J.K. Rowling!Existentialist

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 179516

Geoff Bannister:
> >I wondered why you wrote your last sentence "I wonder if that's why
> >some Christians hate Harry Potter so much!";it seems to be something
> >of a red herring. <snip>

TheTrojanVabbit replies:
> It's not a red herring. My point us that people expecting an
> overriding Christian theme in the books would have been expecting book
> 7 to define Dark Magic in moral absolutist terms, simple and
> clear-cut. Instead, the lines between Light and Dark became more
> blurred. To moral absolutists (and the Christianity is a dogmatic
> religion), used to doing as told or else, moral relativism is a scary
> and unsettling thing.

Ceridwen:
This sounds like you're extrapolating.  Since many Christians do like 
the Potter series, it ends up as nothing more than conjecture based on 
only certain denominations, and in some cases, certain subsects of 
certain denominations.

Moral relativism should be a scary and unsettling thing.  People band 
together in a society for protection against the unlawful and for 
convenience of living.  For instance, it would take too much out of a 
person to raise all of his or her food for each year, raise the cattle 
or sheep or whatever for both meat and leather, hew trees, build the 
house, weave the cloth, sew the clothes, etc.  Societies have rules in 
place to protect its members, and the members are the ones who create 
and/or agree to the rules.  When someone breaks those rules, it 
threatens society.  When will someone think it's all right to assault 
or kill, that the morality prohibiting those things is only relative to 
what a person thinks of another?

Your point about the line between Dark and Light magic becoming more 
blurred is interesting.  That line was smeared out of existence.  
Thinking about it this way, I can see where maybe Rowling's WW, the 
Ministry, the Statutes of Secrecy, can equal an absolutist mindset.  If 
the Ministry of Magic was created during her doubt-filled days, then 
that would make a lot of sense.  While Christianity is less absolutist 
than portrayed from the outside, it can seem absolutist to someone in 
doubt.

Ceridwen.