The evolutionary biologist, a leading atheist and author of books including The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, told an audience:
“Fairy tales are harmful to children because they ‘inculcate a view of the world which includes supernaturalism‘” and “He suggested children should be taught scientific rigour from an early age.”
Blimey! Some adults don’t even wanna get that rigour. You know, I’m getting the feeling Richard’s Siege of Orgrimmar cross-realm raid probably wiped again yesterday… “Let’s do this scientifically—warriors—Sundar Armor! Rogues and ’locks stack D.O.T. NOW! No, no, NO, don’t heal him, the alt. tank is expendable! Touch the Lightwell you fool!”
“… he stopped believing in religion when he was about eight after having seen through Santa Claus when he was just 21 months old.”
Yep, I think I recall I knew it was my dad eating those mince pies left out, but I also seem to recall going along with it as I usually got one too; to be honest, if Mr. Kipling’s were on offer—and I had not become a diabetic—I’d have probably let that go on for a lot longer.
“Even fairy tales, the ones we all love, with wizards or princesses turning into frogs or whatever it was. There’s a very interesting reason why a prince could not turn into a frog—it’s statistically too improbable.”
You don’t say. It’s “statistically too improbable” that you’ll win the Lotto but Asda still does well out of that. I’m sure there’s a few adults out there who couldn’t give a croak about the prince too— kissing frogs just really wets their knickers.
“Professor Dawkins said his mother had written down an early encounter with Santa.”
Ah, here we get to the Xmas knob of it all.
“I grew up. I put away childish things.”
Well, you might as well, if you are gonna read stuff like that your mum has wrote. Seriously, dubbed by the media “Darwin’s Rottweiler” it sounds like we’d be better off if Cthulhu hopped out R’lyeh in the South Pacific than with the chearless sort of atheist humanism chappy wants to bring in. I certainly can’t imagine Sartre or Camus wanting to share a coffee on the Left Bank with him, and even Nietzsche gave God CPR when Richard rolled in; give him the role of Spock’s great uncle, J.J. Abrams and pack him off to Vulcan be done with it!
-dead.png "Shhh! God is not dead when Richard is here!")