f you had told me that between child sexual abuse, on the one hand, and religious upbringing, on the other, a person of Richard Dawkins’ intellectual stature would declare religious upbringing on a par with child sexual abuse if not the worse of the two, I would have deemed your remark utterly implausible.  Guess what, I would have been wrong.  In his book, The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006) Dawkins makes just this claim in the sections entitled “Physical and Mental Abuse” and “In Defense of Children”.  This goes to show that no one is immune to being ideologically driven.  There is much in the book that is wonderful and even courageous.  I hope to address some of these ideas on another occasion.

Now, since Mr. Dawkins admits to having been a victim of child abuse (p. 316, para. 1), he clearly can speak about the matter first-hand.  I assume, as Dawkins maintains and illustrates with an example, that there are children who are not psychologically devastated and damaged by a single instance of sexual fondling from an adult.  On page 317, Dawkins tells us of a woman raised Catholic who had been fondled by a priest when she was 7 years old, but who was more distraught over the fact that her playmate, who had tragically died, would be going to hell because she was a Protestant. 

Dawkins remarks, as represented in the preceding paragraph, tell us what we already know, namely that it is always possible for something to have a most unexpected negative impact upon us when we had every reason to expect that it would not; or for something not to have a significant negative impact upon us when we had every good reason to expect that it would. 

We do not expect most people to say that the occasional sexual fondling in youth by this or that adult had next to no impact upon them.  If it were even remotely plausible to have that expectation, sexual abuse could not be the profound harm that we take it to be. 

Richard Dawkins writes:

I am persuaded that the phrase “child abuse” is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like the punishment of unshriven moral sins in an eternal hell (p. 318)

I am perfectly prepared to concede that the story of burning in hell forever is extremely difficult to fathom.  Moreover, I am perfectly prepared to concede that there is a way of indoctrinating a child with that story that is utterly damaging to that child.  For instance, constantly telling a child that she or he is going to hell for not doing the right thing would be unconscionable.,

But most people I know have managed to shake off the story of hell taught to them during their upbringing with little or no difficulty.  By contrast, I know several folks who were the victim of sexual abuse during their childhood; and not a single one of them has been able simply to shake off that damage.  Indeed, I know of one male student (call him Opidopo) whose attitude towards females was severely damaged by a junior high school experience.  The student believed that he did not resist the teacher’s overtures as forcefully as he should have. 

The Opidopo devastation is far more typical of the pain that sexual abuse occasions.  This should come as no surprise.  For sexual abuse is an egregious violation of trust at a most basic level on the part of those whom we deem most trustworthy: parents, uncles, members of the clergy, and so on.  And when there are repeated instances of such abuse, there is the further issue of being powerless to do anything about it. 

Now, I have already acknowledged that the hell story has struck me as difficult to fathom.  But this much is clear: Merely teaching one’s child that story would not constitute a violation of that child’s trust in one; nor, again, would it constitute putting that child in a powerless situation and then harming it.  In a word, teaching one’s child that story does not in any way amount to a form exploitation of the child. 

I understand that for Mr. Richard Dawkins, the very idea of God is just so much nonsense.  But it is utterly irresponsible of him to suggest that religious indoctrination as such parallels child sexual abuse.  This is to use his prestige as an erudite scholar of evolutionary theory in a most malicious and deplorable manner. 

No one denies that religious practices can be abusive; and we do not need the story of the Inca girl who, 500 years ago, was made a human sacrifice (p.327) in order to see this.  Indeed, it is rather disingenuous of him to invoke that story when the point that he wants to make presumably is that religion as it is practiced today is akin to, if not worse than, child sexual abuse.  As a first approximation: death by religious sacrifice at a young age does appear to be considerably worse than being sexually fondled at a young age by an adult. 

Even if there were nothing at all good about religion as it is generally practiced today it would still be quite some distance from child sexual abuse. 

Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.  Sometimes greatness gets in the way of appreciating how those who are less fortunate live.  Whether he likes it or not, religion has across the globe been a source of inspiration and hope for the weary—and not just an occasion to think of ill of the Other.  Perhaps from the lofty heights of Oxford University and international fame, there is no shortage of hope and inspiration. 

But for those without that social standing, it has often been the inspiration and hope afforded by religion that have made the difference between giving up in despair and finding a reason to go to work the next day or to come home to the family.  Religion has made it possible for people to feel engulfed by a sense of majesty whilst living in an utterly shattered reality. 

There is no denying the horrific wrongs done in the name of religion.  But the problem, I suggest, is not so much religion but arrogance.  And arrogance on the part of non-religious in the academy has been a most destructive force to the ideal of open-mindedness.  Nothing has turned inquiring nubile minds into “bigots” like the condemnation of arrogant non-religious professors who truck no disagreement, all the while claiming to be the very embodiment of open-mindedness.   Is Mr. Dawkins a case in point?

Well, there is the Salvation Army and the Red Cross.  Both organizations owe their existence to the Christian spirit of helping others.  There are the people of Le Chambon who stood up to the might of Hitler’s army and saved the lives of thousands of Jews.  But they were Christians who no doubt believed in, and taught their children about, hell.  There is Raoul Wallenberg who risked his Christian life in order to save Jews.  Then there is that nun.  She went by the name Mother Theresa, I believe.  Perhaps these sorts of facts are only for intellectual peons. 

Obviously, I am mocking Dawkins.  But for good reason.  He is a brilliant scientist from whom I have learnt much; and his words have considerable weight.  In the absence of an extraordinarily rich and complex argument: It is misleading and incendiary and downright irresponsible for him, of all people, to put religious upbringing on the same plane as child sexual abuse.  If nothing else, he has dramatically trivialized the horror of child sexual abuse.  As I have already noted: In terms of violating trust and abusing the powerless, and even leaving aside the examples of altruism spawned by religion, there is no comparison whatsoever between religious upbringing and child sexual abuse. 

Mr. Richard Dawkins is way too intelligent not to know that instinctively, especially since (as he has told us) he has been through that abominable experience of having been sexually abused.  And when a man of his intellectual caliber and personal experience says something so egregiously wrong, there are really only two explanations.  One is that his intellect has begun to fail him, after all.  The other is that he has an ideological bone to pick.  In Dawkins’ case, it ain’t the first.  So we know it is the second one.  Call it the Dawkins Delusion ! ! !