Richard Dawkins vs. Harry Potter

GreyICE said:
You know, a few months ago I got torn across the coals when I said that I thought some of Dawkins' positions were a little extremist and that the man wandered into some weird territory. Certain people here seemed to disagree with me.

I'll reiterate what I said then - the man is certainly far from wrong on very many things. But he's on his own personal crusade, and I don't agree with everything he says and does. And the best part of being an atheist (or a fake atheist, a theistic apologist in disguise here to infiltrate the JREF and poison your minds) is that you don't have any prophets you have to believe! They're just human beings - smart, silly, a lot irrational most of the time.

Oh yeah - and one of my fundamentalist atheist positions is that no written word, critically evaluated, can possibly be bad, even if it is 100% lies. There are no 'dangerous concepts' there are no 'dangerous ideas' there is no such thing as a 'damaging book.'
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I'm going to disagree with you there. It isn't hard to see the causal links between ideas and actions. The words in the bible that call homosexuality an abomination and the ideas they spawned have been a source of tremendous harm.

That said, of course the solution is not to burn or ban anything, but to discuss. The discussion would have been a whole lot easier if the ideas hadn't been so forcefully spread. Feeding children the idea that any human being is evil and deserving of punishment is harmful because functionally logic doesn't always triumph. One doesn't have to be a proponent of censorship to acknowledge that the world would be better off without some ideas.
 
Why is what Dawkins [actually] said a problem for anyone? Just because many (most? all?) of us skeptics managed to separate fact from childhood fiction doesn't mean that we might not have been better equipped rationally had we been exposed to less fantasy as children. All that's being said here is that it could be something worth looking at. If we could increase the percentage of children growing up to be rational, skeptical people by delaying their introduction to pure fantasy, might that not be a good thing? I don't claim to know the answer, and neither does Dawkins (in the material presented).

This smells like good skepticism and potentially interesting science to me.

Note: Until there's good data, I'll continue encouraging my nephews in their interest in comic books. It's one of the ways I developed my language skills and I never thought Spider-Man was real. :)
 
ravdin said:
It makes me wonder what in particular about Harry Potter has drawn Dawkins' attention, as opposed to other, equally unrealistic works that have very coincidentally been written by outspoken atheists and personal friends of his?
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What makes you think Harry Potter has drawn his attention. He say's he hasn't read it and has no opinion on it. He has criticised no work of fiction at all.

What he has said, is that raising children to believe in fairy tales might be problematic and that he's interested in finding out if that's the case. He hasn't equated reading Harry Potter with being raised to believe in fairy tales and I suspect that the only reason Harry Potter was even mentioned is because the interviewer raised the issue to give his story an angle.

For pity's sake, on a forum dedicated to critical thinking people can't even analyse a newspaper article.
 
NobbyNobbs said:
I see Harry Potter as "non-scientific", not "anti-scientific". I think that the kids for whom it is written are well aware of the difference between fiction and reality. My daughter is 9 (well below the general age range for those books) and she's in the middle of book 2, and she's dressing up as Hermione for Halloween, but she doesn't for a moment believe she can cast spells with a flick of her wrist and a few words in pseudo-Latin..
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Not for a lack of trying, I bet.

I walk in the room and say, "Lumos" and the lights do in fact come on. Provided I hit the light switch, of course...

"swish and flick" the light switch - oh wait, that's levitation...
 
What puzzles me is that a lot of the people who seem horrified by the Harry Potter books must be about the age to have read the Chronicles of Prydain and Wrinkle in Time and a whole bunch of other fantasy fiction when they were young (like I did), not to mention Wind in the Willows (has anybody read THAT as an adult? There's some weird stuff in there), Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass, I mean, what's the dif? People have been reading this stuff as long as there have been books.
 
Hm. Go figure. Yet another case of quote mining and lots of people jumping on it without looking both ways beforehand.

This is one of those cases I actually disagree with Dawkins on, but I admit I would be interested to see what research could demonstrate. There might be something there worth understanding.

That said, sometimes these works of quote mining remind me heavily of creationist attempts at quote mining Darwin -- wherein people are often quick to rush to finding the full quote of Darwin and pointing out how it's wrong. Here, people rush into the quote mine of Dawkins.

Sigh. Pass the kool-aid please.
 
It sounds to me more like Dawkins is needlessly pointing out the obvious. Yes, Harry Potter is fantasy. It's sold as a work of fiction. So what? Does he really need to justify his statements by claiming that the effect of fantasy stories on children is something that could be investigated?

On the other hand, I do see how a study into the effects fantasy stories have on children would be useful. It might get religious fundamentalists who have insisted that Harry Potter turns children to witchcraft to finally STFU.
 
Wowbagger said:
Please don't refer to my Bible as "fanciful stories". :cry1
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I apologize for trampling on your beliefs. It's completely feasible that your namesake would spend eternity insulting every semi-sentient being in the universe.
 
I think some people are missing an important part of Dawkins' philosophy. As described in The God Delusion and The Root of Evil, the fact that some people can believe things that aren't true has a harmful effect on society in general.

Seen in that light, his stated desire to find out more about whether fantasy stories like Harry Potter have an effect on the beliefs of children makes a whole lot more sense. Seems to me that he'd like to try and find out whether some beliefs in things that aren't true (like Harry Potter) are benign.

Sounds like a good idea to me.
 
disclaimer: I think on this single page we've expanded far more from the vague and simple quotes of Dawkins there. He isn't really taking much of a position, and we're extrapolating a lot just in order to argue.

arthwollipot said:
I think some people are missing an important part of Dawkins' philosophy. As described in The God Delusion and The Root of Evil, the fact that some people can believe things that aren't true has a harmful effect on society in general.

Seen in that light, his stated desire to find out more about whether fantasy stories like Harry Potter have an effect on the beliefs of children makes a whole lot more sense. Seems to me that he'd like to try and find out whether some beliefs in things that aren't true (like Harry Potter) are benign.

Sounds like a good idea to me.
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At least sociologically or psychologically-formatively (err...) interesting. But this would also seem to call for studies on whether belief in things (at that age) that are true are benign or damaging. And just how important these things are to overall growth. I can imagine the possibility that if I'd grown up on The Prince and On War read to me at bedtime I might be even more messed in the head.

Instead I grew up on The Hobbit, comic books, D&D, and "100 Tales of Ghosts [and '...Witches', etc...]". I ended up inquisitive about whether this stuff was possible, and along with all other input that was probably much more important, a skeptic. Without such fantastical ideas, I may have been less interested in questioning the world. A curriculum designed for children of only "true" things could also be damaging, particularly if these "truths" are merely best-guesses or likelihoods.

Finally, imagination is important to the arts, to society, to mental health--even at times to science. I think quashing very cool kid's stories because they're silly fantasy is not a good thing in the long run. A world without fantasy is frankly, very boring.
 
The Atheist said:
Is that now a fact?
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Whether it is a fact or not is what Dawkins apparently wants to find out.

Dragoonster said:
disclaimer: I think on this single page we've expanded far more from the vague and simple quotes of Dawkins there. He isn't really taking much of a position, and we're extrapolating a lot just in order to argue.
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Very true. But it's fun, isn't it?
 
Since when is, "intends to look at the effects of", the same as saying it is so?

Given what we know about how reporters don't often get the story right, especially when it comes to science reporting, I'd say some skeptics here aren't being quite skeptical enough of the OP conclusions.
 
skeptigirl said:
Given what we know about how reporters at the Daily Mail don't often ever get the story right, especially when it comes to science reporting, I'd say some skeptics here aren't being quite skeptical enough of the OP conclusions.
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Fixed.
 
Maybe from now on children's reading should consist purely of factual, verifiable data. Such as figures for British coal production from 1871-1908.

ETA, highly suitable reading material for minors, I think we can all agree.

[just to explain that joke - minors means kids, but when spoken could also be mistaken for 'miners'. Now, many miners happen to be coalminers, who mine coal, and thus would contribute (if they were working in Great Britain between 1871 and 1908) to the aforementioned coal production figures. Hence we have what is commonly referred to as a 'play on words', which, when well executed, has the potential to instigate a feeling of mirth in the reader/listener, possibly engendering some fleeting emotional warmth towards the producer of said play on words. In this case being me, Plumjam.
Thanks for listening.]
 
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I'm just confused how I'm supposed to give Dawkins more credit in his study to see if Harry Potter damages rationality than I would to a Priest who is studying whether Harry Potter damages faith.

Several people have assured me that Dawkins deserves respect for this, but the only difference I can see between the two is that I actually care about the thing that this study is mocking.

And yes, this study mocks rationality. If a rational worldview was fragile enough that a kids book destroyed or damaged it, it wouldn't be worth holding on to anyway.
 
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