Richard Dawkins vs. Harry Potter

[GreyICE]

From my perspective, we as skeptics have identified a problem, many people are not rational thinkers. If we are to ever change that fact we need to do a better job of assessing the root causes.

I am not familiar with where Dawkins was going with this. I am familiar with how reporters get it wrong. If I were to speculate, I'd say Dawkins was correctly looking at potential beginnings of irrational thinking. That in turn might lead to means of changing the irrational thinkers to rational thinkers.

Unless I see more evidence Dawkins was on to something else, that is where the evidence leads me in this case. And that is a reasonable line of investigation for Dawkins to be interested in.

Are we assuming that rational thinking is the default condition and something has to 'derail us' from that path?

 

[Lonewulf]

If Dawkins assumes that rational thinking is the default condition, then he's been lying his arse off in "Unweaving the Rainbow", wherein he says almost the opposite. In "Unweaving the Rainbow", he actually states outright his own speculation (and he admits it's such) as to why children are so easily convinced by their parents, and fall so easily into fiction. He also states that he doesn't regret the fiction he grew up with; the tales of Merlin, or one time where his parents had him convinced that he was flying an aeroplane while he was simply in his back yard with a blindfold on. He didn't seem to be in such an uproar about that.



He does say that he wishes more people would give their poetry to science instead of saying how sad it is that we've unwoven the rainbow and explained it scientifically, as Keats did.

I think it's more of, Dawkins wants to see more pro-science literature overall. I'm with him on that point, too; even "science fiction" gets many science facts wrong, with some exceptions.

 

[psikeyhackr]

I think Dawkins is a little late on this subject.

I was in a large bookstore a few years ago and they had Harry Potter stuff all over the place. When I went to pay for my book the clerk had a Harry Potter button. So did all of the other clerks. I said, "I know plenty of science fiction books that are better than Harry Potter." He said, "So do I."

At the time I had watched the first movie on cable just because there was so much hoopla about HP. It was about what I expected. Light entertainment for kids. A "more" fantasy version of Star Wars. But since so many people want to insist that the books are so much better than the movies I read the first book after I found a place to download them. I wouldn't spend money on one. Bad enough to spend the time reading for research purposes. I think the movie captures the book very well it just skips over a lot of trivia that would make the movie too long.

I just think HP is way over hyped and there is so much better stuff that most kids will never hear about.

This is the book that got me hooked on sci-fi at age 9:

Star Surgeon by Alan Edward Nourse
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18492/18492.txt

Fortunately it is also freely available as an audiobook:

http://librivox.org/star-surgeon-by-alan-edward-nourse/

Why don't we have a national recommended reading list classified by age and subject? I could see why some authors and publishers might not like it.

psik

 

[AkuManiMani]

I think if Dawkins were born a couple centuries ago he would have turned out to be a firebrand Anglican clergyman or something. Hes so pious its almost as if hes merely an inverse theist rather than an atheist.

 

[Tumblehome]

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.

If that were actually the case, I think the biggest difference between the two would be the methodologies likely to be used.

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.

I think the bolded part reveals the root of your objections. It's been pointed out several times that the Daily Mail article is sensationalized and misleads the reader as to Dawkins' intentions, yet you're still arguing from the perspective of the newspaper story.

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.

I think it can be shown easily that the rational worldview of a child can be damaged, but that says more about the strength of a child's convictions rather than of the rational worldview.

I don't think Dawkins' book would succeed with kids, anyway. I can see well-meaning parents solemnly bequeathing the book to their children, but what would a child prefer to get for Christmas--a fantastic world of magical wizards, or a treatise on thinking rationally? Dawkins' book would be a dust collector on most children's bookshelves.