Hang On, Though...

Here's the original More4 interview with Richard Dawkins, which I'm sorry I didn't look at before posting below. Turns out he's not talking about fiction in general but myths (both religious and folklore) and his concern is much more specifically whether or not it's a good idea, or at all fair, to bring children up to believe in them. He states categorically that he is agnostic on the matter, since the research has not been done, and merely very curious. A censorious commenter on the Guardian post is suspicious that Dawkins has on the contrary already made up his mind that it's a pretty bad thing - and Dawkins does elsewhere call it child abuse - but quite frankly when I remember how scared I was of the bogeyman under my bed and how frightened of God's censure whenever I did wrong, and the appalling energy that went in that, the timidity it engendered in me as a child, I can't help making up my own mind against the practice...