I’m not sure if this thread is going to “work”. I can see it, if we’re not careful, descending into insults and stereotypes, and I don’t want that. Also, if this belongs in Cafe Society, or even General Questions, I understand.
This question is directed to those who think the Harry Potter books are satanic, or teach kids witchcraft. Why do you think that? It’s something I’m actually curious about.
Well, I don’t fall in either of these groups, but it seems to me that there is a certain category of human that believes that any use of the imagination (particularly in paths disapproved of by that category of human) that leads inevitably to the worship of demons and/or witchcraft (which has, of course, nothing to do with demons). Any source of encouragement of imagination which deals with any form of magic is doubly suspect.
YMMV, and I am not an unbiased observer in these matters. 
I have a friend who attends a fundamentalist churc h(Pentecostal type church). They handed out a Harry Potter warning to everyone, the same warning that made it’s way around in emails. She came to me (I’m a HP fan) and asked me about it. I started laugh hysterically because after a bit of research I found that the basis of the church handout was from an article in The Onion. It goes so far as to use the quotes of the article as real quotes from actual children.
So, IMHO, I think a lot of it is ignorance, plain and simple. God forbid they investigate things independently and come to their own conclussion. It’s much easier to be spoon fed their beliefs. Anything that has to do with witchcraft, real or in literature, must be inherently Satanic. Of course, they conviently overlook the story of King Saul. They are so worried about all the evil in the world they are oblivious to the evil that comes from their own thoughts, hearts and beliefs.
I’m not sure you’re going to get much response from your selected group. Few of them post to the SDMB, and at least one who does has already expressed a desire not to explain the reasoning.
As an outsider to that view, my WAG is:
There is a strong “anti-witch” theme that runs through some Fundamentalist Christian traditions. Part of this is based on the ideas put forth by Paul (exemplified in Ephesians 6:11-13) that every “power” either comes from God or comes from Satan (and anything that is not clearly in their tradition of coming from God, must, therefore be from Satan).* This view is further buttressed by the passage in Deuteronomy 18:,
(Note the “divination” and “observer of times” prohibitions–condemning all fortune tellers–and the condemnation of enchanters, witches, and wizards.)
The folks who take this most seriously tend to believe that any acceptance of this sort of action, even in play/fantasy/fiction/etc., opens people (especially children) to the possible influence of these evil people in real life. There was a fairly loud (if quickly ignored) cry against Sabrina, the Teenage Witch for the same reasons. “Sabrina” is luring young kids to view witches as “fun” people with “magic” powers (obviously from Satan) and will cause children to be more accepting of this sort of evil when they have grown up.
*The same logic leads these folks to condemn Hindu or other beliefs on the grounds that the “gods” that are worshipped are simply manifestations of demons from hell. (e-mail daemons are suspect, as well, among some folks.)
So, Tom, you think they think that the “fake” magic in Harry Potter makes kids more prone to practicing “real” magic?
I guess it’s just frustrating hearing somebody make a statement like that and then not explaining it.
My (incomplete) understanding is that everything having to do with “magic” is evil. Anything that does not treat magic as evil allows the children to be misled to believe that magic is not evil. (The same folks are often the ones who forbid their children to go Trick-or-Treating, for much the same reason.)
I will not claim that my explanation is easily understood (or that I have actually explained their position correctly). I have a serious problem with the idea that one cannot separate fantasy from reality and indulge the fantasy.
An attempt at an analogy: Child pornography is evil. Our society condemns, not merely those who engage in child pornography, hurting children, but also those who engage in fantasizing about child pornography. (The Supreme Court heard opening arguments in just the last couple of weeks regarding the constitutionality of prohibiting kiddie porn computer images even when no child was present when the images were manufactured (meaning no child was harmed in the creation of the images).) So, in effect, the larger society has also engaged in the concept that there are evils that have such terrible ramifications that we may ban even imaginary associations with them.
(I am not taking a position on the Supreme Court case, which I have only heard about in passing; I am only noting that the idea that some thoughts/concepts/images/portrayals/etc. are too evil or terrible to entertain, even in the imagination, is not limited to those who oppose Harry Potter, Halloween, or ouija boards.)
Tom, for someone who’s not a Fundie, you’ve sure got a good take on the Fundie anti-HP mindset. You’re not using a crystal ball or something, are you? 
Yeah, the general attitude towards all that “magic stuff” is, “Don’t even think about stuff like Ouija boards and tarot cards, let alone touch them or look at them, 'cause Satan can use that thought to lure you away down the Road to Hell. He’ll make you curious about it, and you’ll start doing research, and the next thing you know, you’ll be performing Black Masses…”
Back in the late 1960s, the Rev. David Wilkerson used to tell Christian teens, “Don’t do your research paper for school on ‘the occult’. We don’t need any more research done on Satan–we know alllll about him already…” Which sums up the Mindset pretty well for me. “Don’t research it, don’t read books about it, don’t talk about it, don’t even think about it…”
When I was growing up, I had family around me who felt the same way about card games like bridge and poker being the Road to Hell. But when I was growing up, the same family around me who thought that Ouija boards and poker were the Path to Perdition also encouraged me to read anything I could get my hands on, and if that included stories about witches, wizards, and the supernatural, well, that was fine with them. To them, books were good–period. And if I wanted to read Ray Bradbury or Saki or 101 Ghost Stories for Young and Old and make myself too scared to sleep with the light off, then that was my business.
So let’s not turn this into a Fundie-bashing thread, 'cause there are some of us out there who think that books are good, period.
And OTOH there was the nice Church Lady, my age, who, making polite conversation with me one day at a Bible study, asked me what kinds of books I liked to read. “Oh, science fiction, murder mysteries, like that,” I responded casually.
She looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said very slowly, “You know, I’ve never understood why someone would want to read something that wasn’t true…”
Which pretty much ended that conversation. :rolleyes:
I’m not sure you’re inviting debate here, *tomndebb, but the point is that there no such thing as magic and witchcraft. How can something be “evil” if it doesn’t exist at all?
And I’m not sure I buy your analogy, since the artificial child-porn prosecution remains controversial, there’s no consensus on which to base your analogy, and yet there is real harm to be associated with in this case.
Besides, how do we define “evil” anyway?
Well, the short and easy answer would be that fundamentalists do believe it exists. Since we are discussing why it makes sense ot them, not just why it makes sense in some objective sense (which I think we all agree it dosen’t), that is sufficient.
Over on this thread, Badtz Maru made the following point, which I think is a secondary reason for the dust up over the books, and a good explaination for why the “it’s just make-believe” idea is non-feasible. (BTW, the thread is about why the books seemed to raise more controversy than the movie, thus far.)
I am not looking for a debate. Captain Amazing noted that this could have been a GQ (and probably put it here because a huge percentage of religious questions wind up here, anyway).
I merely attempted to provide an answer to the question, given that few believers of that perspective post here. (Those believers accept that magic can be real and is evil; no other opinions are necessary for them to condemn Harry Potter, which I do not.) If my analogy conveys the meaning I hoped, it was successful. If it provides no insight to the issue, then it failed. I have no “back up” analogy, so if it failed, then it will simply have to moulder where it lies.
Well, this story may or may not shed any light on the subject (and may I say that I think Tom has a pretty good insight, but why do y’all keep talking like he is a subscriber to the beliefs he’s writing about?)----
(Necessary background: I’m a librarian, and my church is not a fundamentalist-type. I have read and enjoyed HP, though I don’t think it’s Great Children’s Lit by any means.)
I was asked to do a class on reading and teenagers for my church women’s group. Others were doing similar pieces on books for other ages, and one of them had an HP book in her display. I was really very suprised after the class, when a woman I know fairly well came up to me and asked what I thought of the Harry Potter books, had I read them, were they OK? She had heard that they were bad, and had not let her kids check them out of the library.
It turned out that she is not very enthusiastic about the fantasy genre in general, because in high school, she had had a good friend who had gotten into D&D–to the point where he wasn’t interested in anything else. She is, therefore, suspicious of all media that had magic/sorcery/etc., although she enjoys science fiction.
We talked a little about how some people just have that kind of personality–so that they need something to hold onto, to fill whatever emptiness they have inside. I feel that some types of people can go over the edge with anything: football, Star Trek, or D&D, if it isn’t one, it will be another. I told her that I didn’t think there was anything inherently wrong about gaming, and that most people don’t become obsessed with it. I encouraged her to read HP for herself, and then decide what she wanted her kids to do. We also talked about the Narnia books, which she remembered loving as a child, though she hadn’t realized that they were a Christian allegory, and I suggested reading them aloud to her kids.
Anyhow, I think a lot of her trepidation came from the fact that HP had been so hyped by the religious groups; she had heard something about it, and worried, but not being a big reader herself, had not really looked further into it. The same seemed to be true of another woman who joined our conversation. I wonder if there aren’t a lot of similar people out there?
Tom,
I guess the question is (and I accept that the reason the people condemning it are doing so because they think magic is evil, and they don’t want their kids to be exposed to even fictional magic), how do they know that the books involve magic, as they understand magic to be, considering that a lot of them haven’t read the books?
To take your child porn analogy, I can understand people who think “Hey, this is child porn…it has to be evil and stopped”, but before they say that, don’t they have a duty to make sure that the work in question really is child porn?
For example, the Chronicles of Narnia, which is Christian writing, and delivers an explicit Christian message, also contains “magic”, but the majority of people condemning Harry Potter don’t condemn the Narnia books.
**Captain Amazing wrote:
This question is directed to those who think the Harry Potter books are satanic, or teach kids witchcraft. Why do you think that? It’s something I’m actually curious about.**
I’d like to see evidence of the existence of an actual “satanic” cult that the Fundamentalists keep raving about. In his book, Satanic Panic, Victor Jeffries does an excellent job of showing that it’s all an urban legend.
I’ve had the opportunity to speak with 2 self-described “Satanists” and various members of the Temple of Set. They’re nothing like what the Fundamentalists describe as “satanists.”
Well, Freyr, I think that a lot of fundimentalists would argue that things like wicca, paganism, hinduism, etc, are really Satanism…you know, that you either serve G-d (Christianity, maybe Judaism) or you serve Satan (everybody else).
A lot of the arguments I have heard against Harry Potter isn’t just that it deals with the occult, which is bad enough. It is that it isn’t about God. There are a lot of people that oppose secular music, reading, and just about anything else because it distracts you from your true purpose- thinking about God.
Not to come across as a fundamentalist apoligist, but I think that the fundalmentalists are doing what all parents do–since is is impossible to screen everything themselves, they are taking the advice of people they trust–namely thier spiritual leaders. I don’t see how this is any different from making a blanket statement that your six year old can’t watch pg-13 rated movies, instead of watching every PG-13 rated movie that your six year old has any interest in seeng, on the off chance that it might not have anything really inappropriate in it. I wouldn’t be willing to sit through Cherry Pie just in case. From the parent’s point of view, this is just four books, and there are a whole world of books out there that they DO approve of, and there is no real compelling reason to read a bunch of books that don’t interest them, jsut to find out if their kids can maybe read them.
**Captain Amazing wrote:
Well, Freyr, I think that a lot of fundimentalists would argue that things like wicca, paganism, hinduism, etc, are really Satanism…you know, that you either serve G-d (Christianity, maybe Judaism) or you serve Satan (everybody else).**
I’ve heard the Fundamentalist refer to Wicca/Paganism as “satanic” but only the most extreme ever included other mainstream faiths as “satanic.”
The point I was making is that they label various things as being “satanic” without ever giving a comprehensive definition of what Satanism is or showing how something like Wicca/Paganism or Harry Potter stories are “satanic” other than saying they deal with the “occult” and therefore must be “satanic.”
**even sven wrote:
A lot of the arguments I have heard against Harry Potter isn’t just that it deals with the occult, which is bad enough. It is that it isn’t about God. There are a lot of people that oppose secular music, reading, and just about anything else because it distracts you from your true purpose- thinking about God.**
What’s interesting is that Disney movies deal with magic or Paganism (or at least Pagan symbology) yet there’s hardly a peep out of the Fundamentalists about Disney’s portrayal of magic. Think about how magic played an intregal part in the last 5 Disney animated releases yet you don’t hear the Fundamentalist screaming about “satanism” or “occult influence” in Disney films.
I can’t beleive nobody mentioned the Simpsons episode on this:
Ned Flanders reads Harry Potter to his kids
“So then Harry Potter and all his friends went to Hell for practicing black magic. The end.”
Little kids: “Yayyyy!”
You obviously haven’t been hanging around the right fundamentalists, then. Check out http://www.christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/2001/atlantis.html, for example. Most of the time, though, fundamentalists don’t condemn Disney for “occultism” as much as for its so-called “pro-gay” practices.
Now, about Harry Potter. If you want the fundamentalist take on this, check out http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/harrypotter.html. However, if you want a more liberal, tolerant Christian take on the situation, check out http://www.hollywoodjesus.com/harry_potter.htm. For a “middle-of-the-road” perspective that specifically addresses comparisons between Harry Potter and Tolkien, check out http://www.decentfilms.com/commentary/magic.html.
Er, Freyr, many of my Fundie friends have participated for many years in an all-out Disney boycott (because of Disney’s same-sex health insurance policy), so the point about “why don’t Fundies object to Disney cartoons?” doesn’t really hold.
And anyway, a lot of them do object to Disney cartoons, because of the “magic” in them, because of the “fantasy” aspect. The Little Mermaid, the Beast, Pinocchio and the Blue Fairy, all of them.
But, you’re not really saying, “Why don’t they object?”, you’re saying, “Why don’t we get a Fundie media shitstorm every time there’s a Disney re-release of Snow White?” That’s because Disney has been around for so long that it’s just part of the background noise for Fundies. There’s no point in objecting to it publicly any more–it’s obviously here to stay. But Harry Potter is new, and so has to pay some dues.
Also–how can I put this?–Harry Potter is a book (at least, it was a book first), and to people with this mindset, books are threatening in a very subtle way, in a way that cartoons aren’t threatening. It’s hard to explain. These people don’t really like to read, for one thing. They’re aren’t very good at “reading”. I don’t mean in a “literacy” sense, I mean in the sense of being happiest when settled in for the afternoon with a good book. They tend to view “bookish” types (like me) with suspicion.
When they do read, the only things they’re really comfortable reading are non-fiction. Easy non-fiction. They find it difficult to wrap their imaginations around fiction to begin with, and fiction dealing with subject matter that’s forbidden by the Bible is just terribly frightening to them, in a way that even a full-length cartoon about magic isn’t. Cartoons are for kids, and aren’t that scary. But “books” are intimidating, and a book about magic is doubly so.
Does this make sense?