Religious people often claim that atheists can’t possibly have a moral compass that will guide us to behave well, since we have no God to tell us what is right and what’s wrong.

I find it ironic, therefore, to read in today’s Age an article about a Rabbi at a Jewish college here in Melbourne who “has changed his evidence about his knowledge of alleged paedophilia and conceded he was aware in the early 2000s of rumours that a former security guard had molested children”.

Suffice it to say that the subject of the rumours was not immediately reported to the police.

What would you do if there were rumours that a member of your staff was molesting children at your school? Just keep an eye on him and hope you hear nothing more? Or get the police involved and have it properly investigated?

I don’t know about you, but I’d call the police in, because the consequence of not getting to the bottom of it immediately would be that kids in my care might be at risk of sexual abuse.

I think my moral compass is in pretty good order.

How did the Rabbi not consider this his top priority? Was his moral compass broken?

We can only guess at what religous justification he may have had for acting as he did. Perhaps religion had nothing to do with  his decision. Either way, given that further molesting is alleged to have occurred later, it’s at the very least a spectacular failure of judgement, don’t you think?

For the Catholics out there: Why are there still Catholics?

More interesting reading here.