Famous atheist Richard Dawkins beclowns himself further.
The guy who once said there’s nothing wrong with some “mild pedophilia” is warning against reading your children fairy tales because it might encourage them to believe in the supernatural. Sure, you can touch children inappropriately but for goodness sakes don’t read to them about Sleeping Beauty.
The Telegraph:
Speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival, Dawkins, a prominent atheist, said that it was ‘pernicious’ to teach children about facts that were ‘statistically improbable’ such as a frog turning into a prince.
…“I think it’s rather pernicious to inculcate into a child a view of the world which includes supernaturalism — we get enough of that anyway,” the 73-year-old said.
“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.”
Yes. One must make sure to read stories to one’s children exclusively about statistically probable events.
I love Ace’s thoughts on this:
Kids do love stories about statistical improbability.
Gather ’round, Children: Gran-Gran Dawkey is going to tell you the wondrous tale of Applied Statistics and Probability Theory.
— For realsies? Will Gran-Gran tell us of grand stories of Regression Analyses?
— Will he tell us of Correlations and Bayesian Interference?
All these things, Children. All these things and more.
— Yay, World Grounded Firmly in Actuarial Tables!!!
Such joy in the atheist worldview. Such joy.
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