{"id":54,"date":"2008-10-30T11:44:05","date_gmt":"2008-10-30T11:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/more-grist-for-the-atheistsasf.html"},"modified":"2008-10-30T11:44:05","modified_gmt":"2008-10-30T11:44:05","slug":"more-grist-for-the-atheistsasf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/more-grist-for-the-atheistsasf.html","title":{"rendered":"More grist for the atheists-as-fundamentalists mill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Alan Jacobs on Richard Dawkins&#8217; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/3255972\/Harry-Potter-fails-to-cast-spell-over-Professor-Richard-Dawkins.html\">suspicion of Harry Potter<\/a>:<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\"><p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">It strains credulity, does it not, that someone of Dawkins&#8217;s education and intelligence could believe that there is no difference between allowing children to read fantasy stories or fairy tales and &#8220;bringing [them] up to believe in spells and wizards&#8221; &#8212; or that children who read stories in which frogs turn into princes could thereby be made skeptical of a science that teaches them that such metamorphoses are impossible. This is astonishingly, Gradgrindingly, literal-minded. Children delight in reading about spells and wizards and frog-princes<em>because<\/em>\u00a0they know such things to be impossible &#8212;\u00a0<em>that&#8217;s the fun of it.<\/em>Good grief.<\/span><br \/><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><br \/><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\"><p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">It&#8217;s especially noteworthy that Dawkins has precisely the same suspicions of fantasy and fairy tale that many fundamentalist Christians do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\"><p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><br \/><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><a href=\"http:\/\/theamericanscene.com\/2008\/10\/29\/sir-richard-rides-forth-to-slay-another-dragon\">Read it all<\/a>, commence heavy sighs. Note that Dawkins <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/3255972\/Harry-Potter-fails-to-cast-spell-over-Professor-Richard-Dawkins.html\">has not actually read<\/a> Harry Potter.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alan Jacobs on Richard Dawkins&#8217; suspicion of Harry Potter: It strains credulity, does it not, that someone of Dawkins&#8217;s education and intelligence could believe that there is no difference between allowing children to read fantasy stories or fairy tales and &#8220;bringing [them] up to believe in spells and wizards&#8221; &#8212; or that children who read&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>More grist for the atheists-as-fundamentalists mill - Text Messages<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/more-grist-for-the-atheistsasf.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"More grist for the atheists-as-fundamentalists mill - Text Messages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Alan Jacobs on Richard Dawkins&#8217; suspicion of Harry Potter: It strains credulity, does it not, that someone of Dawkins&#8217;s education and intelligence could believe that there is no difference between allowing children to read fantasy stories or fairy tales and &#8220;bringing [them] up to believe in spells and wizards&#8221; &#8212; or that children who read&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/more-grist-for-the-atheistsasf.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Text Messages\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-10-30T11:44:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Patton Dodd\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"More grist for the atheists-as-fundamentalists mill - Text Messages","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/more-grist-for-the-atheistsasf.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"More grist for the atheists-as-fundamentalists mill - Text Messages","og_description":"Alan Jacobs on Richard Dawkins&#8217; suspicion of Harry Potter: It strains credulity, does it not, that someone of Dawkins&#8217;s education and intelligence could believe that there is no difference between allowing children to read fantasy stories or fairy tales and &#8220;bringing [them] up to believe in spells and wizards&#8221; &#8212; or that children who read&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/more-grist-for-the-atheistsasf.html","og_site_name":"Text Messages","article_published_time":"2008-10-30T11:44:05+00:00","author":"Patton Dodd","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/more-grist-for-the-atheistsasf.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/more-grist-for-the-atheistsasf.html","name":"More grist for the atheists-as-fundamentalists mill - Text Messages","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-10-30T11:44:05+00:00","dateModified":"2008-10-30T11:44:05+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#\/schema\/person\/186e2b80f15c2a749e18f6781b9e4dbe"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/more-grist-for-the-atheistsasf.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/more-grist-for-the-atheistsasf.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/2008\/10\/more-grist-for-the-atheistsasf.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"More grist for the atheists-as-fundamentalists mill"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/","name":"Text Messages","description":"Christianity and culture with Patton Dodd","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#\/schema\/person\/186e2b80f15c2a749e18f6781b9e4dbe","name":"Patton Dodd","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ea6\/ea67ccdc30915dc0263069ec4253344bx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ea6\/ea67ccdc30915dc0263069ec4253344bx96.jpg","caption":"Patton Dodd"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/author\/pdodd"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/textmessages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}