OR…you could watch FOX News
In this wonderful age of technology it is possible to share your insightful wisdom with the entire planet with just a few clicks. Got some good relationship advice? Want to help people avoid making the same ignorant mistakes you did? Know a funny story that may brighten someone’s day? You can make sure countless people can have the opportunity to soak in the positive and helpful contribution you provide.
Wanna misrepresent someone’s position, accuse them of being a rapist, or just help promote bullshit gossip because you are too stupid to read and unable to comprehend anything even if you could? Unfortunately you can share that with people just as easy. As a bonus you will be acting as a kind of sexual organ that helps breed stupidity my fucking the minds of people who read your words. Reproduction!
The Daily Beast offered the following headline on Sept 10th-
Richard Dawkins: Pedophilia’s OK
it links to a Salon article by KATIE MCDONOUGH titled-
Richard Dawkins defends “mild pedophilia,” says it does not cause “lasting harm”
I’m not sure why Katie picked the title she did or why The Daily Beast decided to ramp it up even more but it would be nice if they would knock it the fuck off already. Isn’t Dawkins name enough of a draw? Even include the word “pedophilia” if you must but leave out the misleading parts, they aren’t doing you or anyone else any favors.
Despite the fact that Katie probably thinks she has an opinion that is bulletproof and can not be called into question that is seldom the case and when you are going to chain a ball of pedophilia to someones leg you should be sure you can do it with facts and an unbiased view.
If you read the article Richard Dawkins says
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 makes it pretty clear his current position is to condemn those behaviors. His defends people’s past ignorance of those behaviors. I wonder if Katie has a problem with the pictures of slave owners on our currency. Shouldn’t we be pissed at people who owned slaves in the past? Are we crazy or something?! We put their faces on our money?! Katie get on this right away please and when you are done there we have about a zillion parents who need to be condemned for spanking their children. To think I haven’t even held my parents accountable for all those spankings! After that we need to go after the public school systems for allowing corporal punishment all those years. It’s like we are supporting child abuse by not shutting those sick bastards down.
Good thing we are born knowing this is harmful
Now that I think about it my parents used to allow my little sister and me to ride in the back of our pickup truck all the time WITH NO SEAT BELTS! Wait a minute….that truck didn’t even have seat belts in the cab! Put the auto industry on the list too.
deep breath…10..9….8…7…6…5…4..3….2…1..ok
People did stupid shit in the past. I know it is hard to understand but they sometimes didn’t know any better are we going to condemn them for their ignorance? We learn things as individuals and we learn things as a society. If we hold everyone accountable for past behaviors we now find unacceptable that is going to have some serious effects on how we portray many people currently held in high regard.
Katie also provides another quote-
As noted by the Religion News Service, Peter Watt, director of child protection at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, called Dawkins’ defense of sexual assault “a terrible slight” to victims of such abuse.
“Mr. Dawkins seems to think that because a crime was committed a long time ago we should judge it in a different way,” Watt continued. “But we know that the victims of sexual abuse suffer the same effects whether it was 50 years ago or yesterday.”
Don’t we have manslaughter or negligent homicide laws? Why is it we have those laws? Why don’t we just lump any killing of a human by another human as straight murder? Because intent matters. The knowledge of how an act will effect another person, the acceptance of behaviors by society, or the motivation all matter.
We didn’t even have any real studies on child molestation until the 1920s. We didn’t pass the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act until 1974. No one knew what kind of damage could be done until we learned from studying the effects.
in 1986 Congress passed the Child Abuse Victims’ Rights Act. Why do you think it took so long to pass an act on behalf of children? Was there a large portion of the population that was interested in allowing children to continue being abused? No, we were stupid and we lagged. Even today I hear about laws being passed and think “What the hell? We didn’t already tell people that wasn’t okay?”
It really doesn’t seem to matter if we think a behavior should have obviously been considered wrong since the beginning of time, many many times this hasn’t been the case. (see; hindsight 20/20)
I know some things people have considered acceptable in the past are horrible and harmful. No one is denying that, Richard Dawkins included. Richard was speaking about his own experiences and observations. Just as we should accept when victims tell us about how they have been negatively effected we should also accept when victims talk about not feeling harmed without accusing them of slighting others. Do we want people to start telling lies? Should Richard say he was caused long-lasting harm because if he tells the truth it means others are lying?
I’m shocked at the number of skeptics who can’t apply logic evenly or follow their thoughts to the conclusion when that logic is applied. Yes there are terrible, terrible things that happen in the world. Some of those things were allowed because of ignorance. You can do your part by minimizing the amount of ignorance not spreading it or worse yet growing it yourself. You know better.
Stupid And The Daily Beast
