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July 21, 2005
Harry Potter and the Half-wit Stance
Lot's of blogs these days are writing about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, hoping to lure in a few readers from search engines who are looking for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. At Ablogistan, we would never write about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince just to boost our Google rankings. But it turns out, there is actually something interesting about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to write about.
Brought to my attention by the folks at Sadly, No! is an article at the Christian Worldview Network, a place that not only claims to be an antidote for Liberalism, but also for "Christian Happy-Talk." Personally, I prefer "Christian Happy-Talk" to the "Christian Fire-and-Brimstone-Angry-Talk" that seems to be growing. But to each his own.
The author, Jan Markell, has some problems with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, mainly all the FICTIONAL witches and wizards in the book. Let's take a look at a few particularly amusing exerpts:
"Chaos reigned in my home town July 16 at midnight. Little kids roamed the streets in ecstasy as they had just purchased the new Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." Most were dressed like witches and wizards. They are addicted, but not to righteousness. And they just want to be like Harry and, if possible, attend Hogwarts' School of Witchcraft. When told it doesn't really exist, they are heartbroken.""Harry Potter is a wizard. Excuse me, but how many times does the Bible warn of us wizards, witches, witchcraft, sorcery, spells, incantations, and more?"
"So the Potter plot may be fantasy/fiction, but the setting and characters promote an occult-based worldview that kids accept as truth in normal life."
It's hard to know how to respond to something like this. You could start by countering that HARRY POTTER IS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER!!! WIZARDS, WITCHCRAFT, SORCERY, SPELLS, AND INCANTATIONS DON'T REALLY EXIST!!!
As far as children believing that the world of Potter is real, well, they also believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and many other fictional *cough* invisible *cough* characters. I say, if kids want to practice witchcraft and wizardary, let them do it. It is harmless. It's not like they'll actually succeed. And if they do, then sign me up, because that's a helluva lot more interesting than anything I learned in 20 years of school.
But this is just isolated among a few radicals, right? Yes... if the newly appointed Pope can be considered radical. "It is good, [to] enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly," wrote (then) Cardinal Ratzinger in 2003.
I don't see why Harry Potter is so different than the thousands of other movies and books in the fantasy genre. I mean, if you ban witchcraft and wizardary, you miss out on some great entertainment: Lord of the Rings, Willow, Wizard of Oz, Bewitched, and any movie every made by Disney.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at July 21, 2005 10:07 PM
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Comments
Gee, some people even believe in an invisible gawd who's sole purpose seems to be to send 95% of us to another invisible place, hell, complete with demons and shit. WTF? These assholes are certifiable. But then, they will all go to another invisible place where they can sing hymns and pray for ETERNITY!!! If that ain't hell, I don't know what is.
Posted by: blackdog at July 27, 2005 10:15 PM
I had a similar conversation today on the absurdity of this. I mean if your going to hate on the Harry Potter books for having wizardry, then you have to hate on Lord of the Rings for portraying man as one among many races of beings that once inhabited the Earth. And clearly this latter isn't getting anyone's panties in a wad.
BTW, did you see Sen. Rick Santorum on the Daily Show? It was an interesting interview to watch.
Posted by: overlord at July 29, 2005 05:13 PM
Overlord, I know this is a touchy subject for you, being a Harry Potter look-alike and all ;)
I did see Santorum on the Daily Show and was further convinced of Jon's genius. Some people say he could have been harder on Slick Rick, but it has to be hard to butt heads with someone who is your complete opposite and do it with such wit and dignity.
Sometimes Stewart seems to be one of the few politicians/journalists/people in the country who genuinely want to know the roots of other people's opinions. Everyone else seems content bashing each other over the head like a blindfolded game of whack-a-mole.
Posted by: Elyas at July 30, 2005 09:41 PM
This proves something I've maintained for many years - it's not children that have trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality, it's adults.
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