Here I am doing comedy in the talent show at The Amazing Meeting, James Randi’s skeptic convention.

Here in the Not My God penthouse, I focus on stories of atheists that are particularly difficult and moving for the purposes of illustration and because this obviously makes for a more interesting book. So if anyone out there thinks I cherry-pick the extremes, yes, I am, but that’s sort of the point.

I found this story on Dawkins’s Converts Corner.

“For many years I was a victim of religious child abuse without realizing and it took me a long time to be able to escape from the psychological terrorism of the Catholic church.

“Nowadays I’m an animation filmmaker and visual storyteller. Recently I started to work on a little personal project about overcoming the fear of hell. It evolved into a sweet non-religious book about tolerance and more than anything it helped me heal some scars from my childhood days.

“I thought I would keep that little project to myself but all that changed after reading ‘The God Delusion.’ The moment I read the chapter on child abuse I became determined to share the little fable to the world. The book is ‘I’m Not a Little Devil,’ part of what I hope will become a storytelling movement that explores the negative consequences that religion has on young kids. So far the response has been very positive. I wanted to thank you guys for inspiring me to put this tale out to the world and I hope you help me spread the word of it. A future world with no religion is in the hands of children. I definitely hope this book contributes to that change.
Rodrigo
www.nodevils.com”

I’m hearing a lot about how the Catholic priests “only” abuse children as often as anyone else. Whether that is true or not, and I tend to doubt this because of the vow to celibacy required, the church’s greater sin in sheltering child rapists is almost as bad as the rape itself.

Even if the priests are no more likely to abuse children than anyone else, for such a thing to happen in the realm of religion somehow makes this a much worse crime. Survivors could easily think god sanctioned this abuse, for example.

As to Hell, it’s at times like this I’m glad I was raised Jewish: no hell. No fear of hell.