What's wrong with Harry Potter?

[Al Moritz]

Where "scientific" fanaticism leads us:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3255972/Harry-Potter-fails-to-cast-spell-over-Professor-Richard-Dawkins.html

[mn dave]

A lot of that is crap, but I think this is good:

"It is evil to describe a child as a Muslim child or a Christian child. I think labelling children is child abuse and I think there is a very heavy issue..."

[Lethevich]

Surprising BS on his part. I haven't read or seen much by him (I just don't care), but until now he had seemed like a reasonably sane person.

[karlhenning]

. . . a children's book on how to think about the world, science thinking . . . .

I shall watch his future literary career with considerable interest 

[mn dave]

I shall watch his future literary career with considerable interest 

Why can't they read both? I have a little niece and nephew who can tell the difference between fact and fantasy.

[Al Moritz]

Surprising BS on his part. I haven't read or seen much by him (I just don't care), but until now he had seemed like a reasonably sane person.

Alas I was forced to draw the conclusion that he is nuts much earlier.

[karlhenning]

Why can't they read both? I have a little niece and nephew who can tell the difference between fact and fantasy.

I think that a very nice children's book could be made of Steve Martin's plumber joke . . . .

[Brian]

Not what I expected. Frankly I was impressed by the total absence of any kind of religion from Harry Potter. I think Dawkins' plan is stupid, his quitting Oxford is stupid, and the article's misspelling of his name as Hawkins is hilarious. Also, he hasn't read the books? Seriously?!

[karlhenning]

. . . his new book will also set out to demolish the "Judeo-Christian myth."

Forget that he doesn't know "what to think about magic and fairy tales";  he doesn't understand children's books.

The man suffers from an atrophied imaginative faculty.

[karlhenning]

A lot of that is crap, but I think this is good:

"It is evil to describe a child as a Muslim child or a Christian child. I think labelling children is child abuse and I think there is a very heavy issue..."

You did well to clip it before:

It's a form of child abuse, even worse than physical child abuse.

Which is zealotry and nonsense.

[Shrunk]

Not what I expected. Frankly I was impressed by the total absence of any kind of religion from Harry Potter. I think Dawkins' plan is stupid, his quitting Oxford is stupid, and the article's misspelling of his name as Hawkins is hilarious. Also, he hasn't read the books? Seriously?!

If you go by what he actually says in the article, he doesn't necessarily have anything against fantasy, just that he wonders whether it does have an effect on rational thinking (though, I agree, that seems a rather daft idea).  

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."

Also, to clarify, he is not "quitting Oxford."  His position as Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science was a time-limited appointment, and the term has expired.  His replacement is mathematician Marcus du Sautoy.

[Opus106]

Also, he hasn't read the books? Seriously?!

Yep. Just like me.

[Shrunk]

Dawkins has responded to this story on his forum:

I am sick and tired of being wantonly misrepresented. I have finally managed to listen to the More4 News piece that started all this off, and am thoroughly irritated to discover that the commentator said that I am "now going to take on Harry Potter".
http://link.brightcove.com/services/pla ... 1877535464
I NEVER said I was going to take on Harry Potter. I have never even read Harry Potter. All I did was to muse, aloud, on how interesting it might be to do RESEARCH on the possible effects on scientific education of children's stories about magic spells. I had in mind not Harry Potter at all (I've never read him, so how would I "take him on") but Hans Anderson, Grimm, and the Arabian Nights. I never said I was against magic stories, merely that I'd be interested to see some research done. Yet from this -- you might think harmless -- curiosity about possible educational research, I find myself accused of hostility to fiction, hostility to imagination, hostility to children, hostility to science fiction -- all of which I of course love.

Bloody Hell! All I said was that it would be nice to see some research. And even that was only a passing remark, a little cautious thinking aloud, prompted by the interviewer. Let me try to clear up a few misunderstandings, but what distresses me is the willful eagerness to misunderstand that is popping out all over several threads.

1. Some people, not you, have accused me of being against science fiction! Science fiction is not the same thing as Fairy Tales. They are poles apart, almost opposite. Fairy Tales allow MAGIC, which is arguably lazy because there are no limits to what spells can achieve. Science Fiction (I mean what I think of as good science fiction) is utterly different because it is DISCIPLINED, invoking limited, controlled, thoughtful deviations from the normal laws of reality. I yield to nobody in my enthusiasm for science fiction, and have often thought of writing a science fiction novel myself.

2. I didn't even attack Fairy Tales, but simply speculated aloud on the thought that it might be interesting to do RESEARCH on how children might be affected by a diet of magic fiction.

3. Imagination. Do you SERIOUSLY accuse me of attacking imagination? Because if so I am mortally and gravely insulted and hurt. I mean that. I really do. Forgive me my quaint hope that my science books, from The Selfish Gene to The Ancestor's Tale, are not entirely devoid of imagination.

My tentative view is that the sort of magic spell fiction that I had in mind for research -- witches waving wands and turning princes into frogs -- is conspicuously UNimaginative, precisely because it is so lazy -- too easy to manipulate a plot when you are allowed to fool around with spells. But in any case I was not committing myself to the view that that sort of fiction is damaging. It could be precisely opposite. I merely entertained the thought that it would be nice to see some research on the question. You tell me there has been lots of such research by educationists. I am delighted to hear it. That is exactly what I had in mind. The reason I was unaware of it is that the question had not come to the front of my mind until the interviewer raised it. Thank you for making me aware of it. I hope it really is about magic spells in particular, and not about imaginative play, which is an utterly different matter.

I read the Narnia books to mine and we chatted about the religious allusions. So don't be afraid that they will end up irrational zombies, my four haven't.

You are obviously an inspired statistician, to be capable of drawing such a conclusion from a (non-independent) sample of four.

As I said, I am glad to hear from you of the mountains of research on these matters, and I look forward to examining it in the hope that the statistics are done properly.

How has it happened that an open-minded, casually passing thought -- that research of this kind might be worth looking at -- has become translated into a perceived attack on imagination? On science fiction? On fantasy?

http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=61769&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

[karlhenning]

Well, hey, we're discussing the reportage.

The comment, It's a form of child abuse, even worse than physical child abuse, is still delusional.

[Guido]

This is quite mental.

[Norbeone]

Well, hey, we're discussing the reportage.

The comment, It's a form of child abuse, even worse than physical child abuse, is still delusional.

Where did that supposed quote come from where he says that it's even worse than physical child abuse?

I completely agree with Dawkins that it's child abuse (childhood indoctrination), but i'm fairly sure that he was mis-quoted (probably intentionally) about the physical abuse part, especially if it did indeed come from The Dawkins Delusion. Then, again, I just don't know.

[karlhenning]

Where did that supposed quote come from where he says that it's even worse than physical child abuse?

From the article linked in the thread's inaugural post.

[Josquin des Prez]

I completely agree with Dawkins that it's child abuse (childhood indoctrination)

By that token Santa Claus is child abuse too. It seems that Dawkins isn't capable of drawing a distinction between "serious" anti-science indoctrination (such as the type imparted by religious fundamentalists) and simple fantasy. That is simply zealotry taken to an inane degree. Now, if you want to argue that Harry Potter is child abuse simply because it's terrible literature (even by fantasy standards), then you might have a better case. 

[not edward]

Dawkins used to have something interesting to say (though he always had a tendency to rant) but I'd say that by the end of the '80s he'd run out of ideas and was just repeating himself. Now he does nothing but rant, and sounds like nothing so much as self-parody. I wonder if anyone's tried to get it through to him that the way he communicates these days he's more likely to drive his own supporters into the opposing camp than to convert anyone to his point of view.

This article appears to be just as stupid as most of the stuff that's appeared under his name in recent years.

[Daidalos]

I must agree with Shrunk, Dawkins does seem to have been misrepresented in that article in regards to his position on Harry Potter.

What to make of the other things in the article (indoctrination and child abuse), well, that's another topic.