Richard Dawkins is a myth-hating, reality-despising fool

Really now, the man is simply deranged:

The prominent atheist is stepping down from his post at Oxford University to write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in "anti-scientific" fairytales.

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."

But Dawkins' lack of knowledge won't stop him from acting like someone is equally paranoid and clueless when it comes to children's literature and fantasy/mythology in general:

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."

No, it's not "anti-scientific." It's anti-scientistic; it defies the absolute "truth" of scientism, which insists that only science can make any sense of life, even while not bothering to provide scientific evidence for what is, in the end, not a scientific assertion, but a metaphysical belief.

Most people know that children have wonderful imaginations, and are both credulous and very discerning, often in delightfulful (and occasionally bewildering) fashion. My three-year-old son, for example, is quite taken at the moment with Buzz Lightyear of "Toy Story" fame. "I'm Buzz Lightyear!" he announces, "I can fly high up into the sky! I have super powers!" But when asked if he can really fly, he says, with a knowing look: "No, I'm pretending." The same is true when he pretends to be a pirate or a soldier. "It's just pretend, Daddy." Duh, don't you adults get it? Yes, most of us do. But some apparently don't.

Dawkins' secular fundamentalism, by its very nature, must be antagonistic to myth since myth is a means by which people can grapple with the fact that there is more to reality and life than can be seen with the naked eye or understood with the reasoning mind. In the words of Clyde S. Kilby:

We intellectualize in order to know, but paradoxically, intellectualization tends to destroy its object. The harder we grasp at a thing, the more its reality moves away. So what is to be done? Man finds himself a third characteristic called imagination, by which he can transcend statements and systems. ... While the basic requirement of systematizing is abstracting, myth is concerned not so much with parts as with wholes. Myth is necessary because reality is so much larger than rationality. Not that myth is irrational but that it easily accommodates the rational while rising above it.

Systematizing flattens, but myth rounds out. Systematizing drains away color and life, but myth restores. Myth is necessary because of what man is. ...

Myth is vision. ... Myth is, in Mircea Eliade's phrase, "the nostalgia for eternity." ("What is Myth?", the foreword to Rolland Hein's Christian Mythmakers [Cornerstone Press, 1998], pp. ix-xiv).

It is this nostalgia for eternity that Dawkins and Co. despise and fear so much. It's the possibility of the impossible—the supernatural and the miraculous—as if any suggestion that science cannot be the answer to everything makes them subhuman and their work as scientists meaningless. The irony, of course, is that their work as scientists can only have any really substantial meaning if there is objective, eternal meaning that transcends science.

In the meantime, Dawkins valiantly attempts to go where Kersey Graves, Sir James George Frazer, Joseph Campbell, and others have already gone, all with poor or seriously dubious results:

But Prof Dawkins, the bestselling author of The God Delusion who this week agreed to fund a series of atheist adverts on London buses, added that his new book will also set out to demolish the "Judeo-Christian myth".

He went on: "I plan to look at mythical accounts of various things and also the scientific account of the same thing. And the mythical account that I look at will be several different myths, of which the Judeo-Christian one will just be one of many.

"And the scientific one will be substantiated, but appeal to children to think for themselves; to look at the evidence. Always look at the evidence."

Indeed. Which is why the authors of the Gospels so often appealed to eye witness testimony, to evidence, to facts (cf., Lk 1:1-4; Jn 21:24-25). But I suspect that Dawkins' treatment of such matters will likely be just as shallow and lousy as were his philosophical engagements with theism.

Here are a couple of thoughts from J.R.R. Tolkien about fantasy and myth, taken from his essay, "On Fairy-Tales" and quoted by Richard Purtill in Lord of the Elves and Eldils: Fantasy and Philosophy in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien:

... fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make .... For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. ...

Fantasy can, of course, be carried to excess. It can be ill done. It can be put to evil uses. It may even delude the minds out of which it came. But of what human thing in this fallen world is that not true? Men have conceived not only of elves, but they have imagined gods, and worshipped them, even worshipped those most deformed by their authors' own evil. But they have made false gods out of other materials: their notions, their banners, their monies; even their sciences and their social and economic theories have demanded human sacrifice. Abusus non tollit usum. Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.

And, in conclusion, this very fitting thought from Chesterton: "It is far easier to believe in a million fairy tales than to believe in one man who does not like fairy tales. ... I believe many things which I have not seen; but of such things as you it may be said, 'Blessed is he that has seen and yet has disbelieved.'"" (from Tremendous Trifles).

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles:
• Why Fantasy? | Richard Purtill
• The Powers of Fantastic Fiction | An Interview with Tim Powers
• Catholics & Science Fiction | An Interview with Sandra Miesel
• Fairy Tales Retold | An Interview with Regina Doman
• The Presence of Christ in The Lord of the Rings Peter J. Kreeft
• Professor Dawkins and the Origins of Religion | Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P. | From God Is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins
• Dawkins' Delusions | An interview with Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P., author of God Is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins
• Are Truth, Faith, and Tolerance Compatible? | Joseph Ratzinger
• Atheism and the Purely "Human" Ethic | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Is Religion Evil? Secularism's Pride and Irrational Prejudice | Carl E. Olson
• A Short Introduction to Atheism | Carl E. Olson
• Evangelizing With Love, Beauty and Reason | An Interview with Joseph Pearce
• C.S. Lewis and the Inklings | Various Articles and Columns

Comments

[Jackson]

Did you see Ben Stein's Expelled? I heard someone say that Dawkins comes off as "reptilian" in it. Agreed!

Everyone, read Thomas Crean's excellent God Is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins.

[Mark Brumley]

Carl, you shouldn't hold back. You should tell us what you really think.

[Nick]

This is basically the way universities are run these days, the more you attack Christianity and such, the "smarter" and more qualified you are. That is essentially where Dawkins gets his "credibility" from in the eyes of "academia" and media.

It is similar to how a generation ago liberal bishops and liberal priests and liberal theologians held a stranglehold in Catholic universities and seminaries, but thankfully things are changing for the better.

[Carl E. Olson]

Carl, you shouldn't hold back. You should tell us what you really think.

Careful what you ask for!

[LJ]

I wonder if Dawkins has noticed that in the best fairy tales, the fantasy world and its characters have boundaries, limitations, systems, strengths, weaknesses and obstacles to overcome; all of which are structured and bounded by reason, the reason of the author.
Those worlds are not our worlds but are parallel worlds, still using the operating system of reason. They are profoundly an exercise of reason, and, as any fantasy writer will tell you, not easily designed. That is why there are so few Tolkiens in the world.

In some sense writing fantasy is an expression of the image and likeness of God. Like all creative activity it is a God given, God-imitating impulse.

[Vincent Toups]

Dawkins may be a small-minded fool, but you paint the dichotomy between the faithed and faithless too starkly.

I object quite strongly to the characterization that fantasy is "anti-scientistic" or that, as you really seem to be implying, a person cannot believe science is the "only way to make sense of life" and simultaneously recognize the usefulness of myth and fantasy.

The real case is that Myth and Fantasy ARE about systemitizing as surely as Calculus or Cladism are, but rather than decomposing the world into real numbers, infinitesimals and functions, myth decomposes the world into the elements of human psychology. Human brains host the richest informational phenomenon in the known universe, it would be a great poverty to expect our attempts to position ourselves in the universe to be restricted to things as simple (though powerful) as Calculus and, for instance, the Standard Model of Particle Physics. The issue, which you only hint at, is when adult humans insist that myths reflect and/or predict fundamental qualities of the universe. The issue arrives when myth forgets its place and becomes simple, if beautiful, falsehood.

It is this which Dawkins is animated against.

I am not sure what you precise philosophical background consists of, but I am certain you agree with me on the following: regardless of the nature of the truth, it is better for a person to believe something which is true rather than something which is false. If Christ is the Incarnation, then it is good to believe it. If he is not, then, regardless of its theological implications, it is beneath the dignity of a human to believe otherwise.

Myth has proven itself over and over to be flaccid when it comes to arriving at the real truths of the Universe, the actual happenings and rules which even the most religious person must admit constitute reality. Each particular religion holds up its own mythical narrative as real and full of wisdom while pointing at other systems, whose narratives are identical, or nearly so, in their quality, differing only in their exact decomposition of the human landscape into ideas. Any particular system might be right, but we will never arrive at that correctness by systematically comparing the virtues of a mythology where man-becomes-god (Mormonism) and one where God-becomes-man (Catholicism). If we could arrive at consensus this way, Mormonism or Catholicism would long since have subsumed one another.

You must admit, from a Catholic perspective, Mormonism is the very image of myth become pernicious.

Myth and fantasy are vestments for truth arrived at by other means. They may help us internalize or understand how humans as a phenomenon relate to particular truths, but they have never demonstrated a substantial ability to pick knowledge out of the swirling impressions that constitute our universe. Science HAS demonstrated this ability for the last thousand years, and in doing so has presided over the most materially successful period in human history (not that material success is the best or even an important measure of quality of life).

Dawkins is merely asserting that, however we raise our children, we should instill in them a respect for truth, the truths arrived at by science, and deter them from believing fantasy as thought it were more than on of many human tools.

I do not believe labels behoove us in most circumstances, but for the moment I will happily self-apply "secular-fundamentalist" while simultaneously asserting the value and usefulness of myth.

[Carl E. Olson]

Dawkins may be a small-minded fool, but you paint the dichotomy between the faithed and faithless too starkly.

The stark dichotomy is between Dawkins and commonsense.

I object quite strongly to the characterization that fantasy is "anti-scientistic" or that, as you really seem to be implying, a person cannot believe science is the "only way to make sense of life" and simultaneously recognize the usefulness of myth and fantasy.

I was making an important distinction between science, which I wholeheartedly think is a wonderful and good thing, and scientism, which is the false belief that only science can provide truth, meaning, and wisdom. It is the latter that Dawkins believes in. It follows that if a person believes that only science can make sense of life--by which I mean the purpose and meaning of life, not the biological make-up of life--that they will not allow the usefulness of myth and fantasy.

It is this which Dawkins is animated against.

Is it? I don't think so. He appears to believe that fairytales--by their very nature--lead to irrational thinking.

The problem, as authors such as Crean and McGrath have detailed, is that while Dawkins may be a brilliant biologist, he is a poor philosopher. And it's not evident at all that Dawkins would agree with you that, "Myth and fantasy are vestments for truth arrived at by other means." As for Dawkins' respect for truth, it's more than a little interesting that while he both denounces and misunderstands what the Judeo-Christian tradition says about God, he himself is apparently open to the possibility that man was created by extra-terrestrials. So maybe he's not so anti-myth after all, eh?