Oh My. Atheist Richard Dawkins is saying a little pedophilia never hurt anybody. No seriously. That’s actually what he said. I’m not being smart. Really.

The man who called Pope Benedict XVI “a leering old villain in a frock” is defending a little bit of light touching under the shorts with kids.

I know you’re not going to believe it so I’m linking it right from Salon Magazine. (Not that Salon is trustworthy but this story is everywhere and I’m too lazy to find the original source.)

Richard Dawkins attempted to defend what he called “mild pedophilia,” which, he says, he personally experienced as a young child and does not believe causes “lasting harm.”

Dawkins went on to say that one of his former school masters “pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts,” and that to condemn this “mild touching up” as sexual abuse today would somehow be unfair.

“I am very conscious that you can’t condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours. Just as we don’t look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as we would condemn a modern person for racism, I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can’t find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today,” he said.

Plus, he added, though his other classmates also experienced abuse at the hands of this teacher, “I don’t think he did any of us lasting harm.”

Isn’t this the same guy who called for arresting Pope Benedict XVI after it was definitively proven that he had absolutely nothing to do with covering up or excusing pedophilia.

Dawkins is going to grow increasingly embarrassing for atheists in years to come. They celebrated him and put him up on their shoulders and now he’s defecating all over them. For a while they’re going to try explaining away the stink but pretty soon it’ll be clear where it’s coming from.

It’ll actually be sad to watch because Richard Dawkins is a lot like Anthony Weiner in that the more irrelevant they become the more outspoken and brash and needy they become. Dawkins will be chasing down microphones and cameras for years to come saying ever crazier things.

*subhead*Crazy.*subhead*