Catholic Reading Wednesday

With many thanks to our wonderful and insightful curator, Karen Celano, you can delve into a faith-related news article each Wednesday! Karen writes:

This week, one of the world’s most famous atheists, Richard Dawkins, made minor headlines by suggesting that reading fairy tales to children is dangerous because it may encourage a pernicious belief in the supernatural. While Dawkins’ words were not, in reality, as stark as the headlines made it seem, his skepticism of the value of fairy tales is indicative of a broader cultural disdain for religious faith in favor of the hard “facts” of science and technology. In fact, philosopher and atheist Peter Boghossian recently went so far as to say that religious faith is an‘epistemological virus’ that needs to be ‘contained and eradicated’ from the human race.

The fact that religious faith and fairy tales are connected in Dawkins’ mind is no coincidence. Nor is it a coincidence that the fathers of speculative fantasy fiction – J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis – were both believing Christians. In his famous essay, “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien writes that fairy tales were an early introduction for him to the concept of sacramentality: they revealed to him “the potency of words, and the wonder of things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine.” He also speaks of how fairy stories, by introducing the reader to a different world with rules different from our own, enable us to reassess our world in a new way – similar to the ways in which religious faith reminds us that God’s rules are not ours, and that we must constantly question our world in light of God’s kingdom. In a similar vein, C.S. Lewis testifies to the sacramental power of stories, writing that myth “takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the ‘veil of familiarity’.” And both Tolkien and Lewis attest to themoral value of fairy stories in posing moral dilemmas of good and evil and demanding listeners to think morally. This moral element of fantasy lends them a truth-value that takes them beyond the factual knowledge that science can provide. As Lewis wrote, “Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

Tolkien and Lewis focus on the moral and proto-religious nature of fairy stories, but even Albert Einstein reputedly recognized their value in stimulating a scientifically-minded curiosity and imagination. Thus, he is remembered to have responded to a mother who wanted to know what reading material to give her son whom she wanted to be a scientist: "Fairy tales and more fairy tales." Scientists above all should know the value of creative thinking in scientific development – especially when the ideas produced through imaginative thought seem improbable according to current scientific understandings. In a recent Scientific American article, "The Case Against Copernicus," the author speaks of the scientific community’s opposition to Copernicus’ theory that the earth revolved around the sun. Far from devolving into battle between science on the side of Copernicus and blind faith against him, the case against Copernicus was spearheaded by skeptical, slow-adapting scientists. Copernicus, for his part – with no scientific evidence to back him – argued that his theory was possible on the basis of God’s omnipotence. Although eventually science proved Copernicus correct, without his far-reaching creativity of thought he would not have been capable of thinking “outside the box” of scientific orthodoxy – and helping us to learn more about the world. Perhaps, without the “epistemological virus” of his faith, Copernicus would not have come up with his model of heliocentrism.

Our culture, while not generally holding as extreme a view as Dawkins or Boghossian, is subtly and perhaps unconsciously acquiescing with their anti-faith ideology, as certain new curricula in elementary, middle, and high schools are encouraging students to read more “non-fiction,” “informational” texts while de-emphasizing “classic” and fictional literature. This is done, we are told, for the sake of teaching children how to be “critical thinkers” for a new technological age. At the same time, however, fantasy literature and entertainment for both youth and adults are abounding, indicating a yearning in our society for the very experiences Tolkien and Lewis attested to: a desire to experience the world in a new, creative way that challenges how we conceive of reality. Tolkien and Lewis would not be surprised: they would see this yearning as part and parcel of man’s innate desire for God. We yearn for creativity because we are built in the image of God the Creator. Dawkins and Boghossian would do well to remember that even science would not exist without the curiosity and imagination that fairy tales – and religious faith – inculcate in our minds and hearts. Critical thinking isn’t enough. Sometimes we must take a leap of faith.