Reddit reviews The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True

My advice is to keep on keeping on. The kids are young and impressionable, but will take long term cues from the people raising them. If you and your wife do not feed them bullshit but continue to use reality to explain things they'll come through okay. My oldest (now 10) bought all that stuff when he was under five. Now he will reject grandma's explanation of "god bowling" when talking about thunder and give an approximate scientific answer about lighting, rapid heating and cooling of air, and the sound waves generated thereby. First time he did that (when he was eight) I was ecstatic and my wife and MIL could only give me disapproving looks since he was right. Now they don't even bother with the stories anymore.

Edit: I'd recommend The Magic of Reality by Dr Dawkins. It's a book aimed at children that discusses myths from many cultures and explains them in simple to understand terms. I was lucky enough to get a copy signed by Dr Dawkins when he was speaking at Northwestern University a few years ago and I use it as a reference now and then to help explain things to my kids.

I've been told that Richard Dawkin's "The Magic of Reality" is a good book for children, but I haven't read it myself so I cant really say much more than that. The Amazon reviews of it certainly seem positive!

> the whole point of religion is to attempt to answer questions like "why are we here," or what's the meaning of life.

There's a subtle difference between religious myths or stories, and fairy tales. The difference largely has to do with how seriously the tellers of these stories are. That's about it.

For example, there are Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories that include ones with titles like "How the Leopard Got its Spots" Now, when adults tell this story to children, and the kids ask whether this is a real story, no sane adult would say yes. Nearly all of them would say that it's a story that teaches a moral lesson, or attempts to answer a question in a poetic or metaphorical way. The talking animals also sort of give it away.

If you take the story of Adam and Eve, this is a creation myth that is based on Babylonian folk tales - their "Just So Stories" if you will. Even has a talking animal in it. These stories, like with Kipling's, attempt to answer questions in a poetic way about where people came from and why things aren't perfect, and why we are mortal and so on. The only real difference between this story and other myths is that you were likely raised to believe these as being serious stories, that are representative of reality in some way.

I know a lot of religious people get annoyed when their stories are compared to fairy tales. That's understandable, given the fact that these people are raised to treat them with reverence, respect and sincerity. But, I'll point out that there are many people who don't see them any differently compared to fairy tales, because these people aren't looking at them through rose-coloured glasses.

If you've not ever read it, definitely check out the book The Magic of Reality. In it, Richard Dawkins begins each chapter with a fairy tale or myth from a different religion that attempts to answer a question, and then he goes into the science we currently understand to tell the actual answer to the question, as best we currently understand. This isn't to dismiss the stories - far from it. We should celebrate these stories because they remind us how curious we are about our universe and how understanding reality has always been important to us, and that it's only been in the last few hundred years that we've actually developed the tools and the processes to systematically go about answering these questions. Here's the Amazon page for the book.

Maybe instead of just debunking religion, you should invest in getting to know the alternatives. Not just skepticism and rationality instead of superstition, but also humanism, for example, as a set of ethical values, and curiosity and enthusiasm for science as uplifting and fascinating things in your life that make life worth living.

Maybe The Magic of Reality is a place to start. Ask someone to give it to you for Christmas or make it a special gift to yourself.

(Get it at your local bookstore, if possible, instead of supporting Amazon.)