Not content with trying to lay religion low, Professor Richard Dawkins is now worrying about the possibly damaging effects of fairytales and such. Professor Dawkins - or, as he is also called here, Hawkins - says:
"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.
"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. Perhaps it's something for research."
A rich programme of further research suggests itself: after the study of fairytales and tales about witches and wizards, someone can look into what ghost stories do for human rationality, and then ditto a certain amount of science fiction. Next, children's make-believe games. Hey, and sexual fantasies - what kind of scientific attitude is fostered by those? Better leave it out, people. And then fiction and drama - two whole areas of the human enterprise that may encourage a very lax frame of mind towards the facts of the world. I mean, have you noticed how a decade can pass just like that between one chapter of a book and another, and how characters who have never really existed are treated like full persons in their own right, with a past, and parents (who also never existed), and a world of inner emotions? Have you noticed how in movies people can perform fantastic feats like you just wouldn't believe?
Strident? Professor Hawkins? Sorry, Dickens. Sorry, Dawkins? Not a bit of it. He's just keen on us having our feet fastened to the scientific ground.
