Harry Potter and God

[Carol]

Potioncat wrote:
> What's worse is when they knock on your door and want to talk to you. 

Carol responds:
As far as I know, only the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons do that (at least, here in Arizona), and you can see the Mormons coming a mile away (always two nice-looking, well-groomed young men in white, short-sleeved shirts and ties--again, that's Arizona style; don't know what it's like anywhere else). The Mormons, at least, are alway polite when I tell them I'm an Episcopalian and happy that way. (I don't tell them that I only attend church on Christmas Eve, if then!) It's odd that they would attempt door-to-door conversion/recruitment. It can't be very successful.

I do want to say, however, that very few Christians refuse medical treatment for their children (the original post in this thread). That sounds like so-called Christian Science to me (I used to hear radio commercials that said, "Christian Science heals!")

And although people have died in religious wars (e.g., the Crusades), that's hardly confined to Christianity. The Sunni and Shiite Muslims kill each other, and some Muslims want to wipe out the state of Israel. And, sure, some Christians owned slaves in the pre-Civil War U.S., but most if not all abolitionists were also Christian. And Christian missionaries wiped out evils like foot-binding in Asia and infanticide of twins in Africa. It was Christian groups in the U.S. and Britain who first called attention to cruelty to animals and child abuse.

Please. Let's not make sweeping generalizations about other people's religious beliefs or lack thereof. Neither Christians nor Jews nor Muslims, even the fundamentalists who promote suicide bombing, are responsible for all the world's evils. Godless Communism was responsible for terrible things during the Stalinist era, not to mention China (for example Tianamin (sp?) Square), or North Korea, where the former leader is treated as a god and mythological propaganda is deliberately created about him and the people are taught that American soldiers poured gasoline on Korean children's heads and set fire to them.

Carol, who thinks that this thread has strayed rather far from its title and doubts that criticizing a person's religion will in any way deter that person from believing it