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0 pointsrayiner2y ago0 comments

That’s exactly the point though—where is the evidence that churches are doing “much worse per unit of youth exposure?” OP asserts that religious organizations are doing especially bad, but makes no effort to compare sexual abuse rates there against the base rate. OP is the one engaged in motivated reasoning.

An important fact that gets overlooked is that religious organizations are one of the few aspects of civil society that put children in contact with adults. Really the only secular organizations that do so at a large scale are daycares, schools, and sports. It makes no sense to assert, as OP did, that churches are especially full of pedophiles, without offering a comparison against the other environments where children are exposed to adults.

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mlyle2y ago

Actually, they've provided evidence (somewhat flawed) that you've tried to wave away with other evidence/preferring another rate (that seems more flawed to me).

Religious organizations have a) smaller number of personnel, b) fewer youth contacts in total, c) lower hours of contact per average youth than your comparison organizations. We can debate about the importance of each of these in the denominator, but they're all signifiers.

Worse, you're trying to compare numbers for schools that include student-on-student sexual violence (the vast majority of cases) to complaints against staff and clergy for churches.

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mlyle2y ago

Actually, they've provided evidence (somewhat flawed) that you've tried to wave away with other evidence/preferring another rate (that seems more flawed to me).

Worse, you're trying to compare numbers for schools that include student-on-student sexual violence (the vast majority of cases) to complaints against staff and clergy for churches.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse