'THE DUBLINER', RICHARD DAWKINS AND MRS ELIN WOODS

[ Some people are surprised when a "liberal" magazine like 'The Dubliner' publishes an obscene attack on the white wife of an African-American sports hero. Surely such attacks only come from the likes of the Ku Klux Klan? The problem is that liberals see nothing wrong with the anti-clerical variety of hatred - nor indeed the anti-American variety - and 'The Dubliner' exhibits both.

Are we really supposed to believe that certain types of hatred are morally superior to others? Should we be surprised when people who hate Americans or Catholic priests, vent their spleen on other targets as well?

The following are two articles about 'The Dubliner'. In the first dated October 2002, Richard Dawkins tells Emily Hourican that although sexual abuse is disgusting, it's "not so harmful to the children as the grievous mental harm of bringing up the child Catholic in the first place." The second is a Fox News report regarding 'The Dubliners' attack on Mrs Elin Woods (September 2006).

Rory Connor
20 January 2008]

(A) The God Shaped Hole - The Dubliner, October 2002

ARTICLE SUMMARY (by 'The Dubliner'): "Sexual abuse is disgusting, but it's not as harmful as the grievous mental harm of bringing children up Catholic in the first place."

Richard Dawkins assesses the legacy of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and enters a plea for a religion-free society.

I am delighted that one of the leading Roman Catholic seminaries for the training of young priests in Ireland is closing down because it can't get any recruits. When I read that in the newspaper, it left me smiling for the rest of the day. However, if the Catholic Church does die in Ireland - and I devoutly hope it will - I hope that it will not be replaced by some other idiotic superstition like New Age-ism or some other kind of religion.

The Roman Catholic Church is one of the forces for evil in the world, mainly because of the powerful influence it has over the minds of children. The Catholic Church has developed, over the centuries, brilliant techniques in brain washing children; even intelligent people who have had a proper, full cradle-Catholic upbringing find it hard to shake it off when they reach adulthood. Obviously many of them do - and congratulations to them for it - but even some really quite intelligent people fail to shake it off, powerful evidence of the skill in brainwashing that the Catholic Church exercises. It's far more skilled than, for instance, the Anglican Church, mere amateurs in the game.

The Catholic Church also has an extraordinarily retrogressive stance on everything to do with reproduction. Any sort of new technology which makes life easier for women without causing any suffering is likely to be opposed by the Catholic Church. Regarding the accusations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, deplorable and disgusting as those abuses are, they are not so harmful to the children as the grievous mental harm in bringing up the child Catholic in the first place.

I had a letter from a woman in America in her forties, who said that when she was a child of about seven, brought up a Catholic, two things happened to her: one was that she was sexually abused by her parish priest. The second thing was that a great friend of hers at school died, and she had nightmares because she thought her friend was going to hell because she wasn't Catholic. For her there was no question that the greatest child abuse of those two was the abuse of being taught about hell. Being fondled by the priest was negligible in comparison. And I think that's a fairly common experience.

I can't speak about the really grave sexual abuse that obviously happens sometimes, which actually causes violent physical pain to the altar boy or whoever it is, but I suspect that most of the sexual abuse priests are accused of is comparatively mild - a little bit of fondling perhaps, and a young child might scarcely notice that. The damage, if there is damage, is going to be mental damage anyway, not physical damage. Being taught about hell - being taught that if you sin you will go to everlasting damnation, and really believing that - is going to be a harder piece of child abuse than the comparatively mild sexual abuse.

The word atheism sounds negative; let me call it rationalism. It is a rational view of the world where you stand up proudly, in your humanity, you look life straight in the face, you look the universe straight in the face, you do your level best to understand it, to understand why you exist, what the universe is about, you recognise that when you die that's it, and therefore life is very, very precious and you devote your life to making the world a better place, to leading a good life so when you die you can say to yourself I have led a good life. Now, that seems to me to be a worthwhile goal to put in place of the medieval superstition which is religion. Belief in God doesn't have to be a bad thing, but I think it's a very demeaning thing to the human mind to believe in a falsehood, especially as the truth about the universe is so immensely exciting.

At the beginning of the 21st century, we humans have a real opportunity to learn about and understand the universe, the world, humanity, life, in a way that none of our predecessors have ever come close to. That is a huge privilege, and belief in God simply gets in the way of that. Religion is an irrelevance, it's a distraction, it's a rather boring, parochial falsehood that stands in the way of the glories of true understanding.

www.foxnews.com Wednesday, September 20, 2006

An Irish magazine has infuriated Tiger Woods and the rest of the U.S. Ryder Cup golf team by calling their wives "filth" and running bogus porno pics of Woods' wife.

Editors at The Dubliner apparently didn't know that phony photos purporting to be the golf great's sexy, 26-year-old Swedish spouse have been floating around the Internet for years.

Clueless Dubliner columnist Lou Slips thought they were real ? and used them as an excuse to write a scathing personal attack on Tiger and the other U.S. golfers, who have gathered in Ireland for the biennial America vs. Europe tournament.

"Most American golfers are married to women who cannot keep their clothes on in public," Slips declared under the headline: "Ryder Cup Filth for Dublin?"

The intensely private Woods is reportedly "appalled" by the baseless slam, according to the U.K. Daily Mail, which broke the story.

When the attack article ran, Woods and many of the other U.S. players and their wives had already arrived in Dublin for Friday's tee-off.

The "Filth" layout included a nude pic allegedly of the lithe Nordegren ? but really of a D-cup model who looks more like Pamela Anderson

Despite the obvious fakery, Slips declared that Woods' wife "can be found in a variety of sweaty poses on porn sites across the Web."

Woods wasn't the only American pro golfer to see his wife slimed.

The mag also ran a shot of golfer David Toms' wife, Sonya, clad in a teeny white bikini, and quoted her as saying she finds it "liberating" to wear at home.

Chad Campbell's wife, Amy, was derided as a "large-chested singer who entered 'American Idol' but didn't get anywhere."

Slips then insinuates that "geeky" Jim Furyk's wife, Tabitha, married him for his money.

"Isn't there a law against people like this?" he finishes the sarcastic column.

No one at The Dubliner could be reached for comment. Woods' spokesman, Mark Steinberg, declined to comment.

The K Club ? which is both the site of the tournament and the place where the Americans are staying ? has reportedly banned The Dubliner from the premises.