Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 7:16pm

Richard Dawkins and “Mild Pedophilia”

The hilarious thing is that atheists like Dawkins consider themselves “Brights”:

In a recent interview with the Times magazine, Richard Dawkins attempted to defend what he called “mild pedophilia,” which, he says, he personally experienced as a young child and does not believe causes “lasting harm.”

Dawkins went on to say that one of his former school masters “pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts,” and that to condemn this “mild touching up” as sexual abuse today would somehow be unfair.

“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.

Plus, he added, though his other classmates also experienced abuse at the hands of this teacher, “I don’t think he did any of us lasting harm.”

I guess pedophilia is bad in Dawkins’ view only if Catholic priests do it.  Judging from this remark he made in 2006, I think that is really his view:

“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,” wrote Dawkins.  “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.”

 

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deltaflute
deltaflute
Tuesday, September 10, AD 2013 6:44pm

It’s called molestation. Not “mild touching” and it does have lasting affects….Dawkins should get his head checked. Apparently his ability to be logical was damaged.

bearing
Tuesday, September 10, AD 2013 6:48pm

Perhaps the fact that Dawkins was sexually abused as a child and even today seems to be repressing the fact ought to move us to pity rather than scorn.

Sexual abuse victims deal with their trauma in a lot of different ways. Maybe he’s let slip more than he realizes.

Clinton
Clinton
Tuesday, September 10, AD 2013 6:54pm

I’m reminded of Whoopi Goldberg’s fascinating insight into the Roman Polanski
case: the man drugged a 13-year-old girl, then raped and sodomized her.
Whoopi’s take on it all? “It wasn’t rape rape”.

I think that once the pedophilia scandals that rocked the Church a decade ago
fade into history and lose their value as a stick with which to beat the Church,
the Whoopis and the Dawkins and all the other “Brights” will forget about their
faux outrage over child sexual abuse. Mark my words, they’ll come out in favor
of reducing the age of consent, and push to brand our condemnation of sexual
abuse of minors as some sort of bigotry.

deltaflute
deltaflute
Tuesday, September 10, AD 2013 6:55pm

I feel pity for him but i call condoning evil idiotic like i see it. That gets my scorn. He’s advocating abuse and that i will not tolerate. Dont care if its because he was abused or not. Abused people dont talk that way. They know its wrong and any bad habits or thoughts that result arent aired out to the public as being good either like drug abuse.

bearing
Tuesday, September 10, AD 2013 6:58pm

Waaaaaait a minute.

If “abused people don’t talk that way,”

and he’s talking that way,

was it not abuse?

This doesn’t make logical sense.

One not-uncommon reaction to abuse is to pretend that what happened wasn’t really abuse.

deltaflute
deltaflute
Tuesday, September 10, AD 2013 7:01pm

Again he’s not simply in denial he is advocating abuse. Dont you think that is wrong?

bearing
Tuesday, September 10, AD 2013 7:13pm

Of course I do, but it’s illogical to say both “what he experienced was abuse” and “abused people don’t talk the way he is talking.”

Having pity on someone doesn’t mean I have to think he’s correct. Please distinguish between scorning a person and scorning a statement.

deltaflute
deltaflute
Tuesday, September 10, AD 2013 7:21pm

I have no scorn for Dawkins. Sure he was abused. But to go on record and condone it isnt normal. Abused people know evil just like non abused persons. He may deny his own abuse was abusive to him but hes denying a form of abuse.

deltaflute
deltaflute
Tuesday, September 10, AD 2013 7:22pm

* condoning a form of abuse. Not denying abuse. Denying is different than condoning.

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, September 10, AD 2013 8:27pm

“Mark my words, they’ll come out in favor
of reducing the age of consent, and push to brand our condemnation of sexual
abuse of minors as some sort of bigotry”
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has written a book advocating informed sexual consent for fourteen year old girls as a form of sexual liberation.
The insult to injury in “mild pedophilia” is that the person is taking liberties with another, albeit minor child’s, human body without the proper consent which remains with the child’s parents. The monster takes possession of the victim, body and soul and OWNs him as a piece of property, irregardless of civil rights and sacred trust.
It appears Dawkins has chosen to deny his immortal soul and the humiliation heaped on his soul by the monster. No, it is not OK. There must be God because there must be JUSTICE, even for “mild pedophilia.”
Adam’s sin was that Adam disobeyed God. The monster’s sin is that he disobeyed God, violated the Sixth Commandment, violated the sovereign personhood of a minor child and finally violated his own immortal soul by committing suicide.
Dawkins will not let “God save the Queen”. Dawkins is going to save the Queen by bashing the Pope, the Catholic Church and our infinite God.

J.A.C.
J.A.C.
Wednesday, September 11, AD 2013 4:27am

lets get this right,right now….it is not just the Catholic Church that has these pedophiles…it is every faith…the only reason you don’t hear much of these other faiths is because the Catholic Church has been around for so long and is the One True Faith…people have been trying to kill the Catholic Church forever and they will think of everything possible to break it up…sure there were some stupid priests who hurt the church’s people but that is all they did was hurt the church…they didn’t kill it….that is because the Catholic Church is strong and her people are strong in their Catholic Faith….I am sorry to say this but pedophilia has been around for ages and did not start with the Catholic Church…so go on Dawkins….keep making an ass of yourself…you can try just as hard as all the other morons who want to kill the Holy Catholic Church….you will never win..God will triumph and so will HIS people and HIS CHURCH….

WK Aiken
WK Aiken
Wednesday, September 11, AD 2013 7:00am

The humanist Left worships at the altar of Man as Supreme Being. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Wednesday, September 11, AD 2013 7:25am

I’m interested in hearing his thoughts on “mild murder.”

Art Deco
Art Deco
Wednesday, September 11, AD 2013 7:48am

Do you think it possible Dawkins is just an exhibitionist?

WK Aiken
WK Aiken
Wednesday, September 11, AD 2013 7:51am

Only a “mild” exhibitionist.

MIke Malone
MIke Malone
Wednesday, September 11, AD 2013 10:08am

Dawkin’s has zero credibility. His arguments for atheism are as empty as his belief that molesting children has no lasting effect. I think he has been sprinkling a little Alzheimer’s on his breakfast cereal.

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, September 11, AD 2013 12:29pm

“latae sententiae -self excommunication” Every person who consents to commit a mortal sin, excommunicates himself. Every priest who consented to commit abuse excommunicated himself. No much of a spiritual father is an excomunicated individual. So, too is Dawkins, a traitor in not calling down Divine Providence on the Queen in “God save the Queen.” Treason, in the United States of America, against the people prohibited from invoking Divine Providence on our blessed land. NO speech, no freedom. “or prohibit the free exercise thereof.” Three quarters of the states must ratifiy any change in our Constitutional First Amendment, but they have not. May God bless and keep America.

enness
enness
Wednesday, September 11, AD 2013 1:57pm

Well, this is rich!

philip
philip
Wednesday, September 11, AD 2013 3:22pm

Off of Life Site news in March or April of last year came a story from Germany.
According to the author; No longer will Germany call pedophiles Pedophiles. They shall be known as “minor attracted people.” The stigma associated with the term pedophiles is demeaning to this type of lifestyle choice.

The article continued on with a drive to lower consent laws to EIGHT years of age. 8!

God help us.

anzlyne
anzlyne
Wednesday, September 11, AD 2013 6:31pm

It seems like the trend is to nothingness. Shock value is shrinking.
Dawkins is too cool to have been bothered by a teachers hand in his pants — “that’s all right, I’m cool, no big deal…
Marriage? — that’s nothing- anybody can do it or not do it-doesn’t matter.
What do I care about LIFE what’s the big deal- somebody wants to end their own life–have at it!
Or an abortion- no harm no foul- I don’t see any “victims” do you? Nothing going on here.
I witness a violent crime — no skin off of my nose… those two thugs are going to fight it out anyway!

We are not too bothered pedophilia, millions of abortions, broken homes, neglected children— all nothing. — God created “ex nihilo” didn’t He?
The trend seems to go back there.
We are getting rid of God; we are getting rid of us.

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, September 11, AD 2013 9:41pm

Anzlyne: I have wanted to say: “God created “ex nihilo” didn’t He?
The trend seems to go back there.
We are getting rid of God; we are getting rid of us.” but you have said it better. God bless.

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, September 11, AD 2013 9:51pm

B4UACT, a group of psychiatrists, is trying to legalize pedophilia in Baltimore, Maryland. Without the infinite God, unalienable civil rights cannot exist. Without The Supreme Sovereign Being, who is existence, mankind, body and soul, has lost his place in this world.
The trouble with Dawkins is that he will become a death bed convert after he has seduced the young and uninformed. This is precisely why freedom of religion must remain an unalienable civil right. So that when the atheist seeks God, the atheist will find God through the freedom of religon. It is choice, the exercise of free will, an intrinsic part of the human soul.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Thursday, September 12, AD 2013 3:29am

In Europe, the trend of legislation, over the past century, has been the other way. Before 1929, Scots law followed Roman law in allowing a girl to marry at twelve years of age and a boy at fourteen, without any requirement for parental consent. The Age of Marriage Act 1929 made void any marriage between persons either of whom was under the age of sixteen. Sixteen remains the lower age-limit today, contained in the current legislation, the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1977. Scots law still has no requirement for parental consent.

The change met with some opposition. One clergyman wrote to the press, “What, then, has the legislature to do here? It is to follow Nature. Whenever man becomes fit for the reproduction of a being similar to himself, he is then fit for marriage.” Such an argument would be unthinkable today.

In France, the age of marriage has been recently raised from 15 to 18 (the age of majority) for both sexes, largely owing to concerns over « crainte révérencielle » – the dutiful child’s fear of offending parents by a refusal.

Clinton
Clinton
Thursday, September 12, AD 2013 6:58am

MPS, while I agree that European nations seem to have been slowly raising the
age at which one may contract a legal marriage, I wonder if many pedophiles
are looking for that sort of permanence in their ‘relationships’.

As it is, many European nations have legal ages of sexual consent that seem
shockingly low to this American. As you point out, MPS, in France the age one
could contract a legal marriage has been slowly raised over the last 200 years.
However, the age of consent for homosexual acts was lowered in 1974
from 21 to 18, and in 1982 it was lowered again from 18 to 15. Other EU
countries have even lower ages of consent, and if I recall, there have been
drives to lower them even further… Cui bono?

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Thursday, September 12, AD 2013 7:49am

It seems to me the trend is still to “nothing” concerning social strictures about marriage and family. The beautiful heart of France has a lhistory of protection for the weak underpriveged. The concern in that great and good culture is for the child, as we have seen in the marriage debate over there. But the downhill snowball is still rolling down. Historically Christian countries seem to be doing a collective shrug of the shoulders about personal behavior and responsibility in society.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Thursday, September 12, AD 2013 8:02am

Clinton

The lowering of the age of consent for homosexual acts in 1974 was a consequence of the lowering of the age of majority generally from 21 to 18. The lowering of the age of consent to 15 in 1982 brought it into line with the age of consent for heterosexuals.

Moreover, Art 227-27 of the Code Pénal punishes sexual acts committed without violence, constraint, threat or surprise on a minor aged over fifteen and not emancipated by marriage are punished by two years’ imprisonment and a fine of €30,000:
1° where they are committed by a legitimate, natural or adoptive ascendant or by any other person having authority over the victim;
2° where they are committed by a person abusing the authority conferred by his functions.

2° is widely construed

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Thursday, September 12, AD 2013 8:37am

Anzlene

Mme Ludovine de la Rochère of « Manif pour tous » the grass-roots organization that opposed SSM, declared that they would continue to fight against the “progress” of which the supporters of SSM speak – “that of merchandising the human body, of wombs for rent” [« celui de la marchandisation du corps, celui des ventres à louer »]

In 1991, the Court of Cassation in plenary session regarded as a perversion of the institution of adoption the plenary adoption of a child when this is only “the final phase of an overall process designed to enable a couple to take into their home a child conceived under contract and requiring that child’s abandonment at birth by his or her mother.” In doing so, it relied on Art 1128 of the Code Civil, which provides that “only things in trade can be the subject of an agreement.” The full court never reverses itself, leaving any change in the law to the legislature.

French law erects further barriers to the commercialisation of the reproductive process. There can be no ownership of human gametes or embryos; this is excluded by Art 16-1 of the Code Civil, which provides that “The human body, its elements and its products may not form the subject of a patrimonial right.” Nor can they be bought or sold, for Art 16-5 reinforces the general prohibition of Art 1128, by providing that “Agreements that have the effect of bestowing a patrimonial value to the human body, its elements or products are void.”

There is well-nigh universal support for the proposition that a child should not be made the subject or source of a transaction.

Ivan
Ivan
Thursday, September 12, AD 2013 8:06pm

One way to handle “mild pedophilia” is for the victim, when he or she grows up to always look down or give a knowing smirk to the perpetrator when he or she meets him. This will always work, and the perpetrator to his dying shame will carry it to his grave.

Mary De Voe
Friday, September 13, AD 2013 6:16am

Dawkins claims to be an atheist. Yet, Dawkins and The Great Liar, the devil himself, using Dawkins, insinuates that the Anglican priests who chose to become Catholic had no free will and right to choose and to consent to become Catholic, and that Pope Benedict XVI had no authority to accept their free will choice and receive these Anglican priests into the Catholic Church, whereas, the word Catholic means for all people, for all time. Dawkins refuses to accept Pope Benedict XVI and the Pope’s acknowledgment of the Anglican priests’ free will.
This is the result of mild pedophilia. This is what comes from having a person’s free will and informed consent denied by another individual who tries to own somebody, anybody.

trackback
Sunday, September 15, AD 2013 12:37pm

[…] and Divorce – Emily Hurt, IT Quebec, Banning Public Employees Wearing Religious Symbols – Hilton Richard Dawkins and “Mild Pedophilia” – Donald R. McClarey, TAC 5 Points about Oscar Romero & Liberation Theology – Carlos X, SM […]

Jamey Brown
Jamey Brown
Monday, September 16, AD 2013 6:59pm

Mr. Dawkins believes there can be “mild pedophilia”—apparently coming from someone with mild intelligence. I certainly wouldn’t want any of my children around him. So I guess there can be “mild wars, mild atrocities, and mild genocides?” He is an example of what GK Chesterton described as “an educated man—educated badly.”
Among a litany of ill-informed and demagogic statements he says that the Church is an enemy of women because it won’t allow women to become priests. May I inform him that the priest stands “en persona,” in the person, of Christ. And since Christ was a man, a woman could no more be a priest than a man could be a Mother Superior, or a Poor Claire Nun, or play the Blessed Mother in the Christmas pageant.
In a stultifying diatribe about the “vile obscenity” of the Church teachings on Original Sin, he says, “Adam who the Church herself now admits was a man who never existed”. Anyone who knows an iota about the Church knows this is not true and anyone who wants to lecture about the Church should do a little research.
Mr. Dawkins goes on to say that “there is absolutely no correlation between Hitler and Stalin’s’ godless atheism and their monstrous atrocities and deeds.” No?—well maybe not to one with “mild” intelligence and reason.
Mr. Dawkins then states that Pope Benedict, who was a university professor for nearly two decades, was an “enemy of education because he teaches young children that because of Original Sin they are born wicked and evil and therefore must be baptized to receive the salvation that only Christ can give, and about the horrors of Hell.” St. John Vianney comes to mind who could have been speaking to the future Richard Dawkins when he said, “Christ wept over Jerusalem…and I weep over you….Hell exists. It is not my invention. God has told us. And you pay no heed.”

philip
philip
Monday, September 16, AD 2013 7:43pm

JB.
Thanks.
I like your insights.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Tuesday, September 17, AD 2013 3:48am

Jamey Brown writes, “or play the Blessed Mother in the Christmas pageant…”

Is that really true? Great female roles, like Clytemnestra and Phaedra in the plays of Aeschylus and Euripides were played by male actors. No woman was admitted to the Dionysia. Again in In Shakespeare’s time, with the recovery of the classical learning, all the female rôles, Juliet, Lady Macbeth and Portia among them would have been played by boys.

The ancient Greeks, like our Elizabethan ancestors, recognized the drama as the place of ἀπορία [aporia] = impasse; lack of resources, puzzlement; doubt; confusion. Even today in that most traditional and popular form of the drama, our Christmas pantomimes, the “principle boy” and the “dame” are always played by men. We would be astonished by a male Aladdin or Widow Twankey. No wonder; children love indeterminacy, ambiguity, irony, paradox. So did the Greeks, in that fresh morning of the world and it was their great gift to us in the Renaissance.

[I agree, by the by, with your general point]

Jamey Brown
Jamey Brown
Tuesday, September 17, AD 2013 7:18am

Michael Paterson-Seymour said “children love indeterminacy, ambiguity, irony, paradox.”

I think while this is true, they like even more, assurance, sureness and certainty. If I were to see a bearded Mary in the Nativity Play I would not stick around knowing it was a sham, and I’m sure the children would be howling in laughter screaming that word that they love to use, “Fake.”

You know a lot about the history of the theatre and I applaud that; but we’re talking here about something eternal, the sacred priesthood and the Sacrament of Holy Orders and our very salvation. I don’t think our good Jesus was a male chauvinist when he chose men to be his twelve Apostles out of his many disciples, some of them women. It is my opinion that it would not be wise to send women alone to be missionaries out into the wiles of foreign lands for obvious reasons: they could be raped or forced into becoming wives. Also I think most women had children to tend to—at least in those days.

I am eternally grateful for women’s extraordinary gifts to the Church. If it wasn’t for a woman, Mother Angelica, I wouldn’t be Catholic today. It was her network EWTN that converted me six years ago. Her and the Poor Claire Nuns and a plethora of women hosts and scholars—Frances Hogan, Johnnette Benkovic, Daphne McLeod, Sr. Joan Marie, and Elizabeth Lev, art historian in Rome, are just a few of the many women, and men, that broke through my “hardness of heart” and continue to convert me every day.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Tuesday, September 17, AD 2013 9:59am

Wouldn’t it be great to get to just have coffee or tea with all of you some fine morning!

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Tuesday, September 17, AD 2013 10:30am

Jamey Brown

I do not believe the choice of an all-male priesthood, either under the Old Law or the Christian Dispensation rests on the sort of practical reasons you suggest.

Priestesses were very common in the ancient world. The most revered sanctuary in Greece was the shrine of Phœbus Apollo at Delphi, where the oracle was uttered by the Pythian priestess. Readers of Plato will know that the temple of Zeus at Dordona was also served by priestesses. Both Apollo and Zeus, it should be noted, were male deities. The play “Iphigegnia in Taurus” contains no suggestion that there is anything unusual in a woman being a priestess.

In Latin, the word “sacerdos” is common gender. Roman law forbids women to offer sacrifice by night, except when celebrating the rites of the Good Goddess. Why, if they were not permitted to offer sacrifice at all? That the Vestals were priestesses is affirmed by Gaius, a very careful jurist and the Sybil at Cumæ was a priestess, according to Vergil.

I believe the all-male priesthood expresses something far deeper

Jamey Brown
Jamey Brown
Tuesday, September 17, AD 2013 3:54pm

In response to Michael Patterson-Seymour

I quote Fr. William Saunders of EWTN.com who quotes Archbishop Fulton Sheen who said that our dear Lord in regards to ordaining women didn’t even ordain his Blessed Mother who was sinless to administer sacrament. Fr. Saunders goes on to say:

“The Mass is not just a ritual meal or pious
remembrance of the Last Supper; the Mass participates in and makes present
now the everlasting, eternal sacrifice of our Lord on the cross and His
resurrection.

In the same way, through holy orders a priest is called to represent
Christ Himself, to be an alterChristus. For instance, at Mass, the priest
acts — “the priest enacts the image of Christ, in
whose person and by whose power he pronounces the words of consecration.”
(St. Thomas Aquinas, , III, 83 1, 3) In this sense, an
intrinsic part of the sacramental sign of holy orders is the manhood of
Christ.”
And I would add that you wouldn’t want a man portraying Mother Theresa or Margaret Thatcher in a movie. And before you go too far in extolling the glories of ancient Greece you take note that before they made up their first fertility god Herm they were worshipping piles of rocks. And certainly their philosophers were brilliant but they never had a single university, nor did the Romans. The Catholic Church established the first universities–along with the first hospitals, orphanages, and shelters for the poor. And of course the first bingo halls.

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, September 17, AD 2013 9:32pm

“Priestesses were very common in the ancient world.” So were women goddesses. “In persona Christi”, Christ, the revelation of God. Any person called to the priesthood must have a vocation. If Jesus did not call women before, Jesus will not call women now.

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, September 17, AD 2013 9:35pm

Anzlyne: Will have coffee with you every morning, except when we have tea.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, September 18, AD 2013 2:44am

Jamey Brown

I was merely suggesting that the exclusion of women from the Jewish and Christian priesthood cannot have a merely cultural explanation, given that priestesses were very common in the ancient world. Their exclusion must have rested on theological grounds, not cultural or social ones.

Mary de Voe appears to agree, but there is still the question of why women were excluded from the Aaronic priesthood, which may have some light to shed on the topic.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, September 18, AD 2013 3:05am

Mary de Voe wrote, “’Priestesses were very common in the ancient world.’ So were women goddesses.”

True enough, but Delphi was a shrine of Apollo and Dordona a temple of Zeus, both male divinities. Iphigenia became a priestess of Posidon, another male deity. It is not as if male deities had priests and goddesses had priestesses.

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, September 18, AD 2013 7:04am

The atheist denies to God the free will to create man. Made in the image of God in free will, man has the free will and freedom to choose between God and wickedness. The tendency and temptation to wickedness is called concupiscence by the Catholic Church and not as the atheist claims that the Church proclaims man to be wicked, but that man has a tendency to wickedness. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. The Catholic Church points the way toward holiness and the avoidance of evil, the same evil which Dawkins has embraced. Dawkins denies the existence of his rational, immortal soul and God and complains that God and His Holy Church are to blame for all the evil in the world. Makes sense doesn’t it?

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, September 18, AD 2013 7:07am

Jesus is the revelation of God. If God wants women priests, God will give women a vocation to the priesthood. If I were to become a priest, I would have been born a man.

anzlyne
anzlyne
Wednesday, September 18, AD 2013 8:19am

“Priestesses were very common in the ancient world.” So were women goddesses” ()Mary DeVoe

Yes – beware Greeks bearing gifts! 🙂 (ref. MPS mention greek gift to renaissance)

do you suppose that eldest daughters were not made Aaronic priestesses because they didn’t want to do it? that was some pretty heavy lifting,not to say bloody mess over and over again- yeich!

Judith Crowley
Judith Crowley
Wednesday, September 18, AD 2013 11:16am

This is the first time I have actually witnessed RD spewing his sickness, hatred, anguished ,twisted soul in person. watching the crowd cheer him on was amazing,
It was like seeing Dante’s Inferno in a modern adaptation.

Jamey Brown
Jamey Brown
Saturday, September 21, AD 2013 1:01am

Comment on Anzlyne:
As GK Chesterton said, “In a world without God there will be no room for man.”
Comment to Judith Crowley:
It was the first time I had heard Dawkins too, and it was disappointing that he was so shallow. As they say he’s a mile wide and an inch deep. At least Hitchens was articulate; he had some clever turns of phrase, although completely wrong. But as you say, Dawkins just said the old false clichés about the Church structured to inflame the crowd—probably on a weekday because none of them had jobs.
One of the myths that he perpetuates is that the birth of children in poor countries—here we go with that horrible “life stuff” that the Church loves—is the cause of poverty.

There’s plenty of food for the world. It’s the greed of the rulers, in collusion with big business—the groups that he really represents, not the toothless goons cheering for him–that keeps the food and medicines, etc. from freely flowing. And no, I am absolutely not advocating socialism. Look at the atrocities of famine in the atheist socialist “Utopias” of the former Soviet Union, China, and North Korea.

I think that Holy Mother Church with her cardinal virtue of charity, the Church that is the biggest charity in the world, that started the first hospitals, orphanages, and shelters for the poor is the answer, and has always been, not the cause of poverty.

I could say more about that pathetic Dawkins but I’ve done enough penance for today. All I can say is that he better get a lot of sunscreen cause it’s sure gonna be hot where he’s going if he doesn’t see the Light. But in Dante’s Inferno Satan is frozen in the ice. Well Dawkins could end up right next to him—an atheist gelato. But there’s always hope. In truth I was as bad an atheist as Dawkins until—by God’s grace– I stopped drinking 27 years ago. If the Lord can deliver me, he can deliver anyone.

William P. Walsh
William P. Walsh
Monday, September 23, AD 2013 2:03pm

Richard Dawkins demonstrates his ability to spout nonsense almost as well did Adolf Hitler.

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