now that's just cruel

[alonewiththemoon]

Okay, I'm all for helping kids develop rational thinking abilities, but this bit from a Boing-Boing article about a summer camp for kids run by Richard Dawkins just made me sad:

"Camp-goers aged eight to 17 will also be taught how to disprove phenomena such as crop circles and telepathy. In the Invisible Unicorn Challenge, any child who can prove that unicorns do not exist will win a £10 note"

Encouraging rational thought = good.  Killing children's imaginations = bad.  It's people like Dawkins who give the rest of us to whom religion is irrelevant a very bad name, I suppose because clearly it is not irrelevant to him.  He is a true atheist.  I'm just not religious.
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Comments

[peregrinekt.livejournal.com]

but you get $50 if you prove invisible unicorns DO exist...

[deadwinter.livejournal.com]

I, on the other hand, hate religion for the poison that it is and I still think this is a stupid thing to do.

Believe me, some of us atheists are kinda fed up with Dawkin's rabidness.

[alonewiththemoon]

I should clarify what the term atheist means to me--I don't use it to describe myself because I do not like being defined in opposition to something that isn't remotely relevant to me. Define me by what I am, not by what I am not. Dawkins, otoh, clearly exists to be in opposition, therefore atheist suits him as a title. I don't see a lot of difference really between him and equally rabid religious fundamentalists.

[atalanta.livejournal.com]

I am a true atheist and think he is an ass.
But I don't think the term atheist is a definition in opposition at all - it's absence, not against-ness. Well, it is against-ness for some people, maybe for many, but that is not necessarily so.

[alonewiththemoon]

But it's not an absence if it's not something that was ever thought of as being there, or as a regular part of the human condition...