Harry Potter and "the Death of God" - by Michael D. O'Brien

LifeSiteNews.com ^ | August 20, 2007 | Michael O'Brien

[sushiman]

ping ...

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[ccmay]

Pllllppppp! Stick to your knitting, Granny.

[ikka]

Interesting take on it.

[PetroniusMaximus]

Thought you might find this interesting.

[Politicalmom]

Check this out...

*Insert image of Dumbledore saying “Not this ____ again!!*

[Billthedrill]

All told, it is the grandest trans-cultural event of epic proportions in the history of mankind, rivaled only by the Bible.

This is almost too silly to comment on. It is nothing of the sort. Twenty years from now Potter will be an item of nostalgia for a dimly-remembered childhood fad. As far as rivaling the Bible in any sense - and the author is quite specific and quite serious about this - it is difficult to see how an adult with all his faculties intact could manage to make the comparison. It is more than hyperbolic, it is simply and categorically false.

[Humidston]

Bump for tomorrow.

[Dragonspirit]

I have to take issue with the author’s objection to the positive use of magic and such within the story. Would the author have the same problem with fictional tales of King Arthur’s knights and Merlin, or of Lord of the Rings and Gandalf?

In such stories, magic is not something worshipped or sourced through Satan or a satanic figure, it is a tool of characters to accomplish their goals. And if the rejection of it is due to some claim that it’s anti-Christian, well, should we take it to the logical conclusion and protest against any story that possesses weapons of any sort? In fact, it would be hard pressed to make any story at all that didn’t present some behavior that would be less than Christian in some capacity.

Faith doesn’t require fear of ideas or references.

[paudio]

Couple weeks ago there was a threat about HP, and I agree with that one. Yes, HP is about wizards, etc., but at least the author did not intentionally write the pieces to undermine Christianity. That’s not the case with “His Dark Materials” by Philip Pullman. He stated that he wrote the series to challenge Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which he saw as ‘Christian indoctrination’.

[Corin Stormhands]

No. Not really.

[JenB]

Wow, this is the silliest, most over-the-top thing I’ve ever read. Putting author’s name on my auto-ignore mental list.

[Ramius]

Good grief. Look at the list of articles about HP that this guy has written. Does he write about anything else?

Looks like he’s even more obsessed with Rowling’s stories than even the most immersed fans.

[r9etb]

use the word rivaled with some consideration, not only because of the impact of the series on the modern world, but also because of the worldview it so powerfully implants in its devotees. In short, the series is a kind of anti-Gospel, a dramatized manifesto for behavior and belief embodied by loveable, at times admirable, fictional characters who live out the modern ethos of secular humanism to its maximum parameters.

I stopped reading right there. The author is FOS.

[r9etb]

Anti-Potter Nitwit ping

[Burlem]

Maybe, just maybe this author and others are making way too much of the Potter books. They were originally written by Rollings to make reading fun for her son who was not a reader.

Why is it necessary to tear apart something with strange psycho-analysis. It is a story, a made up fun story.
Scheesh.

[NCLaw441]

The book is fiction. Everyone who reads it knows it is fiction. Every fairy tale ever told (I think) relies on magic or talking animals or some sort of necessarily fictitious events. If there is anyone who has read any of the Harry Potter books who believes that they are true, or that they contain authoritative information about witchcraft, it is their own messed-up minds and not the Harry Potter books that is the cause.

(I have read only the first of the series myself— not a big fiction reader.)

[JenB]

Er, while I don’t agree with the writer of this piece, when JK Rowling (Not Rollings) wrote the book, she was the single mother of a very young daughter. No son, daughter not old enough to read yet.