{"id":20260,"date":"2013-09-10T23:20:23","date_gmt":"2013-09-11T03:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=20260"},"modified":"2013-09-10T23:28:08","modified_gmt":"2013-09-11T03:28:08","slug":"richard-dawkins-mild-paedophilia-not-so-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/richard-dawkins-mild-paedophilia-not-so-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Dawkins: \u201cmild paedophilia\u201d not so bad"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems that the young Richard Dawkins was groped by a teacher; he doesn\u2019t think it did him any \u201clasting harm\u201d. Obviously the teacher was not a Catholic priest or Dawkins would be denouncing him as a leering old villain in a frock<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He also doesn\u2019t seem to object to having been caned. If I were of a psychological bent (I\u2019m not), I might be tempted to consider the applicability to Richard Dawkins of Theodore Dalrymple\u2019s question<\/a> :<\/p>\n

Is flagellation for the purposes of sexual pleasure as English as cricket and buttered crumpets?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or, if I were given to unkindness (other than to bishops, I\u2019m not), I might suggest that Dawkins\u2019 calling a religious upbringing child abuse<\/a> and his encounter with phalangeal meandering “harmless”, is a twisting of values that brings disrepute to respectable atheists everywhere.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, in the last paragraph below, Dawkins tells us that ethical standards should be determined by the values of the day: very fitting for someone who calls himself a cultural Anglican<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In an interview in The Times<\/em> magazine on Saturday (Sept. 7), Dawkins, 72, he said he was unable to condemn what he called \u201cthe mild pedophilia\u201d he experienced at an English school when he was a child in the 1950s.<\/p>\n

Referring to his early days at a boarding school in Salisbury, he recalled how one of the (unnamed) masters \u201cpulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said other children in his school peer group had been molested by the same teacher but concluded: \u201cI don\u2019t think he did any of us lasting harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am very conscious that you can\u2019t condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours. Just as we don\u2019t 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\u2019t find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems that the young Richard Dawkins was groped by a teacher; he doesn\u2019t think it did him any \u201clasting harm\u201d. Obviously the teacher was not a Catholic priest or Dawkins would be denouncing him as a leering old villain … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":12,"footnotes":""},"categories":[274],"tags":[2218,2238],"class_list":["post-20260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-richard-dawkins","tag-paedophilia","tag-richard-dawkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}