Harry Potter?.......( Is it bad?)

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phil19034 said:
However, you don’t come away from writing a book report on any of the 7 Harry Potter books with a deeper understanding of Christianity.
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That’s not the intentions of the book. It has Christian themes, allegories and imagery, but it is not Christian fiction. Of course, that doesn’t make it unChristian or against Christianity. Those sorts of claims are simply false.
 
Roguish said:
I did see the movie, but I admit I don’t remember it very clearly now. Perhaps I’ll watch it again some time soon.
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Well… there’s your problem. The movies are enjoyable but they pale in comparison to the books. The movies misses many of the themes present in the books, and the ones they do touch on hardly do justice to the source material. The movie’s treatment of the themes is like a five minute synopsis of War and Peace…
 
Is that what children play having read? Or isn’t it wizards etc
 
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Lee1 said:
Magic is the central theme, and if not then she has done a poor job imo.
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Your close mindedness is astounding. But whatever, I’m not the one missing out.

Are you seriously incapable of recognizing a literary device for what it is, a means to present the story?

Whatever. There is no point in arguing someone who ignores depth due to superficial flaws.
 
This is getting silly. We have bigger issues in this world than Harry Potter, such as actual witchcraft, sex abuse, homelessness and th marginalized.

I’m sorry, but As a former witch, Harry Potter is nothing. In fact it lead me in a way back to God.
 
Lee1 said:
I saw that what children play having read? Or isn’t it wizards etc
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Yeah, in the same way short people with hairy feet are the main point of the Lord of the Rings, or the fact that perpetual winter would kinda suck is the main point of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. You are missing the forest for the trees. But, like I said, not my loss. I’ve spent too much time in this thread as is.
 
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In the past I have seen movies which contain all sorts of what we might, if we were religious, call evils. My wife even pointed out swearing in some of them which she found excessive and I hadn’t even noticed!

It’s called desensitisation.

I do have many flaws, that is perfectly correct but I have this sneaky feeling that Our Lady would not approve of HP and so neither do I.
 
ProdglArchitect said:
In teh books love is promoted. Like…s eriously, are you one of those people bashing the books without having read them? This isn’t fifty shade of grey we’re talking about here. This is a complex series of books with deep themes and meanings woven throughout.
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Now you’re switching your argument to “it’s about love, therefore it’s good”. Perhaps you’re even implying “it’s about love, therefore it’s Christian.” But authentic Christianity isn’t a feel-good thing.

And the point made by many, including me earlier in this thread, that HP portrays magic as fun, useful, interesting, and that HP thus promotes an interest in the occult (which is at odds with Christianity), you continue to disgregard.
 
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Roguish said:
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ProdglArchitect:
In teh books love is promoted. Like…s eriously, are you one of those people bashing the books without having read them? This isn’t fifty shade of grey we’re talking about here. This is a complex series of books with deep themes and meanings woven throughout.
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Now you’re switching your argument to “it’s about love, therefore it’s good”. Perhaps you’re even implying “it’s about love, therefore it’s Christian.” But authentic Christianity isn’t a feel-good thing.
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There is a difference between switching my argument, and appending / adding to it to address a specific complain. I still hold that the book series is positive.
And the point made by many, including me earlier in this thread, that HP portrays magic as fun, useful, interesting, and that HP thus promotes an interest in the occult (which is at odds with Christianity), you continue to disgregard.
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So do Narnia and Arthurian Legend. I would argue, however, that it presents is in much the same way that arithmetic and physics are presented in real life. It’s just another skill or subset of knowledge that needs to be developed to be useful. Much of the school-based portions of the books show it as anything but fun, with the main characters (well, Harry and Ron), looking at it as just more school work, like arithmetic and physics.

In her universe, it’s just another skill. It is wondrous from our perspective (for the first couple of books), but by the end it’s presented as fairly mundane, and also as having the extreme potential for damage and destruction.

I’m sorry, but as I’ve already stated ad nauseum, the inclusion of magic as a system has no inherent moral quality. Just “being magic” doesn’t make it evil any more than having no magic would automatically make a piece of literature good.

Like I said though, I’ve spent too much time on this topic. I’m nto going to change your minds, and you’re not going to change mine, so I’ve had enough of wasting my time. I believe the books are good, and can help people understand certain moral ideas. You think that, because of magic, they are inherently bad. I think that’s a stupid position and causes you to ignore very real substance and message, but hey, whatever.
 
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If the author had expressed Christian sentiments without the use of magic then it may have become a piece of Christian literature, but she did not.

Normalising magic doesn’t make it ok, it’s just like every other bad thing in our society which has become normalised and which has led people to practise excess to get their kicks.

Also, I am stupid but I cleave to my faith.
 
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All I can say is that I haven’t seen Harry Potter sold in a Religious Bookstore.

However, I did see it displayed at Barnes & Noble surrounded by bizarre “Magic books”.
 
Lou2U said:
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phil19034:
However, you don’t come away from writing a book report on any of the 7 Harry Potter books with a deeper understanding of Christianity.
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That’s not the intentions of the book. It has Christian themes, allegories and imagery, but it is not Christian fiction. Of course, that doesn’t make it unChristian or against Christianity. Those sorts of claims are simply false.
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I never made that argument. I’ve said multiple times that I don’t think there is an issue with Harry Potter in itself.

But I don’t think Harry Potter is good for children, esp ones who are not being properly catechized. Harry Potter teaches that witchcraft can be used for good - as does a TON of cartoons today for young children.

I’m witnessing this with my kids. They are borderline obsessed with witches, vampires, etc and they are only 7 and 3 because cartoons geared towards kids under 7 are always showing good witches, vampires, werewolves, etc.

So my kids (esp my 7 year old daughter) often has nightmares about vampires or monsters getting her.

My wife and I are doing our best to keep them away from this, but it’s everywhere now. And I find it disturbing.

So while Harry Potter is not bad, in of itself, it’s part of this obsession Hollywood has with witches and monsters.

God bless.
 
I’m stupid and I cling to my faith as well. I just don’t see this as a danger to my faith. I believe it can be a danger to some people, and that personal discernment should be involved when deciding what to read.

However, as I said in my first or second post, ANYTHING can be a danger to someone’s faith if they don’t approach it correctly, including and especially the Bible. (As evidenced by the thousands of protestant groups who have the “Real Biblical Truth” ™)
 
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That’s very unkind.

No I don’t.

It’s sad that you say these things. We’re talking about Harry Potter books. It doesn’t require ego involvement.
 
ProdglArchitect said:
I’m sorry, but as I’ve already stated ad nauseum, the inclusion of magic as a system has no inherent moral quality.
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The use of magic is, generally speaking, un-Christian. I don’t know if you’re Catholic, but if you care what the Catechism has to say about it, look at paragraph 2117.

So unless you just don’t care about a Christian perspective, I find it puzzling that you claim that the use of magic as a system has “no inherent moral quality”.
ProdglArchitect said:
So do Narnia and Arthurian Legend.
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As far as I recall, the protagonists in Narnia (part 1) do not use magic – but I’m going by memory now. (But to be fair, Gandalf from LOTR uses it extensively of course.) As for Arthurian legend, yes there is magic, but it is never used by the knights that are always at the heart of the story. (Which makes most Arthurian legend very Christian, by the way.)
 
It does not sound as though it’s a danger to your faith in particular, my concern is with our wider society.
 
Lee1 said:
Harry Potter is not neutral. It glorifies the use of magic.
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As someone who’s read quite a few fantasy books and loves the genre (though I’ve only seen the HP movies) I will say I’ve never tried to use magic. As a child when I’d play, of course magic would factor in heavily to some things I’d do, but it always clear to me that magic simply wasn’t going to work.

Now earlier you mentioned that a book shouldn’t even have demons in it. So allow me to switch the book in discussion for a little while the Wizard in Rhyme series. It’s a portal fantasy where a college English major named Matthew Mantrell gets brought to alternate history of earth which also has magic present and it works through verse in addition to a person’s character. As in, if you’re good, the more you strive to be holy, you’ll have a stronger magic and if you’re evil, the more darkness you do and whatnot, the stronger magic the demon in you will give. (I gloss over some details.) It was a rather interesting series and there was also a reliant on saints/angels for some of the bigger tasks. (For example in the first book, when the demon in the evil king comes out, that’s when a saint comes and banishes it in God’s name.) In other words, a book that had magic used by the main characters was very much a positive read.
Now you mentioned your sons read HP and are atheists. While I can’t speak to their experiences, I can speak to my own religious struggles. Reading fantasy stories was never at the heart of the issue. The issue came from misconceptions based on Fundamentalism’s permeation of what Americans think of in regards to Christianity. So when I finally realized I needed to take my Catholicism seriously (Catholic Answers’ Ask An Apologist really helped) there were definitely some things where it was like “Oh, my disagreement with this is a disagreement with Fundamentalists, not Catholicism.” Other things tied to it was also that my upbringing in the Catholic faith, while much more than many others, wasn’t informative enough for me to really know what it was so other sources filled the void.

So going back to fantasy, a series like Terry Pratchet’s Discworld, even though I was able to get the feeling he was an atheist from his novels, wasn’t anything that led me away. Rather, they were entertaining books I enjoyed reading. And the fantasy books I read are also similarly for pleasure. And in my view, if someone reads a fantasy novel and it pushes them away from faith, it’s not the fantasy novel, but other issues. In fact blaming the fantasy novel would be like saying that it was the roadside scenery that caused a traffic accident because the driver took a quick look at it, even though they were already drunk and had just hit a pothole at night.
 
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