We told you about the book earlier this year, and now it’s just about here. Set for release on October 4th, The Magic of Reality will be unlike any book written by Richard Dawkins before. It is illustrated for starters, and largely geared toward young and old readers alike. Perfect, he says, for anyone 12 and up. When it comes to the structure and gist of the book, Dawkins does a pretty good job of explaining things. So let’s let the video roll…
Note: If you’re willing to tweet about the book, you can view the first 24 pages of The Magic of Reality here.
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Can’t wait for this one to come out!
Dawkins defines reality. Dawkins defines what is magical. Dawkins turns from scientist to priest. Among the famous books that are aimed at developing minds and set out to educate them about the Big Questions (such as “what is reality”) are the Torah, the Bible, the Quran, the Bahagvadgita, and indeed the many ‘myths’ which Dawkins is taking on here as ‘junk magic’. This book is an oxymoron.
Richard — do science. Don’t tell people what to believe.
Well said, Stefanie.
This book is about science, Stefanie. But most of all it’s about the bogus myths that attempt to pervert that science. He’s talking about magic as an expression of wonderment, that’s all. You’ve gone ahead and made the mistake of the fundamentally religious: taking things too literally.
Well said, Simon.
Science is built on the religious idea of ‘progress’. The idea that humans are motivated to continue because they are getting better at stuff is a residue of Christian values that have dominated for centuries. By shedding all associations with Christianity, science would also have to drop the belief of ‘progression’ and presumably all moral codes we have come to assume are ‘evolved’ and not a product of years of religious conditioning. At best this is Christian science.
Sam, the idea that progress is a fundamentally religious idea is charitable at best, especially because you’re using the terms religion and Christian interchangeably. Humankind had been evolving and progressing for hundreds of thousands of years before the Christian era helped to bring about one of the darkest most backward times in our history. Dogma is not forward thinking, and is not concerned with human possibilities and potential, in fact it’s completely opposed to those concepts by it’s very definition, the static preservations of articles of faith at all cost
Come on Sam. Science predates Christianity.
Hippocrates lived around 400 BC. Many discoveries in Mathematics, Astronomy, Medicine took place in the 100’s and 1000’s BC in Greece, India, and China. Many religions make it clear that “progress” is not one of there tenets. It’s manipulative to suggest that science and religion share some integral link and therefore you can’t have one without the other.