Richard Dawkins wants to Kill Kids' Imaginations
My favorite overly religious anti-religion crusaders who loves to appeal to emotion while pretending to appeal to emotion Richard Dawkins has set his mighty intellect against our children's imaginations.
Prof Hawkins (sic) 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 (Telegraph)
Never mind that it is nearly impossible to solve problems without an imagination, or that mythic thinking is the way humans set themselves to a context that helps them make sense out of their lives, maybe we would be better off if we had more kids who are incapable of thinking in ways that are unconstrained the limits imposed upon them.
What am I saying? This is what happens when the religion of science is confused with science itself.
It is not anti-scientific to have kids, or for that matter adults, read stories about wizards and magic. In fact, mythic fiction is vitally important for people of all ages to read, watch, and assimilate into their minds and character.
All my life, I have been confronted by people who love to tell me the limits of what is possible. Authorities love to set limits and criticize anyone who pushes on the boundaries of what is known or acceptable. The most Important thing I have learned from Speculative Fiction is that limits could be illusions, and the only way to know for sure is to try to cross the line and see what happens.
Mythic Thinking is a skill. It is the ability to taken in the world around you with all of the stories you have heard about what it is and why it is that way, and processing that into a cohesive worldview. If we do not learn how to think in these grand mythic dimensions, we fell rudderless and adrift in a vast world that has no future and purpose.
Dawkins, like many of his ilk, confuses myth with religion. Myths are the threads we weave around ourselves to better understand our place in the universe, society, and life. Any story we believe in or that helps us understand how to live is a myth.
Please, Professor Dawkins, leave our kids alone. Let them dream, hope, and if it is not too much to ask, poke at the limits you grew up with in hopes they might move forward in their understanding of life, the universe, and society. Then, maybe, just maybe, they will expand that horizon for all of us.