendiary style, Professor Dawkins said the mental torment inflicted by the religion’s teachings is worse in the long-term than any sexual abuse carried out by priests.
He said he had been told by a woman that while being abused by a priest was a ‘yucky’ experience, being told as a child that a Protestant friend who died would ‘roast in Hell’ was more distressing.
Last night politicians and charities condemned the former Oxford professor’s views as attention-seeking and unhelpful.
The remarks are due to be broadcast tonight by Qatar-based TV network Al Jazeera.
Interviewer Mehdi Hasan asked Professor Dawkins about previous comments he made, when he said: ‘Horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place.’
Mr Hasan asked: ‘You believe that being bought up as a Catholic is worse than being abused by a priest?’. Professor Dawkins replied: ‘There are shades of being abused by a priest, and I quoted an example of a woman in America who wrote to me saying that when she was seven years old she was sexually abused by a priest in his car.
‘At the same time a friend of hers, also seven, who was of a Protestant family, died, and she was told that because her friend was Protestant she had gone to Hell and will be roasting in Hell forever.
‘She told me of those two abuses, she got over the physical abuse; it was yucky but she got over it.
‘But the mental abuse of being told about Hell, she took years to get over.’
Read more here.
The atheist Dawkins should stick with what he knows: biology. Clearly, he has no idea what the Church teaches and is a theological dilettante of note!
About Fr Stephen Smuts
Clearly as Richard Dawkins was raised Church of England Anglican, rather than generalise, we need to seriously, positively emotionally engage in just what, where his comments context is coming from. Equally clearly, the paedophile Priest childhood victim needs to be actively respected, rehabilitated, reconciled so that somethings seriously in the reason for this season are done? Not just shooting our comments off?
You try ‘seriously, positively emotionally’ engaging a vicious, militant God-hater like Dawkins. Further, we are now expected to equate sexual abuse with the Biblical teachings on Hell and damnation? And that based on an anecdote? Please!
Well, I’m not surprised. Apparently, Dawkins was molested by an Anglican priest as a child or something.
The only language this person will understand is beyond words, now. It’s probably flames from a bonfire of his blasphemous book.
Please turn your other cheek & forgive 77×7, the reason for this season is God so loved our world? Richard Dawkins is as much a child of God so why disrespect Richard so?
I merely respect Richard Dawkins’ views: “If you don’t liked to be mocked for having silly beliefs, maybe you shouldn’t have them.”
Oh, and nevermind what a BIG COWARD this man is: He has been trolling the United States, basically intellectually bullying ignorant, Southern Baptist pastors and rural Christian communities and making them look ridiculous. But the moment ONE, I say, ONE well-educated, capable, systematic analytical philosopher (William Lane Craig) poses a challenge to the Pope of Atheism, Dawkins’ big excuse is “I don’t have time!”
And I don’t know whether I’m infuriated by this man’s cowardice, that I don’t get to see him thrashed thoroughly for his stupid beliefs (oh, sorry, UNbelief) or that he gets to go his way thinking he won the debate without ever engaging in it.
See- if I didn’t respect him, I wouldn’t even see him as a proper human being who can communicate with some semblance of cognitive faculties- for even in biology, he is as stale as Einstein is in physics.
You are his enabler. Keep on going, you might end up doing something productive.
Since we all know what I would like to happen to this man, as a side note:
JUST LOOK AT HIM! Who WOULDN’T want to punch that stupid smirk of his face? All atheists I’ve seen have that same look: P.Z. Myers, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Carrier, etc. They all have that stupid smirk that I would like to see transformed into horror when the Christians have all gone, and they have to face a mob of angry pro-Sharia Law Muslims who think atheists are the Great Satan.
Honestly, these people are a parasite to Christian morality. They benefited more from Christian treatment of fellow human beings that Christians have benefited in atheist societies. Just reading the atrocities done to Christians in atheist countries make my blood boil when I see this person’s face smirking.
He speaks like communist aparatchik.
Richard Dawkins thrives on infamy. He is probably a bit upset about not being in the news much recently, what with all the real news about. I have worked with several people who were taught by him. He is not loved by his students, by and large. His nickname is “The Dork”, and it isn’t given in affection.
As with all organisms that thrive on publicity, the surest method of eradication is to ignore them.
Amen. (Also, lol @ “The Dork” nickname.)
But then, there are those who follow him. They are as dangerous and stupid because of their diligence to their master’s teachings.
Actually, Dawkins is not “a theological dilettante of note”. Rather, he is almost wholly ignorant of theology, and sees nothing wrong with this ignorance. There is an argument raised by another atheist/biologist, PZ Myers, called “The Courtier’s Reply”, which refers to an imagined defense a sycophant might give of the naked emperor of Hans Christian Anderson’s story: “Haven’t you read the discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor’s boots?” and so on. The idea is that complaining about an atheist’s lack of theological knowledge is no better than the courtier’s complaint that the naked emperor’s critics haven’t read the works of Count Roderigo. This is just the same old question-begging “Pastafarianism” pseudo-defense, now tarted up with a clever marketing tag.
How does it work? Well, suppose an atheist is confronted with evidence that his “objections” to Aquinas (or whomever) are as impressive as the fundamentalist’s “chicken/egg” objection to evolution. What’s he going to do? Say, “OK, I don’t know the first thing about Aquinas. But I’m not going to let that stop me from criticizing him!” That is weak at best. But now, courtesy of Myers, he’s got a better response, “Oh dear, not the Courtier’s Reply” followed by some derisive chuckling. Of course, intelligent listeners will be baffled, wondering how shouting “Courtier’s Reply!” is supposed to excuse not knowing what one is talking about. In the confusion, the atheist can slip out the back door before anyone realises he hasn’t really answered the question.
Dawkins and Co. have a stake in the claim that religion is inherently irrational. They want a society in which religious believers are no more welcome than racists or Holocaust deniers. To admit that there really are respectable arguments for religion — that it is something about which reasonable people can disagree — would be at once to admit that all the extremist talk about bringing up a child in you religion being tantamount to child abuse, no more worthy of respect than belief in the tooth fairy, and so on goes out the window.
One final thought: Suppose you are Richard Dawkins, former Charles Simonyi Professor in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. You’ve spent years criticizing creationists and Intelligent Design people for not doing their homework before attacking Darwinism. You’ve staked your reputation as a scientist on a crusade against religion, dismissing it as the province of ignorant, bigoted yahoos without a single serious argument in its favor. You’ve written The God Delusion, presenting it as a once-and-for-all demonstration of the truth of this proposition. Theologians and philosophers of religion have criticized you for not knowing what you are talking about. Even some fellow atheists have done the same. And you have dismissed them all as allies of the fundamentalist bigots. The people who actually know the stuff are wrong (you claim) and you are right — despite the fact that this is the very attitude you rightly condemn in fundamentalist bigots themselves.
Sp what are you going to do? Admit that the critics are right? Admit that you’ve been making a fool of yourself? That you’ve done an injustice to the believers you despise, and who would relish your public humiliation? That you are a hypocrite? Not a chance.
So “Courtier’s Reply!” it is. Your atheism must be touched by philistinism, deliberately closing its mind to the serious consideration of, or even reading, the arguments of writers like Augustine and Aquinas, lest these dangerous ideas tempt one to doubt the secularist creed. In the words of a better-known exercise in doublethink, “Ignorance is strength!”