Harry Potter doesn't exist.
This type of debate makes Christians look like a bunch of zealots. Harry Potter is a character in a book, for crying out loud. What's next? Superman? Batman? Terminator?
There's evil to fight on this earth and there are people who are still debating if they should join the fold.......this stuff about Potter = Bad is highly detremental to debates I must answer.
Excellent post. But I am afraid too many people have too little to do in their lives and must perform Thought Patrol on others. Probably best, keeps them from doing something really dangerous, and only those who believe as they do will listen to them, anyway.
Don’t dismiss the principle that language really can be used as a tool to influence people’s beliefs. Maybe Harry Potter won’t do this in an undesirable way or to a significant degree. But to say the Harry Potter Debate = bad is not as good an assessment as one that at least defines the potential problem (corruption of children’s approach to good/evil), explains the steps that would be involved in the process of this kind of corruption, and identifies any of Rowling’s language/concepts that can be said to contribute either significantly or insignificantly to such corruption.
One thing I always noticed—liberals in the press and elsewhere have always gotten just a little too excited about these books.
Maybe these people will one day realize Harry Potter is a fictional character (Osama Bin Laden and the ACLU are, sadly, very real) and their attacks on the Potter books while being silent on The Wizard of Oz, The Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia only show their willful hypocrisy.