Exactly...and the Potterbashers seem unable to grasp the idea that Potter lives in a different world from the one we’re in.
The Potterbashers are not the idiots they seem to be. They are committing a logical error, but it is a subtle one.
In Rowling’s universe, magic functions as a TECHNOLOGY. It is part of that universe’s “nature”, has its own laws, and does not involve having spirits do supernatural work for you.
The Bible uses the word “magic” to refer to the practice of having spirits do supernatural work for you. The visible effects of the naturalistic magic in the Potter universe cannot be produced by naturalistic means in our universe, therefore the very word “magic” has different metaphysical connotations in the fictional universe than it does here. Here, naturalistic magic spells do not “work”, except in the Clarkean sense (”any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”).
However, the Potterbashers claim that occult magic, the kind that involves appealing to spiritual beings to do supernatural work for you, IS ACTUALLY REAL IN OUR WORLD AND REPRESENTS A DIABOLICAL TRAP FOR HARRY POTTER FANS.
Their error is NOT that they think occult magic is real, and trying to argue against this belief misses the point.
Their real error is that they can’t tell the difference between summoning supernatural spirits, and pretending that there is a naturalistic magic in our universe. Their deficiency is being unable to get past the WORD “magic” to discern that two very different kinds of activity are denoted by it in fiction.
If Rowling’s “good” wizard characters had summoned demons to do their bidding, I would agree that the books were spiritually unhealthy. If she had even had “bad” wizard characters do this, I would regard the books with serious reservations, because of the confusion of the two senses of the word “magic” that this would lead to. But she quite properly did neither of these things, and so her books are no more spiritually dubious than the Narnia books (which also had naturalistic magic performed by “good” characters such as the Hermit in “The Horse and His Boy” or Coriakin in “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”).
There is a genuine theological point at issue here. My argument depends on the assumption that REAL demons only come when they are personally addressed, and that playing at magic spells WHEN NO SUPERNATURAL BEINGS ARE ASSUMED TO BE INVOLVED will not cause demons to come and tempt those who are playing by offering actual supernatural work.
Those Potterbashers who think that children playing at magic will not be protected from demonic temptation have an understandable reason to shun the Potter books, but I disagree with them on the key theological point (which is not whether demons exist, it’s whether they will perform supernatural work even for people who have no intention whatsoever of communicating with supernatural beings).