What is it about people that molest children and religion? It seems the two go hand in hand with each other. Between all the altar boy abuse by Catholic priests and the recent Penn State scandal regarding assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky diddling children, it really makes me wonder about the scale that religious people judge morality on. It is also incredibly infuriating when groups like Answers In Genesis flippantly sponsor billboards along highways that attempt to decry the “dangers of atheism” when the proof is in the pudding – atheists clearly aren’t part of the problem.
When asked whether he is sexually attracted to young boys in a recent interview with Bob Costas, alleged Penn State pedophile Jerry Sandusky said, “I enjoy young people. I — I love to be around them. I — I — but no I’m not sexually attracted to young boys.” Although all the boys he allegedly molested no doubt have something else to say about that, one fact keeps coming up in my mind – people who are accused of crimes like this, without fail, always practice some form of Christianity.
Sandusky, who it has been reported is a regular churchgoer and has a Bible quote posted on the door of his garage, is currently facing 40 charges of sexual abuse of underage boys. Why does religion seem to breed this kind of mentality? This is not OK.
Answers In Genesis, yet another group devoted to forcing the “word of god” down the throat of every man, woman, and child, has begun a billboard campaign which features a child looking down the barrel of a gun pointed at you, the reader, and so thoughtfully asks, “If God doesn’t matter to him, do you?” The message is clearly flawed and supports the agenda of “teach your kids religion or they will kill you”, but that’s not the only problem with this. With religion being directly responsible for the deaths of so many people and the cause of so many wars, people killing in the name of god and committing other heinous acts while all the while claiming their own morality is a common theme these days.
With all the scandals over the years involving the Catholic Church, altar boys, and priests, pedophilia clearly seems to have become something that god accepts. Yet these same people have the gall to fund a billboard campaign that claims that atheism is the cause of violence, not to mention all the rest of the ills of society. As an atheist, I can confirm that my set of moral beliefs doesn’t differ much, if at all, from the “acceptable” form of morality so espoused by religion.
This is because people intrinsically know what is right and what is wrong. The only difference is that people like me don’t need to attribute it to a book.
According to Pope Benedict XVI, in a traditional Christmas address given on November 12 in anticipation of the Christmas season, “In the 1970s, pedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children. It was maintained – even within the realm of Catholic theology – that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”
Isn’t that a telling statement about the attitude of Christianity in general? This is where the crux of the problem lies. When the pope himself suggests that pedophilia was somehow acceptable as recently as the 1970s, it legitimizes it among the minds of the sick and twisted. I am not a huge believer in there being true “evil” in the world but I do know that those who molest boys, kill people and start wars in the name of religion, and vilify atheism as if it is the one threatening society are pretty backwards. And in the end, all of this reverse-logic seems to come from one book and an invisible man who is watching your actions who apparently condones the molesting of children and murder.
Gerry Wachovsky is a graduate student and columnist for the Daily 49er.
