Richard Dawkins hates Harry Potter

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.

In his case it sure seems to have.

Geez--you don't know how hilariously close this comes to the South Park episode that was done on him with Ms. Garrison as his girlfriend teaming up to rid the entire world of religious belief.

That'd be too late. Actually, wouldn't it be more that someone already did?

(Not a huge HP fan, but LOVE fantasy and magic books and games, thank you.)

"BTW, Hitchins, Dawkins and Harris aren't the atheist trinity. We're perfectly free to disagree with anything they say."

Not exactly, Karen. Dawkins doesn't think that kids should normally be removed from their parents because of religious belief, but he does think that families bear close monitoring for the kinds of things that they are teaching their children.

Dawkins is pretty weird. I'll give you reams and reams of examples if you're interested.

Having said that, it's a mistake to call him simply "atheist". An atheist is someoone who does not believe in a supreme creator god. One subset of atheism is materialism. One subset of materialism is scientific-Darwinist materialism. Then, one subset of that is Dawkinsism, which actually has quite a rigid set of doctrines - it's most accurately viewed as a religion.

Honestly, I really think Americans take Dawkins too seriously. In England, he's treated as a bit of a joke character. There was a TV series in which he went round frothing at the mouth about herbal medicine and reiki, and stuff, trying to claim that Deepak Chopra wants to burn people at the stake - I don't really know anyone who treated it as other than comedy. There was a series on at the same time in which Anne Widecombe (one of the nearest the UK has to a religious-right politician) did the same about prostitutes, drugs and welfare cheats - that was quite funny as well!

My children are exposed to a lot of talking animals on TV, including (would you believe it) talking sponges and starfish. I often wonder what kind of pernicious effect this will have on their understanding of the natural order. Am I alone in my concern?

Well at least we've just found something Richard Dawkins and fundamentalist Christians can agree on.

Actually, I think you *can* make this stuff up, and that may be sort of what the writers of this article did.

Dawkins didn't say he hates Harry Potter, he said he doesn't know whether bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards is harmful, and that it might be an interesting subject for research. He hasn't even read Harry Potter.

Dawkins's quote about his book says: "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." That's pretty vague and it may or may not include any criticism of fairytales or fantasy stories. Knowing Dawkins's interests, I imagine he'll primarily be contrasting religion with science.

The writers were clearly trying to make a headline -- such as "Richard Dawkins hates Harry Potter" -- by casting Dawkins as being against something that's a common part of childhood. I suggest reserving judgment until we've actually seen the book.

The article doesn't say he hates Harry Potter. It does quote him as saying

"It is evil to describe a child as a Muslim child or a Christian child. I think labelling children is child abuse"

So it's classic Dawkins, really. Does he have any children of his own? His Wikipedia page mentions three wives, but no children.

Careful Pyrhho, I like Sponge Bob and I believe he really exists. As as matter of fact he is running for president, just has a new costume.

I wonder if he thinks raising kids with Legos may be detrimental, afterall, no house or car is made of plastic, interlocking blocks.

You need to put a 'some' on that, ex. I'm not singing anything.

And Bob, him saying that still doesn't alter my ability to disagree.

I won't say all theists are like Fred Phelps, or Robertson, and I don't.. and we're not all Hitchins or Dawkins or Harris.

LOL, Dawkins finally found something in common with "religious fundamentalists."

Of course if there were folks with the powers of Harry Potter, the muggles would call them Master and like it. If you have overwhelming power, there is no reason to stay hidden.

The thing both religious fundamentalists and secular fundamentalists have in common is an absolute intolerance for any worldview other than their own. It's really rather totalitarian.

As a big fantasy fan (and hopefully fantasy writer one day...if I ever get back to that manuscript), this actually makes perfect sense to me. Fantasy has always seemed to me to be a lot like religion---and I say that as a compliment to fantasy, not as an insult to God. The fact that fantasy allows the impossible, hopefully with a good understanding of human nature and morality thrown in, makes it perhaps the best genre for imitating the Bible or any other religious system. Hence Tolkien, Lewis and even Rowling's Christian themes. And Dawkins is probably right---the idea that humans can do things that defy the laws of science, and that these strange occurrences can be used to make good inevitably triumph over evil (as opposed to the most fit triumphing over the weaker---after all, Sauron could easily have kicked Frodo's tiny little hobbit @$$), DOES defy a lot of the ideas of atheism.

In fact (this is a random thought), it occurs to me that the one explicitly atheist fantasy writer I can think off the top of my head is Philip Pullman, whose books (from what I know about them) are in a lot of ways more like sci-fi than fantasy. Hmm. But again, maybe I'm wrong about that, anyone else have any thoughts about that?

God bless.

The many commenters who are arguing some variation on "Dawkins is just like a nutty religious fundamentalist" have clearly not bothered to read the actual article in which Dawkins is quoted, but are instead relying on Rod's overly simplistic (and heavily biased) account of it.

Here is what Dawkins said about fairy tales, etc: "I think it is anti-scientific – whether that has a pernicious effect, I don't know,"

Wow, what a nutjob he must be! How intolerant!

He must be a joy to have at parties.

It's sometimes crossed my mind that perhaps Dawkins is a secret Christian, going round putting people off atheism. You know - in the same way that I sometimes wonder about televangelists and Jehovah's Witness door-to-door canvasers being secretly employed by the Humanist Association.

Prof. Dawkins refers to “the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes” and wonders “whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality.”

Well, he does, in fact, believe that the frog did indeed turn into a prince, it just took millions of years!

As far as Pullman, he wrote a book about “killing God” but then attempted to water-down his purpose when he wanted dollars as well as pounds. See: Atheism’s Sales Pitch to Children.