I Googled Dawkins child abuse last night, not because I'm out to make some case about the morality of atheists (I think there are moral and immoral theists and atheists, and that most people use their belief or unbelief systems to help them be who they already are), but because I wanted to beat up Michael with the foam cudgel of a passage I remembered about how it's child abuse to indoctrinate a child into anything, even atheism. (I've regained my good spirits, and regained them by being as mean as a wimp like me can be. So much for throwing stones.
) So imagine my surprise when I came across this on Dawkins' website, subtitled A Clear-Thinking Oasis : Being fondled by the Latin master in the Squash Court was a disagreeable sensation for a nine-year-old, a mixture of embarrassment and skin-crawling revulsion, but it was certainly not in the same league as being led to believe that I, or someone I knew, might go to everlasting fire. As soon as I could wriggle off his knee, I ran to tell my friends and we had a good laugh, our fellowship enhanced by the shared experience of the same sad pedophile. I do not believe that I, or they, suffered lasting, or even temporary damage from this disagreeable physical abuse of power.
Given the Latin Master's eventual suicide, maybe the damage was all on his side. Of course I accept that his misdemeanors, although by today's standards enough to earn imprisonment followed by a life sentence of persecution by vigilantes, were mild compared to those committed by some priests now in the news. I am in no position to make light of the horrific experiences of their altar-boy victims.
But reports of child abuse cover a multitude of sins, from mild fondling to violent buggery, and I am sure many of those cases now embarrassing the church fall at the mild end of the spectrum . Doubtless, too, some fall at the violent end, which is terrible but I would make two points about it. First, just because some pedophile assaults are violent and painful, it doesn't mean that all are.
A child too young to notice what is happening at the hands of a gentle pedophile will have no difficulty at all in noticing the pain inflicted by a violent one. Phrases like 'predatory monster' are not discriminating enough, and are framed in the light of adult hang-ups. Second (and this is the point with which I began) the abuse constituted by an unsubstantiated of violence and terrible pain, if sincerely by the child, could easily be more damaging than the physical actuality of sexual abuse.
An extreme threat of violence and pain is precisely what the doctrine of hell is. This passage was occasioned by a letter from a woman who wrote that being fondled by her priest at age 7 was merely yuchy, while being told that a little Protestant friend who'd died was in hell was a nightmare-inducing trauma. Read the whole thing, I don't want to be accused of sensationalistically misrepresenting it.
This was published almost exactly a year ago, and I imagine a big fuss about it has already come and gone. I am, er, bringing up the rear. But really, you don't have to be a recovered-memory hysteric or a vigilante to believe that the policy towards adult sexual interaction with small children and the barely pubescent ought to be a calm and steely zero tolerance.
(Will that stop it from ever happening? Did Thou shalt not kill wipe out murder?) For one thing, you can't predict which child will shrug off the advances of a gentle pedophile and which, for reasons of temperament or background, will react with lasting horror or self-loathing.
For another thing, true pedophilia, in a person who rationalizes acting it out at all, is a deep disturbance, and you can't predict which gentle pedophile will progress to abduction, assault, or murder, or which genuine predatory monster will use gentleness as a lure. Do I think Dawkins' more than zero tolerance for the sad pedophile has to do with his strident atheism? No, to be honest, I think it probably has more to do with British public school.
Beyond that, perhaps it arises, along with his strident atheism, from a rather juvenile glee in contrarian provocation. It is particular to Dawkins and should not be used by the religious, eager to turn around the priest-scandal finger-pointing, to tar all atheists with the immoral brush. But it will be.
(For all I know, already has been.) Talk about playing into a stereotype, Dawkins is the gangsta rapper of atheism. His coantireligionists should be as embarrassed by him as, say, Bill Cosby is by Snoop Dogg.
Posted by amba on May 20, 2007 at 12:59 AM I Googled Dawkins child abuse last night, not because I'm out to make some case about the morality of atheists (I think there are moral and immoral theists and atheists, and that most people use their belief or unbelief systems to help them be who they already are), but because I wanted to beat up Michael with the foam cudgel of a passage I remembered about how it's child abuse to indoctrinate a child into anything, even atheism.
News RSS