How Much of Woke Academia Would Like to Destigmatize Peodphlia?

How much of the academic social science world is behaving as if they are trying to incrementally normalize pedophilia?

We recent saw an example of such a professor who thinks we need to destigmatize pedophilia. 

Walker explained that people can be attracted to children without acting on it.

“It’s less stigmatizing than other terms like pedophile,” Walker said. “A lot of people when they hear the term pedophile, they automatically assume that it means a sex offender. And that isn’t true. And it leads to a lot of misconceptions about attractions toward minors.”

This professor eventually resigned, but the professor seems to have several supportive colleagues in academia.

For example:

The AAUP’s ODU Chapter President, Dr. Daniel Richards, said the organization stands in solidarity with Walker……Richards went on to say Walker’s work is part of a larger movement in their field, to try and reframe child sexual abuse as a preventable public health problem.

A larger movement, eh?

Then there is Elizabeth Letourneau, director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.  The Washington Post helped her views to get a larger hearing.  Letourneau writes:

Trans Professor Doesn’t Want Anyone to Use the term “Pedophile”

Interesting…..

In an interview with the Prostasia Foundation, professor Dr. Allyn Walker argues for the use of the term “minor-attracted people” — or MAPs — to describe people attracted to children.

Walker explained that people can be attracted to children without acting on it.

“It’s less stigmatizing than other terms like pedophile,” Walker said. “A lot of people when they hear the term pedophile, they automatically assume that it means a sex offender. And that isn’t true. And it leads to a lot of misconceptions about attractions toward minors.”

Yes, nothing worse than misconceptions about attraction toward minors.

In the interview, Walker stressed that child sexual abuse is never okay. They explained there is a difference between attraction and behavior.

Walker said there is no “morality” attached to attraction because that’s something we can’t help. They said it’s the response to that attraction that’s either good or bad.

I’m not sure I agree (more on this later, perhaps). But if I go along, and weigh only the response, then yes, at that point the response is either to deny the attraction or to indulge it. People can make that choice. And it would be morally wrong to indulge one’s desire to have sex with children.

The Dumb Atheist

Atheist PZ Myers is baffled:

What baffles me, though, is that after that silly rant misinterpreting DNA to distort it into support for the author’s weird hatred of gay and trans folk, he announces that DNA is bogus and fake, because it’s found in bullshit things like dinosaurs and apes, and that DNA has nothing to do with heredity. So why is he making up stories about DNA in the first place?

Earth to Dumbass. It’s quite likely you are dealing with a Poe. Ever consider that obvious possibility? Well??

Thought not.

I thought atheists were supposed to be smart.

Concerned about Covid, Social Justice Atheists Beat Dog to Death

From CNN:

A series of loud bangs startle the sleeping corgi, driving it out of its bed. The door opens and two people dressed in full hazmat suits enter the living room, one carrying a crowbar and another a yellow plastic bag.”Did the leader say we need to settle it right here on the spot?” one of them can be heard asking. “Yes,” the other replies, as he proceeds to move a table the corgi was hiding under, and strike the animal on the head with the crowbar. The dog whimpers and runs off camera to another room.The unsettling scene, captured by a security camera and shared online by the dog’s owner, shows the last moments before the pet was killed in its home by Covid prevention workers in the Chinese city of Shangrao, in southeastern Jiangxi province, on Friday, while the corgi’s owner was undergoing compulsory quarantine in a nearby hotel.

In the mind of the atheist, the ends justify the means. So, in the name of public health, the leader says we must beat the helpless little dog to death. We must protect the collective.

Oh, and I read the woman never tested positive for Covid.

CRT Teacher Proselytizes in the Classroom

From here:

An 11th grade English class at a New York state high school included a presentation that mirrored critical race theory, telling students that America and white people are racist.

According to screenshots obtained by nonprofit parent group Parents Defending Education, a Powerpoint shown to students at Great Neck North High School featured a number of slides on race that appeared to portray the U.S. as a systemically racist country that has not progressed since its founding, and claimed that every white person is racist based solely on their skin color.

The teacher requests that the class take a pledge, agreeing to “confront our own roles in a racist system,” “commit to calling out our own racist tendencies and those of others, even at the expense of exposing white fragility” and “to view antiracism as a lifelong process that we will work toward relentlessly.”

Too bad we don’t know the name of the teacher. Someone could find her and ask if she’d take the anti-pedophile pledge.

The Anti-Pedophile Pledge

It’s simple:

Pedophilia is disgusting. It is wrong and should always remain illegal.

If you agree, let the world know in the comments section.

What is Secular Privilege? Here are 10 Everyday Examples

When trying to better understand what white privilege is supposed to be, I discovered a series of articles that help by providing concrete examples, such as What Is White Privilege? Here Are 9 Everyday Examples by Suzannah Weiss.   As I was reading through these, it occurred to me that the social justice movement has been suspiciously silent about a another form of privilege that may be just as extensive  – secular privilege.

Let me use the first seven examples of white privilege  from the Weiss article to show they could just as well represent examples of secular privilege (it would help to read that article before this one).   I’ll start by again quoting Weiss, with a few word changes, and quote her examples with the appropriate word changes.   I will then add three more examples of my own.

Let’s begin.

If you’re a secular person who has trouble understanding your privilege, here are some examples proving that it definitely exists. It’s not your fault that you benefit from these privileges, but you can still work to help others benefit from them too.

1.Your Wages Aren’t Lower Because You are Religious

While I was unable to find any solid studies that compare the income of religious vs. secular people, this Pew Research survey found that atheists and agnostics have a higher household income than members of most religions.  For example, while almost 60% of atheists have an income of more than $50,000 per year, only about 30% of Baptists do.

While the Pew data don’t measure religiosity itself, it is worth noting that the religious group with the highest household incomes also happens to be the least religious.   In this survey, 58% of people who made less than $30,000 a year self-reported that religion was very important in their lives, while 58% of the people who made more than $100,000 reported that religion was at most “somewhat important.”

2.People Don’t Make Assumptions About Your Intelligence Because Of Your Religion

A common stereotype about religious people is that they are stupid.

The stereotype is even proudly perpetuated by the social sciences – Religious People Are Less Intelligent Than Atheists, Concludes New Study.

A Track Record of Failure

According to astrophysicist Paul Sutter:

Life, including intelligent life, evolved on Earth. Yet there shouldn’t be anything particularly remarkable about our planet; it’s just another random world in the galaxy. So if intelligent life happened here, it must be pretty common — common enough that we should be seeing signs of alien civilizations all over the place.

So, where is everybody?

This is the heart of the infamous Fermi paradox, and it’s the main argument used to fuel the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). At first glance, it seems immediately obvious that we should not be alone in the universe, and so if we look hard enough, we should see evidence for intelligence.

Perhaps aliens are blasting radio signals for us to listen to. Perhaps they’re just generally blasting the radio, and we happen to pick it up. Perhaps they’ve left artifacts in the solar system, designed to monitor us or just hang around. Perhaps they’ll engage in mega-engineering projects, like enclosing their star in a swarm of solar panels. Or perhaps they’ll just play around and contaminate their star with heavy metals to announce their presence.

After over half a century of SETI, however, we’ve found nothing. No radio signals. No artifacts. No mega-engineering. To date, after over a hundred dedicated searches, we have absolutely no evidence for any intelligent life in our galaxy, or even in the universe.

Of course, this means there should be no atheists who believe ETI exist (or even likely exists). Yet there are many that do. Just more evidence that their “no evidence” posturing is just that – only posturing.

BTW, now that I think of it, after over a half century of abiogenesis research, we still have no Theory of Abiogenesis.

The Atheist’s Delusion

Over at his blog, social justice atheist PZ Myers tries to explain what atheism is. He unknowingly acknowledges that modern day atheism is built on the god of the gaps logic:

We’ve had the successes of science to undermine belief in god. Materialism seems to work so much better, you know? So atheists and agnostics and even some religious freethinkers managed to mostly kill god.

For some reason, atheists have never figured out that the above is a valid move only if the god of the gaps logic is sound. Yet atheists insist the god of the gaps logic is a fallacy.

Then Myers proceeds to lay out the moral duty atheists supposedly have:

Another day, another abusive teacher

Hmmm. The same profession that wants to indoctrinate children with Woke ideology (and lie to parents about their intentions) also seems to have an abuse problem. Here’s one that just became known:

A Florida high school English teacher was arrested and charged with hitting a student in the face, two days after the teacher received a “Teacher of the Year” award, according to a police report obtained by Insider.

The conflict began when Caroline Melanie Lee, 60, received the award from Duval County Public Schools last Wednesday, and the school district posted the achievement to its Instagram page, the responding officer wrote in the report.

According to the Duval Schools Police report, an unnamed student commented on the recognition post and criticized Lee, accusing her of using the N-word in her classroom. The teacher later admitted to authorities that she did use the slur while reading from the novel “Of Mice and Men” in class, the report said.

Though the student in question was not in any of Lee’s classes this year, the teacher requested to speak with the student in-person to discuss the Instagram comment, the Florida Times-Union reported.