In the abstract, atheists assure us that it's possible, even preferable, to be good without God. But their moral footing is slippery when they shift to concrete cases:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/09/richard-dawkins-pedophilia_n_3895514.html?view=print&comm_ref=false
Sounds like he enjoyed it and would rather not feel the guilt of having consented. Of course, even if he did consent, he wasn't as guilty as the adult who knew full well what he was doing. Children at a young age can be easily confused intellectually and emotionally, but the adult wouldn't have been.
ReplyDeleteAlso, a statement like Dawkins' would be said by someone who himself might have committed pedophilia in his adult years. I'm not accusing Dawkins of that, but it is suspicious. We do know that victims of pedophilia are more likely to become offenders themselves as compared to those who have never been victims. For all we know, he's preemptively protecting himself if it turns out later on that someone comes out and accuses Dawkins of pedophilia. If Dawkins came out strongly against pedophilia, any possible victims might publicly call him out on his hypocrisy.
It's possible that Dawkins appreciates the common link between pedophilia and homosexuality. It's hard to defend or attack one without defending or attacking the other. So perhaps he's being consistent, in a morally twisted way.
DeleteYeah, that makes a lot of sense. Then it's the defenders of homosexuality who nevertheless oppose pedophilia who are being inconsistent.
DeleteOn one hand:
ReplyDelete"I am very conscious that you can't condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours. Just as we don't look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as we would condemn a modern person for racism, I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can't find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today," he said.
On the other hand:
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
I'm confused...which way does Dawkins want to argue this?
Good point showing a contradiction on his part.
DeleteBy his own admission he can't strictly condemn "mild" pedophilia. Also, by his own admission he can't strictly condemn infanticide, even though he charges the God of the Old Testament with infanticide (as can be seen from the second quote Stephen Rodgers provided above).