October 2008 Archives

It strains credulity, does it not, that someone of Dawkins's education and intelligence could believe that there is no difference between allowing children to read fantasy stories or fairy tales and "bringing [them] up to believe in spells and wizards" -- or that children who read stories in which frogs turn into princes could thereby be made skeptical of a science that teaches them that such metamorphoses are impossible. This is astonishingly, Gradgrindingly, literal-minded. Children delight in reading about spells and wizards and frog-princesbecause they know such things to be impossible -- that's the fun of it.Good grief.

It's especially noteworthy that Dawkins has precisely the same suspicions of fantasy and fairy tale that many fundamentalist Christians do. 

Over the last few centuries, we've come to believe that the key to better Bible reading is to add more and more stuff to the text. Modern Bibles are cut into two columns and laced with cross references, footnotes, section headings, commentary and all manner of what-not and hooha. We've split books that were originally whole and severed natural connections within big sections. Our Bibles are a complicated mess. 

Bible additives like these left philosopher John Locke complaining that the scriptures "are so chop'd and minc'd, and as they are now Printed, stand so broken and divided, that . . . the Common People take the Verses usually for distinct Aphorisms," and "even Men of more advanc'd Knowledge in reading them, lose very much of the strength and force of the Coherence, and the Light that depends on it." In other words: we've adapted the Bible to the point that it's nearly impossible to understand.