Greta Christina has an interesting point about a comment by the Vatican's chief exorcist opposing the Harry Potter books because they "encourage children to believe in black magic and wizardry.”
Okay. Wait a minute. Let me get this straight.
The Harry Potter stories encourage people to believe in black magic and wizardry.
And exorcists don’t.Heh. 'Cause yeah, I guess if you believe in a valid need for exorcists in the world, you kind of have to believe in dark supernatural forces, and the distinction between 'black magic and wizardry,' and 'demons and evil spirits' (although I'm just guessing here that that's what exorcists might battle) gets a bit...fine.
I mean, yeah, there certainly is a distinction, and as a devotee of fantasy role playing games I am well aware of this and will happily discuss it at length at a nerd party sometime, but if you're going to go believing in one set of them, I'm not sure on what grounds you can rule out the other set.
And if you don't rule it out, then what does it matter if books encourage belief in something that's likely to be true?
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