(no subject)

[theweaselking]

"Harry Potter is dangerous because magic is REAL"

Version 1

Version 2

One person, convinced by the strong arguments in 1 and 2, attempts to learn REAL magic from Harry Potter and D&D. With pictures! And many samples!

Paraphrasing luna_the_cat, why are the "True Christians" always the ones who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality?

Comments

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

why are the "True Christians" always the ones who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality?

Because their worldview is inherently magical, but since magic is Teh Evil!!!1!!one!, they haven't been taught how to deal with it.

(There are a number of ways of managing same. Being, despite my proclivities, something of a skeptic, I tend to view it as a psychological construct, which has gotten me into trouble with some more literal-minded paganistic folk.)

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

why are the "True Christians" always the ones who can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality?

Um, no offense to the Christians, but, being that the believe in a bearded guy who created the world in seven days, angels, an underground burning place and a fork-tailed imp who runs it, I think the whole "can't separate fantasy from reality" thing goes beyond just the "true" Christians...

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

It's far from all Christians who believe in the bearded guy, the imp, and the seven days.

In fact, the ones who take that as fact as opposed to allegory and metaphor are typically the "True Christians."

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

Really? I think the whole bearded guy stuff is part and parcel of the standard Christian package. You can't exactly believe that Christ was sent by God to die for our sins unless there's a God sending him and an imp-managed inferno to save us from, right?

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

You can believe in God without the bearded guy, and Satan without the imp, and certainly Christianity without the seven days.

As I'm not Christian I don't know the inner workings of Christian theology for the sane, but it's there.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

Ok, I see what you're saying. Let me rephrase it:

(Take two)
Um, no offense to the Christians, but, being that they believe in an omnipotent supernatural force which created the world in less time than it would really take, spiritual servants, a metaphysical place of punishment post-death if your life is not lived correctly and the cunning and nearly-as-powerful-as the-omnipotent-force advesary to the ominipotent force that runs it, I think the whole "can't separate fantasy from reality" thing goes beyond just the "true" Christians...

Is that better? My point was that all Christians believe in things that look like fantasy, not to argue the exact beliefs, names, and variations of those core (fantastical) elements.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Well, the omnipotent supernatural force would be in there, as well as the spiritual servents. The rest don't need to be there to be christian.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure some version of Hell and the Devil needs to be there to be Christian, regardless of people who pick and choose the good from the bad. I mean, the Devil and Jesus have at least one conversation, after all, so believing in Jesus requires at least belief in the Devil.

Even excluding Hell, the Devil and all that, an omnipotent supernatural force and his spiritual servants are elements found in fantasy. There is no way to remove every fantastical element from Christianity and have it still be Christianity.

If people are going to write all of that off as allegory and example, they really aren't Christians as much as they are atheists who follow the morality lessons given by The Bible and/or Jesus.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

I mean, the Devil and Jesus have at least one conversation, after all, so believing in Jesus requires at least belief in the Devil.

Depends how metaphorical you want to get.

However, I take your point. Not being Christian myself, it's really not an issue for me.

However (2), I'm hesitant to ascribe terms to people that they haven't chosen themselves, and tell them what they believe. I get into enough trouble cataloging books, which can't fight back.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Ok, good point.

[luna-the-cat.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of Christians who believe in God, just not God as an old-bearded-guy-in-the-sky; more as a Great-Spirit-Imbuing-The-Universe. These Christians also often regard Christ as a teacher, a human being who had some remarkable insights and who steered monotheistic religion in a new direction (somewhat away from the fire-and-blood-sacrifice style of the Old Testament). The "progressive Christians" or "moderate Christians" may believe in a literal heaven and hell, but tend to be a great deal more sensible about whether magic is real or there is a literal Satan -- or for that matter, that Harry Potter books are anything other than entertainment. Funnily enough, it is for these more relaxed attitudes that the nutcases above condemn them as "not true Christians", which I don't think helps the religion any.

Me -- I believe that evil is a real thing. I don't believe there is a red guy with a tail behind it, or that he's trying to lure kids in to him by working through J.K Rowling. >:-/

[zenten.livejournal.com]

When I was growing up most christians I knew didn't belive in the burning place, many didn't believe in the fork tailed guy, they thought that the bearded guy was an incoporial being, and that the seven days thing was allegory.

Mind you, you might still think it's crazy, but it's a bit less crazy than what you're describing.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Six days.

[rgovrebo.livejournal.com]

Sheesh, have the loonies given up on rock music? There was everything else, including the UN...

[luna-the-cat.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, just do a Google search for "[topic of choice]+Satan". It's always cheap amusement to while away a Sunday afternoon.

[stormkami.livejournal.com]

I'll tell you why. Their "faith" - more like a giant spiritual orgasm when focused in unison, zealously - can cause some wicked things to happen. They fear the fact that other people might have the same ability and not share it with them - that without owning the orgasm, they'll lose it. I grew up in an Assembly of God church. I SAW my hillbilly aunt Nadine speaking tongues, recorded it, and had a language professor at Akron U years later identify it as some old Middle Eastern dialect. I SAW this fat lame kid named Josh start hobbling around, progressively better, after being baptized alongside me when I was 12 (he was 11). You can feel the spirit of what they call God within you when this stuff happens. I just don't believe it's necessarily a specific God, because I felt the same sort of "perception" the first time I took a REAL breath (yoga, also age 12) or "left my body" (if that's what you'd call it - after watching Oprah's episode and reading a library book, same age). I learned very young that, as far as I can tell, these are all HUMAN abilities, no different than the ability to process raw organic matter in the furnace that is our belly or conceiving of something in one's mind's eye and then building it from rock, sand, oil, and tree sap. The Christians are afraid they've been lied to, and they have: they can be happy without permission, and miracles can be a very human phenomenon.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Since that feeling you describe is also encountered in Pagan festivals (particularly in ecstasy-oriented sects such as Feri and its offshoots), I think you might have something here.

They get around this by saying that if you invoke any other name than Jesus to get these results, whatever happens comes from Satan and not from God.

On the other hand, there are plenty of Pagans who get twitchy when I, like you, refer to these as human phenomena. (Although, I don't consider human ability and divine providence to be mutually exclusive—I mean, how ELSE is it going to happen?) Because they don't want to believe that there might be a perfectly rational explanation for whatever's happening.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Yeah, most of the pagans I know bristle and shriek at the HINT of rationality.

/The line, it was there.

[stormkami.livejournal.com]

Well, certain holy texts also indicate we were created in the image of God. After all, don't we create things from mere thought and motivation every day, and aren't we on the verge of creating more universal things, like energy, matter and LIFE? I'm not so short-sighted as to think we merely share the visage of God (not that I think he's an old man with a beard and a book of good and bad deeds on his lap, either). It's nice to know someone shares some of my observations on religion, btw.

-Ry

[utmoonbog.livejournal.com]

The Harry Potter books would not have been culturally acceptable half a century ago. Today's cultural climate --an "open-mindedness" toward occult entertainment together with "closed-mindedness" toward Biblical Christianity -- was planned a century ago. It was outlined by the United Nations in the late 1940s and has been taught and nurtured through the developing global education system during the last six decades.

To understand how the world was prepared to welcome Harry Potter and to hate the Christian "muggles" who refused to approve its favorite entertainment, read the following articles and chapters: