Well, there’s another person who doesn’t like Harry Potter. No, it’s not some religious fundie on a book 
burning crusade. It’s none other than the world’s most famous atheist.
From the Telegraph UK, Harry Potter fails to cast spell over Richard Dawkins. What exactly is the hater-of-all-thing-religious worried about? Excerpt:
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 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.”
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.”
I haven’t read Harry Potter, but I have read my share of fairy tales, and I can corroborate Dawkins’ thesis: Fairy tales have had an “insidious affect on [my] rationality. Okay, maybe “insidious” isn’t the right word. But The Pied Piper, The Golden Key and The Hobbit have permanently tweaked my perception of reality. My imagination will never be the same.
And maybe that’s what Dawkins really fears — imagination, wonder, myth and mystery. It’s what Chesterton called Elfland. “…fairy-tales are as normal as milk or bread,” he said. “Civilisation changes; but fairy-tales never change… Fiction and modern fantasy and all that wild world… can be described in one phrase. Their philosophy means ordinary things as seen by extraordinary. The fairy-tale means extraordinary things as seen by ordinary people.”
Course, this is Dawkins’ fear: that “ordinary people” envision “extraordinary things,” that the young mind finds wonder in science 
as well as science fiction. I mean, why imagine elves and orcs, pirates and princes, when we can settle for a nerd in a lab jacket smashing atoms? It belies the atheist’s real god.
But maybe what’s most interesting about Dawkins’ objection of all things fantastical, is his admission that extra-terrestrials may have seeded life on earth. And this from a man who considers Christians intellectual Neanderthals. Hey, bring on the science. But when it comes to this grand, baffling, wonderful, mystery called life, maybe we need our “rationality” tweaked. Extra-terrestrials seeding earth? And Dawkins is worried about Harry Potter?
It always seems to surface, doesn’t it? These scientists who are irrational at heart . . . willing to fill that void God placed there with aliens or order from chaos or anything fantastical when God is literally staring them in the face. Without excuse . . .
As soon as I’m done laughing I’ll remember to tell this guy he has no imagination. Good lord. Some things don’t even merit responding to.
Nice post, Mike. Nicely said.
HAHA too funny to take serious
Um, actually in your link for “his admission that extra-terrestrials may have seeded life on earth”, he in no way claims that extra-terrestrials may have seeded life on earth. He was talking about in a purely hypothetical example context.
This really should not shock us. The entire mantra of the atheist is to remove all sense of wonder and replace with a dour, cynical world view. The conflict arises when the atheist creed(s) meets the disasters in life that require faith. I have yet to find where an atheist finds his/her hope. The old hymn On Christ the solid rock I stand sums up the believers hope. I am going to lift up Richard Dawkins to God and ask him to put him on his Damascus road so that he might be saved.
Fair Tales do change actually, we now define them all based on Disney’s not at all faithful versions.
I seem to be the only person in the Nerdy circles I hang with who still hasn’t read Harry Potter. It’s not just perceived as for kids anymore, lots of older Nerds have ti right up there with Sta Wars and Tolkien now.