Friday, April 16, 2010

Richard Dawkins on child abuse

This is an interesting quote from Richard Dawkins, in the light of his current plan to arrest Pope Benedict.

from his runaway best seller "The God Delusion", pages 315-316:


"Priestly abuse of children is nowadays taken to mean sexual abuse, and I feel obliged, at the outset, to get the whole matter of sexual abuse into proportion and out of the way. Others have noted that we live in a time of hysteria about pedophilia, a mob psychology that calls to mind the Salem witch-hunts of 1692. In July 2000 the News of the World, widely acclaimed in the face of stiff competition as Britain's most disgusting newspaper, organised a 'name and shame' campaign, barely stopping short of inciting vigilantes to take direct violent action against pedophiles. The house of a hospital pediatrician was attacked by zealots unacquainted with the difference between a pediatrician and a pedophile. The mob hysteria over pedophiles has reached epidemic proportions and driven parents to panic. Today's Just Williams, today's Huck Finns, today's Swallows and Amazons are deprived of the freedom to roam that was one of the delights of childhood in earlier times (when the actual, as opposed to perceived, risk of molestation was probably no less).
In fairness to the News of the World, at the time of its campaign passions had been aroused by a truly horrifying murder, sexually motivated, of an eight-year-old girl kidnapped in Sussex. Nevertheless, it is clearly unjust to visit upon all pedophiles a vengeance appropriate to the tiny minority who are also murderers. All three of the boarding schools I attended employed teachers whose affections for small boys overstepped the bounds of propriety. That was indeed reprehensible. Nevertheless, if, fifty years on, they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers, I should have felt obliged to come to their defense, even as the victim of one of them (an embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience).

The Roman Catholic Church has borne a heavy share of such retrospective opprobrium. For all sorts of reasons I dislike the Roman Catholic Church. But I dislike unfairness even more, and I can’t help wondering whether this one institution has been unfairly demonized over the issue, especially in Ireland and America. (my emphasis) I suppose some additional public resentment flows from the hypocrisy of priests whose professional life is largely devoted to arousing guilt about 'sin'. Then there is the abuse of trust by a figure in authority, whom the child has been trained from the cradle to revere. Such additional resentments should make us all the more careful not to rush to judgement. We should be aware of the remarkable power of the mind to concoct false memories, especially when abetted by unscrupulous therapists and mercenary lawyers. The psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has shown great courage, in the face of spiteful vested interests, in demonstrating how easy it is for people to concoct memories that are entirely false but which seem, to the victim, every bit as real as true memories. This is so counter-intuitive that juries are easily swayed by sincere but false testimony from witnesses."

I think the reason Dawkins is saying all this is that he wants to push the idea that teaching religion is mental abuse, and is more serious than physical abuse.

This was written in about 2000. Meanwhile in the Vatican, Cardinal Ratzinger was asking the Pope to give him authority to look over all the claims of sexual abuse in the world, and he was granted that authority in 2001. He then started action against what he called "filth" in the Church.

Given a choice between Cardinal Prof Ratzinger and Prof Dr Dawkins to look after the shop, I know who I would chose.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Ethics for schools

In about a week from now, the trial of secular ethics classes will start in about 10 NSW public schools. I'm very interested to see what the content of the course would be, but the only information I have seen is the following list of topics that was in the newspapers:

* Session One: Getting Started

The first session will be used to set up the class and involve discussion of moral dilemmas.

* Session Two: Fairness

In this session students will be given the opportunity to think about some of the reasons why things are either fair or not fair by judging specific scenarios.

* Session Three: Lying

In this session students will be asked to make relative judgments. They will look at particular cases and determine when it is acceptable to lie and why one lie is more or less acceptable than another.

* Session Four: Ethical Principles

In this session students are asked to think about principles of ethical decision-making. By focusing on principles such as ``You should always tell the truth'' and ``You should keep your promises'', students will see their limitations and the tensions that can exist between them.

* Session Five: Graffiti

This lesson deals with the topic of graffiti. Students are asked to discuss various examples of graffiti and to suggest possible measures that may help to reduce the incidence of graffiti in their local area.

* Session Six: The Use and Abuse of Animals

This session returns to relative judgment and will ask students to think about various ways in which we treat animals and to examine the acceptability of one case by comparison with another.

* Session Seven: Interfering with Nature

In this session, students are asked to decide whether various things people do are acceptable or not acceptable interventions in nature and to develop criteria for making ethical distinctions between different cases.

* Session Eight: Virtues and Vices

In this session the class will be exploring the topic of virtues and vices, in the sense of good and bad character traits. They will be asked to consider whether virtues and vices always correspond to one another.

* Session Nine: Children's Rights

This lesson asks the students to consider whether certain rights should or should not be accorded to them.

* Session Ten: The Good Life

In the final session students will talk about what they need in order to have a good life. It will allow them to apply their knowledge to the central topic in ethics.

Concerning this subject, I have started listening to a series of lectures on ethics by Peter Kreeft

A couple of interesting ideas from his first lecture are:

1) we can distinguish between "big" issues and "little" issues in ethics. The big issues are the foundations, like what is good and evil, are our actions free or determined, is there a god, is there life after death.

The small issues are like law school case studies that apply these ideas to specific examples, but don't explore the foundations, like is  war just, are the developers or environmentalists right? These are important, but not enough. I will be interested to see how much of the school ethics classes are about big or little issues.

2) C.S. Lewis compared ethics to fleet of ships setting sail. There are 3 levels of moral laws important to the fleet:

  1. the laws that tell the ships how to sail so they don't bump into each other
  2. laws about how to keep each of the ships in good order
  3. where is the fleet going, and what is its purpose?

It is popular these days to concentrate on the first of these and ignore the other two. I am also interested to  see how these ideas relate to the content of the school ethics course.

Monday, April 05, 2010

At least an Anglican and Lutheran is prepared to defend Pope Benedict

I saw some newpaper articles that I thought are interesting....
this from Peter Hitchens, the brother of prominent atheist, Christopher Hitchens:
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2010/04/our-nice-furry-archbishop-lost-in-a-barbarous-world-.html


Peter says what he thinks about Dr Rowan Williams' priorities and also has some very interesting comments about the attitude to the new film "Kick Ass" which has just been released here as well as in England.
This is a very detailed defence of Pope Benedict by a Lutheran theologian:
http://www.logia.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=121&catid=39:web-forum&Itemid=18


Another interesting recent article is about child abuse cases in state institutions in East Germany and in non-religious schools in Germany:
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5421548,00.html


I haven't seen any mention of this story of abuse in Germany in our media. I suppose the fact that the Pope isn't mentioned means no-one here is interested. I wonder why?

The People are Revolting

Its interesting to see that it is possible to use the internet to go over the top of the mainstream media on issues that really matter to people. Long may it continue.


For example the petition that has been started to remove lads' mags from the lolly counter in your local shop:


http://www.sayno4kids.com/blog/
http://www.kf2bk.com/
http://www.collectiveshout.org/


More strength to the arms of Melinda Tankard-Reist and all the other women (they seem to be all women) behind these campaigns.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Rage against God

An interesting interview with Peter Hitchens about his new book.

Press Diversity and Pope Benedict

regarding all the recent stories about Pope Benedict, I read two articles about this by two English journalists, and its hard to believe they are talking about the same thing:


firstly, Damian Thompson in the London Telegraph


Then Peter Popham in The Independent (cut and past'ed in todays Herald)

Its interesting to see how "commentary" can be very different, depending on who writes it.


I also read a couple of other articles (by priests) which I think give a reasonable background and description of the real facts of this case, by

Fr John Allen SJ

and

Archbishop Vincent Nicholls

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

who needs paper, bookshelves and dust?

Something to think about.

28,000 app developers out there, and 280 million apps downloaded last December. Any publisher who doesn't publish everything first on ebook is cutting their own throats.

Friday, March 12, 2010

The Brothers Hitchens

A fascinating and moving article by Peter Hitchens about the parallel lives of him and his brother, Christopher.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

porn 80-20 rule

an interesting article in today's paper about the government proposal to filter hard core porn on the internet:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/opposition-grows-to-internet-filter-20100224-p3ma.html
Quote from the newspaper article: "Despite the vocal opposition, McNair Ingenuity research released a fortnight ago found support for the filter running at 80 per cent."


From all the rants on the internet, it sounds like most people oppose internet filtering or hard core porn, but it turns out to be only a small minority. Maybe it shows that 20% of the population either make money out of, or consume hard core porn. Depressing thought, huh?


On the other hand, Apple is removing explicit material from its iPhone/iTouch app store:

http://www.businessinsider.com/apples-war-on-porn-is-just-getting-started-2010-2
the obvious conclusion is that Apple want to make sure that when they release the new iPad next month, it doesn't get publicity for being a porn device. They clearly also believe that 80% of the population don't want the porn, so commercial reality makes them clean it up.

Its a pity some of the media who oppose internet filtering and therefore support internet porn aren't exposed to the same commercial (let alone moral) realities.