I didn’t say that you yourself would say such a thing. I was pretty clear that I was talking about the reactions I am seeing from atheists to the Catholic church scandal — which is similar to what I saw with the Duggar family scandal. It is not a direct statement in those reactions, but implied.
I’ve grown tired of correcting them, but that’s often intepreted as defending the churches, which is not at all what I am doing.
Re: the Atlantic article being a hatchet job — I tried to track down the original Time Magazine interview to which Katie McDonough refers to see what distortions there might be, but after 10 minutes I gave up. I did find several references to Dawkins’ phrase “mild pedophilia,” including one from an atheist. And there is a response to that from Dawkins that remains unsatisfying to me, though it seems to satisfy the author discussing it, HEMANT MEHTA. I see it as the usual “non apology apology,” with the “if…then…” statments that usually accompany such apologies.
Whatever is said in the Atlantic article, he DID use that phrase. That is indisputable, especially since he later tries to explain. He does a bit better job with that, but still, what I say in my extended article that was inspired by Twitter discussions, applies.
I hooked my article to yours because yours is about the myths regarding atheist sexuality, and this is another myth [whether you subscribe to it or not]: that someohow not being religious is a prophylactic against pedophila.
To me it’s like a moment in my personal history where the Associated Press took a picture of my third grade class on the steps of our school in Litterock, CA, in 1957, with the caption asserting that Littlerock, CA, was superior to Little Rock, AR, because it had black faces sprinkled in the picture. Never mind that those white kids were frequent users of the “N-word,” the black kids were all residents of a migrant labor camp, and the teachers treated the black kids differently.
It’s that sense of superiority and knee jerk rejection of anyone who isn’t an atheist that irritates me to no end, and causes me to resist being an ally. Not that you have expressed it. But that sense of superiority among the “atheists in the street” enters every time an atheist blames pedophilia — or any other negative human behavior — on religion.
And there ARE public atheists who do that.
