Posted on 10/28/2008 10:19:39 AM PDT by NYer
The prominent atheist is stepping down from his post at Oxford University to write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in "anti-scientific" fairytales.
Prof Hawkins said: "The book I write next year will be a children's book on how to think about the world, science thinking contrasted with mythical thinking.
"I haven't read Harry Potter, I have read Pullman who is the other leading children's author that one might mention and I love his books. I don't know what to think about magic and fairy tales."
Prof Dawkins said he wanted to look at the effects of "bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards".
"I think it is anti-scientific – whether that has a pernicious effect, I don't know," he told More4 News.
"I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's something for research."
But Prof Dawkins, the bestselling author of The God Delusion who this week agreed to fund a series of atheist adverts on London buses, added that his new book will also set out to demolish the "Judeo-Christian myth".
He went on: "I plan to look at mythical accounts of various things and also the scientific account of the same thing. And the mythical account that I look at will be several different myths, of which the Judeo-Christian one will just be one of many.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The mystical Dawkins.
“Which is why he doesn’t know it’s not actually about the power of magic, but about the power of love and friendship.”
#######
Yes, and bravery and perseverence, as well as faith and hope. Not to mention the essential and clear, good versus evil dichotomy and thus, a healthy exposition of good old-fashioned judgmentalism.
All some very solid, timeless Christian principles.
He might lose his head when he starts claiming that numerous events in muslim tradition are false.
IF he does, I will respect his nerve and buy his book. Might not read it, but I'll buy it.
I can just picture children begging their parents to read them
"a children's book on how to think about the world, science thinking contrasted with mythical thinking"
at bedtime.
Someone has just painted himself as a glamour-bombing target.
I am in most ways a pretty fundamentalist guy who like reading in general and fantasy in specifics. I enjoyed all the Potter books for what they were...fantasy, as did my very grounded 16-year-old, who knows, as I do, the difference between reading about Merlin-like pretend magic and the devil-inspired hubris of messing around with the real thing. But at the core, they are "British Schoolboy Tales" from that lost time in the past when Imperialism was a tradition, honor was a very real thing, and values weren't in shades of gray. HP preaches love, care, and that evil is very real and must be constantly guarded against.
If the Compass books had been written by Robert Heinlein, the bad guys would turn out to be evil reptilian alien with hearts black as coal, and the franchise would have gone on for a dozen movies. My Unitarian brother tried to downplay the Church aspect in Compass, and set it as just another sword and sorcery movie, but I know better; I know what a smarmy old troll Pulman really is, and what's more, I know that the movie was carefully crafted to hide what the trilogy is all about, in order to pull in ignorant parents and get them to buy the books for the kiddies. (That is the most reprehensible part of it...that the movie is just a tool to "get past" the ParentRadar.)
I am a "long-term-miracle" man, myself...taking the progression of life on Earth as evidence of God "breathing life into clay". My faith in Christ's sacrifice making my personal sins clean is not threatened by taking Creation as parable. Still, if I should turn out to be wrong about it, I'm sure God will straighten me out in the first five minutes of the afterlife, and by then, it probably won't matter. Taking at it's original POV, evolution is no more than "survival of the fittest" and man is still here, still on top, and has both the biggest brain and the opposable thumb going for him, so I take that as Divine Providence at work.
“Mummy, let’s read the fun book again, the one about scientific realism and the death of all childhood imagination that will prepare me for the life as a chartered accountant!”
Poor Potter...the lad is safe from noone!
For someone who has no belief in God, Mr. Dawkins seems obsessed with the God of Christians and Muslims (and oblivious to the gods of other religions).
LOL! Great point! A little poignant, too - I remember a conversation I had with a friend's grade school aged child and the earnestness and worry in her voice when telling me about how we have to recycle to save the planet or soon we wouldn't have a planet to live on.
So true. His attempts say more about his anger at God than his disbelief and disregard.
I can’t think of somebody less fitted to write children’s books. It’s not even just the atheism, it’s that he seems about as fun as a root canal without good drugs. Unless perhaps the one causes the other. Which as far as I can tell is entirely possible.
Yes, watching the global warming acolytes is depressing...To be so young, and have such a threat hanging over your head is just sad, and the fact that it’s false makes it that much worse.
Now that is funny.
I think this has been done.
“Lord of the Flies”
This is the problem of education today. On the one hand it produces specialists who have a great deal of knowledge about a very small area of human experience, or on the other it simply creates minds full of nonsense. It is very difficult to find anyone with a well-rounded education.
It is a very sad situation. It is the reason this country is on the verge of electing an empty suit to the White House. That is even more pitiable than Dawkins lack of understanding of the purposes of the imagination.
Anybody who has read the Jennings or Chalet School stories or (most notably) Kipling's Stalky & Co. (which is actually literature, unlike most of the Public School stories) will recognize the breed . . . .
Everybody knows you can't go to hell til you're seven!
his attitude towards fairy tales has been thoroughly debunked by C.S. Lewis (An Experiment in Criticism), J.R.R. Tolkien ("On Fairy-Stories"), and Bruno Bettelheim (The Uses of Enchantment).
Obviously Dawkins has never read a thing in the field, or probably anything outside his own very narrow area of expertise. Proving once again the adage that an expert is a man who knows more and more about less and less, until eventually he knows everything about nothing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.