Dislikes
- The term “owned”. No worries if you use it in its actual form, “pwned”.
- Harry Potter. Like the religious fundamentalist parents fearful of its Satanic influence on their precious offspring, Dawkins has yet to read Harry Potter.
- Fairy tales.
- Santa (but not Christmas).
- Improper grammar, especially when part of a “coordinated campaign”.
Likes
- Faulty comparisons.
- 1960’s-style psychedelic imagery from the 1990s that was somehow created just last year (time travel???).
- Honey.
- The Bible. As he told me at a lecture of his that I attended a few years ago, it’s poetic and historically significant, unlike, say, the Quran, which is poetic and historically significant to only people of a less Anglo persuasion (i.e. people we are only supposed to care about when we’re telling American feminists to shut up).
- Calling himself a Christian.
- Christmas (but not Santa).
- [update] Fairy tales.
* Dawkins’s anti-theist atheist disciples who denigrate religions as “fairy tales”, in accordance with the common understanding that fairy tales aren’t real, could not be reached for comment in time for this piece.
Update 10:30 AM PST: He apparently likes fairy tales? I have updated the list to reflect this.
Don’t forget he loves honey: https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/396956105869250561
Honey’s already on the list ^_^
He sounds more like the religious extremists who want to ban Harry Potter and everything magic in books every day. .
He hasn’t read Harry Potter but feels it is abusive (really? wonder what he would think about Matilda?) and will probably lead to unscientific thinking? WTF? You mean like Frankenstein lead to grave robbing or The Time Machine lead to belief in Doctor Who, or something? What? That makes no sense.
And he clearly hasn’t watch The Mentalist either, Jane points out IN THE VERY FIRST EPISODE that he is not special, just observant. So there’s that…
Looks like us atheists have our own version of Pat Roberts.
Dotage is a word that come to mind for some reason, maybe I read it in a kid’s book.
If he doesn’t like the “coordinated campaign” against his maybe rather than scold their spelling he could stop being a dick.
Just a thought.
I wonder what Dawkins thinks about Dungeons & Dragons.
Did he say the Quran was not poetic or historically significant?
I attended a talk he gave at CalTech a few years ago, back when I was still a huge fan of his. He was giving it to promote his then-new book, The Greatest Show on Earth. During the Q&A, I asked him about his views on Islam. He said that he thinks that the Bible is beautiful literature with historical significance but that the Quran is worthless, irredeemable rubbish. That was probably the first time I considered the idea that he’s unable to see things from a non-Eurocentric, Christian-based perspective, but it was hardly the last.
This is like the worst OK Cupid profile ever!
Well, at least it’s honest.
I’m no Dawkins fan by any means but some of these are inaccurate reporting rather than things he has said.
The fairy tales one for example was an out of context quote that the right wing press in the UK ran with. The Harry Potter thing is similar. He didn’t single out Harry Potter for criticism, he just said he hadn’t read it and then speculated more broadly on the effect of magic in children’s stories. There’s a slightly more complete account here:
http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2008/10/has-dawkins-been-saying-harry-potter-is.html
There are certainly ways in which Dawkins is utterly dreadful, but these two aren’t examples of it.
I never said he was being dreadful.
And honestly, the speculation is silly. I’d like to see one shred of evidence that reading about magic in works specifically marked and treated as fiction can harm children.
Thanks for the linkup… I had to laugh at some of the gems in there, for instance:
“I think there are always paths not taken but if a different path is taken, I think there is a magnetic pull. There is a sort of something that pulls you back to the pathway having taken a fork in the road.” Richard Dawkins
Oh Jeebus, this is that fate BS that’s so popular among the public…
Oh no!
No one tell Dawkins that Shakespeare has ghosts, wizards, miracles, spellcasting…and faeries!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_character
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter%27s_Tale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbeth#Witchcraft_and_evil
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/essays/fairiesshakespeare.html
I don’t think he was misreported. He backpedaled. All too often he just doesn’t think through what he is saying, then when people point out that what he said was absurd, he insists he meant something other than what he said. It’s kind of a trend. So much so we could dub it “pulling a Dawkins.”
And in the Harry Potter / faerie tale case, he was correctly reported as saying these were anti-scientific and that that *might* have a pernicious effect that should be investigated…just like Putin and his cronies who said talking about homosexuality in public might have a pernicious effect that should be investigated…then they outlawed it, the only step Dawkins didn’t propose, but then neither was he claimed to have. He’s just suspicious of the Fictionalist Agenda. ;-)