2% of the Catholic Church clergy are paedophiles - Pope

Dogma can be, oh sure. All one has to do is to look at the history of the Soviet Union to see that. Marxist theory became marxist dogma, especially under Stalin, and look how that turned out. No one (other than Stalin himself maybe) was able to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, and criticize after dinner (especially that last one).

But I don’t think that means all religion necessarily has to be rigid and dogmatic. That’s my beef with Dawkins. He lumps all into the same category and ignores the very real diversity in how people actually practice. For me, it comes down to actions. Someone believes in a god, I don’t care. They use that to try and restrict other’s lives, well, then I do. they use it to help others, that’s great. Plus, he comes down harder on Catholicism and Islam, and that really irritates me. He’s English… why not take on the Angelican church, which was historically complicit with British colonization?

Yeah, I’ve noticed that agnostics tend to be the least dogmatic people I know…

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The thing about dogma is, one has lost the capability to persuade people by influence and reason. The transmission of common sense is lost. The population is just made to blindly follow rules, which creates a matrix through which abuse of power is simplified.

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I agree with your point. But my point was that anything can become dogma, not just religion, and not all religion has to be dogmatic. That’s where I split from Dawkins and at least some of the new atheists. I don’t like dogma of any kind, even if it’s on a topic I generally agree with.

Also, common sense, as I see it, is social constructed. One time and place has a different common sense than another. There was a time in human history when it was common sense to have slavery as a form of labor (and in some cases, that’s still true), but the general common sense now is that it is wrong. See what I mean?

Well, “common sense” in its kind of Yorkshire meaning. If you look at something and see a practical and useful outcome that balances the givens, it’s common sense. But common sense includes human decency.

I agree that common sense should include human decency… not everyone agrees with that assessment, which gets us back into the realm of dogma, I think.

Also, sorry, but you mentioned Yorkshire, and as an American, this is what comes to mind… my sincerest apologies…

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Not all religion has to be dogmatic… but a great deal of it is, and the fact it’s dogmatic is kind of centrally crucial and inherent to a certain kind of religion, which I think deserves to be distinguished from other kinds. I don’t even think of those other sorts as ‘religion’ - call it spirituality or whatever else, because the term religion has dogmatic overtones; one sense of it is a perfect synonym for dogma.

Anybody who’s interested in comprehending reality and having their point of view taken seriously is going to want to distance themselves from that…

So why not? Let’s start reserving the term ‘religion’ for stuff that’s ‘like a religion’ to people.

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While I suspect you might be right, I think it again comes down to practice in real life. Something might seem dogmatic when heard, but in context it might actually be less so.

As far as comprehending reality goes, it depends on the discussion and who is involved. Not everyone agrees on what reality means, and I’m not just talking about in terms of cosmology here. Think about our collective inability to decide on what the cause of problems in our societies are. You and I might agree that large corporations are the problem and should be reigned in, but someone else might point to “big government” as the problem. We all agree that there is a problem, but not what the cause is… then we have to call in an expert and, well, I’ll let Laurie Anderson take it from here:

I definitely agree - priests hold one of the unique positions to garner trust in young children, and they can easily abuse that trust. Only certain occupations have that intrinsic quality (teachers are another one). I didn’t deny at all that power and control are a portion of a pedophile’s psyche - my only aim was to make sure that there was a reminder that rape comes in many forms. Some pedophiles never rape their victims, but do maintain strict control.

When rape does occur, it may go on for years. I had the unhappy experience of serving on a jury for a juvenile rape case a few years ago. It involved a father who’d been molesting his partially-deaf daughter (the disability helped to isolate her) from the time she was 4-12. Rapes started at 8. He was so comfortable with the situation that he would take her to hotels for sex, all while still married to his wife.

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God, how do you deal with being on a jury like that? I can’t even imagine being able to be objective before hearing the evidence against him.

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It was not an easy week. Fortunately (!?!) he had confessed his involvement twice, once to the police at arrest and then again in holding. The thing being debated on various counts was the duration of the attacks and the type that occurred.

In the end, 8 counts were issued against him, for various reasons. He was found guilty on all charges, and we did absolutely follow the judge’s instructions on definition of the crimes. I know we did not sway from following the letter of the law. The only defense attempted for him was a claim that his daughter showed no physical damage, so he couldn’t have “hurt her”. This was from an exam at age 12, when he’d been raping her for years with various devices leading up to full penetration at age 8 - physical injuries were minor because he wanted to keep the abuse hidden.

There’s more, but it really is an awful story. I only brought it up because people sometimes don’t understand how long a person can be molested for, or that physical injuries may be lacking in exams. These types of rapes really don’t match “power” or “anger” rapes toward adults, and juries can be confused by the different types.

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What an awful story. Presumably, cases like it every week across the USA.

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Yes, but I’d guess elsewhere too. I’m afraid we don’t have a monopoly on awful.

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Yep, I’d guess that, much like military rapes, long term child molestation is heavily underreported. That’s just because of the nature of and participants in the crime.

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Well yeah, but it is a hell of a lot easier to rule out causes… and even assign rough probabilities here and there.

Bring a few pertinent facts to bear, and the picture starts to look clearer (thank fuck for Piketty). Folks interested in refining their paradigms are fairly recognisable by their ability to change their mind. Or acknowledge uncertainty.

Talk about dragging the elephant around the room making it sing.

It’s no more than a question of simple maths. When you concentrate wealth and income, you damage your own and everyone else’s interests. It’s the Mugabe “paradox” - you can be king of the hill, but the less overall activity you allow, the smaller and muddier the hill is.

It’s why I’m forming the long-term belief that the egomaniacs who drive the concentration are responsible for many of the world’s ills; be it wealth, power, influence, access, whatever. The more we let them do it, the worse things will be.

I’m struggling to understand why this wouldn’t be an appropriate response :stuck_out_tongue:

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Sadly, it really is that wherever kids congregate, you find these people:

My immediate reaction to reading that sentence (prior to reading the link itself) is that it probably proves that Disney is more aggressive in investigating such crimes and handing the perpetrators over to the legal system; their higher number is probably an indication that they’re the MORE responsible employer, from a victim’s POV, not that they hired more perpetrators to begin with.

But then, I’ve been reading a lot about the Catholic church recently, so my assumptions on current “ethical” business practices and percentage of workforce engaged in sexually-based crimes are probably skewed.

What I’m learning over my life of child-rearing is that this sort of horrid activity and desire is far more prevalent than the world would like to admit to itself.

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Now you’re just being a vector for the transmission of that Hate-on-Dawkins meme.
He really has you pipped to the post.