Dawkins: "Being raised Catholic is worse than child abuse"
355 replies, posted
[B]Raising your children as Roman Catholics is worse than child abuse, according to militant atheist Richard Dawkins.[/B]
In typically incendiary style, [B]Professor Dawkins said the mental torment inflicted by the religion’s teachings is worse in the long-term than any sexual abuse[/B] carried out by priests.
He said he had been told by a woman that while being abused by a priest was a ‘yucky’ experience, [B]being told as a child that a Protestant friend who died would ‘roast in Hell’ [/B]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: ‘[B]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.[/B]’
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.
‘[B]But the mental abuse of being told about Hell, she took years to get over.[/B]’
Professor Dawkins, a biologist who revolutionised the theory of evolution with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, added: ‘It seems to me that telling children that they really, really believe that people who sin are going to go to Hell and roast forever – that your skin grows again when it peels off with burning – it seems to me to be intuitively entirely reasonable that that is a worse form of child abuse, that will give more nightmares, that will give more genuine distress because they really believe.’
The comments were condemned by Peter Saunders, the chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood.
He said: ‘At NAPAC we know that recovery from sexual abuse can take a lifetime. People never get over it. It is entirely unhelpful to make such comparisons.’
Roman Catholic former Tory MP Ann Widdecombe said: ‘[B]Dawkins doesn’t know what to say next to get attention. No sane person would believe that being brought up in a force for good, in the Ten Commandments, in the Beatitudes, and in the Gospels can be worse than child abuse.[/B]'
[URL]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2251963/Being-raised-Catholic-worse-child-abuse-Latest-incendiary-claim-atheist-professor-Richard-Dawkins.html[/URL]
I'd like Dawkins more if he wasn't occasionally a colossal ass about being an atheist.
Don't really give a shit about any religion, but it's pretty damn awful to trivialize rape like this.
Christ, did Dawkins lend his brain to somebody or something?
Nice to see that Dawkins is making himself a more and more intolerable academic with more pointless, empty controversy. All of the shit he says serves no purpose but to alienate certain atheists from each other and [I]further[/I] alienate theists from everyone else.
I'm sure in academia he's written some perfectly valid stuff (I find it a little hard to believe, but I don't see how else he'd be in such high standing in the academic community), but his mainstream shit is just one irritating whine after the next.
[quote]He said: ‘At NAPAC we know that recovery from sexual abuse can take a lifetime. People never get over it. It is entirely unhelpful to make such comparisons.’[/quote]
the thing is, dawkins is more correct than even he realises
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rind_et_al._controversy[/url]
[quote]The authors stated their goal was to determine whether CSA caused pervasive, significant psychological harm for both males and females, controversially concluding that the harm caused by child sexual abuse was not necessarily intense or pervasive,[3] that the prevailing construct of CSA was not scientifically valid, as it failed empirical verification, and that the psychological damage caused by the abusive encounters depends on other factors such as the degree of coercion or force involved.[1] The authors concluded that even though CSA may not result in lifelong, significant harm to all victims, this does not mean it is not morally wrong and indicated that their findings did not imply current moral and legal prohibitions against CSA should be changed.[1]
Seven years after the publication of Rind et al.'s (1998) meta-analysis, Heather Marie Ulrich, with two colleagues, replicated the study in The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice and confirmed its main findings.[4][/quote]
can we please stop having this extreme atheism that makes these attacks which accomplish nothing other than making the rest of us look like dumbasses
How can you even [I]compare[/I] the two?
[QUOTE=Rellow;38934123]can we please stop having this extreme atheism that makes these attacks which accomplish nothing other than making the rest of us look like dumbasses[/QUOTE]
This is not 'extreme' atheism by any means, this is just some random schlub waving his dick around to attract attention.
[QUOTE=SockFC;38934154]How can you even [I]compare[/I] the two?[/QUOTE]
because child sexual abuse is made up to be a much bigger deal than it really is, see the study i linked to
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;38934156]because child sexual abuse is made up to be a much bigger deal than it really is, see the study i linked to[/QUOTE]
I think his point is more that they're dissimilar, than one is necessarily much worse.
Is the kind of harm involved in sexual abuse really even the same kind as that in religious upbringing?
[QUOTE=Robbobin;38934179]I think his point is more that they're dissimilar, than one is necessarily much worse.
Is the kind of harm involved in sexual abuse really even the same kind as that in religious upbringing?[/QUOTE]
Well he explains it pretty well I think
[quote]‘It seems to me that telling children that they really, really believe that people who sin are going to go to Hell and roast forever – that your skin grows again when it peels off with burning – it seems to me to be intuitively entirely reasonable that that is a worse form of child abuse, that will give more nightmares, that will give more genuine distress because they really believe.’[/quote]
[editline]22nd December 2012[/editline]
this isn't something new he's said either, I just checked my copy of the God Delusion, it's in there too.
It is pretty cruel to tell a child they're going to burn in hell forever if they masturbate. I was raised Catholic, and they say some really stupid shit.
I see where he is coming from, bringing up a kid to feel guilty for things that aren't worth being guilty about can be pretty scarring depending on the execution.
[QUOTE=Robbobin;38934179]I think his point is more that they're dissimilar, than one is necessarily much worse.
Is the kind of harm involved in sexual abuse really even the same kind as that in religious upbringing?[/QUOTE]
Depends on how hardline the religious upbringing is. If your parents are extremists who take huge parts of the bible literally, I'd say that yes it can be very traumatic, whilst if it's just an average goes to mass once a week parent then it's not going to harm the child at all. I mean, pressing a whole "born into sin" on an innocent child can be pretty brutal, think of how unfair it is to think that your god is shitting on you from the start because of what some guy 6000 years ago did.
Then I guess it also depends on how bad the sexual abuse is. There's really too many variables to make an interesting comparison.
was raised catholic, don't think it was that bad..infact enjoyed it quite a bit, I went to church groups and stuff, the priest was very funny on the mass on sundays etc... I'm not religious now and I don't follow catholic religion but I think Dawkins went overboard with this statement
Using religion to abuse a child is different than saying "you were raised catholic is worse than child abuse"
remind me of the guy who said if he could eliminate either religion or rape he eliminate religion.
I can kind of believe that.
I became a Christian after some school friends took me to church a few times and it was terrible knowing that my non-religious mother was going to end up in hell. I'd cry just thinking about the fact that she didn't accept Jesus, and I'd try to convince her to believe. It wouldn't work, and it'd just make me more sad.
I was taught that if you think of sinning, it's equivalent to actually sinning in God's eyes. I was also taught that God and people in heaven could see and hear your thoughts all the time, which was pretty traumatizing. A blasphemous thought would cross my mind (such as "God is mean" or "What if god isn't real") and I'd start crying and shouting "No God! I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it! I'm sorry!".
All this stuff was happening when I was in elementary school. I know the article is about Catholicism, but I think that the problem is fundamentalist Christianity. And even though I eventually grew out of those irrational thoughts, I still remember how terrible I felt. I really don't think young children should be exposed to religion in this way. I think it is a brain-washing technique, because children are very impressionable. You can teach them the fundamental things that no adult would believe (Hell, virgin birth, etc), and it will be engraved in their mind.
[QUOTE=Terminutter;38934209]Depends on how hardline the religious upbringing is. If your parents are extremists who take huge parts of the bible literally, I'd say that yes it can be very traumatic, whilst if it's just an average goes to mass once a week parent then it's not going to harm the child at all. I mean, pressing a whole "born into sin" on an innocent child can be pretty brutal, think of how unfair it is to think that your god is shitting on you from the start because of what some guy 6000 years ago did.[/QUOTE]
You don't need to be super religious, mainstream catholicism teaches you'll go to hell for all the same trivial sins if you don't confess. In fact, come to think of it, confession was really scary too.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;38934196]
‘It seems to me that telling children that they really, really believe that people who sin are going to go to Hell and roast forever – that your skin grows again when it peels off with burning – it seems to me to be intuitively entirely reasonable that that is a worse form of child abuse, that will give more nightmares, that will give more genuine distress because they really believe.’[/QUOTE]
It's funny because that isn't what Christians believe Hell is.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;38934156]because child sexual abuse is made up to be a much bigger deal than it really is, see the study i linked to[/QUOTE]
Child abuse covers more than just sexual abuse though
I know people call Dawkins an ass, but he says the harsh bitter truth that we tend to ignore when we become more passive about people's ideologies; at least at Facepunch, we've become much more accepting of religion than we were in 2007-2009, and that's a good thing, but there still needs to be someone out there that can point out the bullshit. Some of my closest friends were Catholic, and honestly it was one of the biggest reasons they had the issues they had. One of my friends was so afraid of being sent to hell for eternal damnation, that she literally harmed herself every time she had a "tempting" thought about men. Her sister was a lesbian, and her family disowned her, she didn't talk to her again until she graduated high school, and now she herself is in an abusive relationship that she has no desire to get out of.
While I'm not citing the religion to blame, since I know that dumb-ass parents can be dumb-ass parents regardless of ideologies, the Catholic ideologies that they forced on her, and they way they justified those ideologies led to some horrific results. I'm not saying Child Sexual Abuse isn't bad, or abuse in general, as I was raised with an abusive father and know full well the pain it can bring, but it isn't a stretch to say that being raised being told [b]"you're going to hell for looking at a girl, or thinking about one, or thinking about sinning in any way shape or form. You're an awful monster of sin, repent"[/b] can have some [b]AWFUL[/b] results on an impressionable child. Honestly, worse than CSA in my opinion.
Dawkins is an ass, but he's the ass we need.
[QUOTE=Thom12255;38934271]It's funny because that isn't what Christians believe Hell is.[/QUOTE]
He explicitly stated Catholic, not Christian.
Catholics DO believe in a hell like that.
[QUOTE=Falubii;38934269]You don't need to be religious, mainstream catholicism teaches you'll go to hell for all the same trivial sins if you don't confess. In fact, come to think of it, confession was really scary too.[/QUOTE]
I fucking hated it, went to a Roman Catholic primary school and it was terrible.
lol shut the fuck up
[highlight](User was banned for this post ("Why reply?" - Megafan))[/highlight]
I got so much slack for hating Dawkins over here, now you guys know why I hate this asshole.
[QUOTE=Loriborn;38934277]
Dawkins is an ass, but he's the ass we need.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, that's just what we needed. The world's most famous atheist telling rape victims that being raised religious was what they really should be upset about.
[quote][B]He said he had been told by a woman that while being abused by a priest was a ‘yucky’ experience[/B], being told as a child that a Protestant friend who died would ‘roast in Hell’ was more distressing.[/quote]
wow fuck off and die
[editline]22nd December 2012[/editline]
if you're gonna try to make a retarded-ass point try not to phrase it in a retarded-ass way
[QUOTE=Rellow;38934123]can we please stop having this extreme atheism that makes these attacks which accomplish nothing other than making the rest of us look like dumbasses[/QUOTE]
it's not extreme athiesm, anti-theism at best. I don't understand how you can be an "extreme atheist".
[QUOTE=YouWithTheFace.;38934250]remind me of the guy who said if he could eliminate either religion or rape he eliminate religion.[/QUOTE]
You'd be surprised how often the two connect. Many demigods have been born from people not even realizing they were having sex, or through people who had no choice. Even Jesus was conceived by an angel coming down to Earth and telling Mary "you're having god's son. Deal with it."
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