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Harry Potter Vs. The Religious Right

I think compulsory non RE lessons should be introduced to all children from 5 years of age to tell them that their parents are lying to them about god.

But Santa Claus is all true, right?
 
Burn Again Christians.

Catholic priests in northern Poland have burned books they consider to be sacrilegious, including ones from the Harry Potter boy wizard series.

An evangelical group, the SMS from Heaven Foundation, published pictures of the burning - which took place in the city of Gdansk - on Facebook. They also show an elephant figurine and a tribal mask burning on the book pile. The Facebook post justifies the bonfire with Bible quotes condemning magic. The group sends Christian messages via SMS.

"We obey the Word," the post says (in Polish).

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47771706
 
Burn Again Christians.

Catholic priests in northern Poland have burned books they consider to be sacrilegious, including ones from the Harry Potter boy wizard series.

An evangelical group, the SMS from Heaven Foundation, published pictures of the burning - which took place in the city of Gdansk - on Facebook. They also show an elephant figurine and a tribal mask burning on the book pile. The Facebook post justifies the bonfire with Bible quotes condemning magic. The group sends Christian messages via SMS.

"We obey the Word," the post says (in Polish).

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47771706
You'd think Poland of all places would have learned something from the last right wing extremist regime to gain serious traction.
 
That kind of 'book burning' goes on from time to time here in the US usually at smaller fundamentalist Christian churches that try to rally people behind them in their misguided crusades.
 
He seems to have included small pottery elephants?
 
He seems to have included small pottery elephants?

Small souvenir pottery elephants bought at a tourist trap in Africa are the work of Satan. Or a good way of getting rid of a tacky gift your parents brought back and thought you might quite like this, you liked the elephants at the zoo so when we saw this we thought of you.
 
I must buy some at once!!!!!!
 
Harry Potter banned again:
Outlining article

This was reported as something new, but apparently the books used to be the most banned in US schools - they were overtaken by books with gay themes recently. I don't know if anyone has tried casting a spell from Harry Potter, but I suspect - just a hunch - that they don't work because it's all fictional.
 
Harry Potter banned again:
Outlining article

This was reported as something new, but apparently the books used to be the most banned in US schools - they were overtaken by books with gay themes recently. I don't know if anyone has tried casting a spell from Harry Potter, but I suspect - just a hunch - that they don't work because it's all fictional.


I suppose they might work (in your head at least) if you really, really believed in them....
 
Those banishings usually end up having the opposite effect of the ones imagined by their sponsors. Reality does not stop the idiots though.
 
I think compulsory non RE lessons should be introduced to all children from 5 years of age to tell them that their parents are lying to them about god.
Well, as atheism is technically a religion according to the US Supreme Court , it should be covered in RE.
 
I suppose they might work (in your head at least) if you really, really believed in them....

But aren't the spells in Harry Potter all flying and turning invisible and shit? I'm pretty sure that's not possible with cod Latin.
 
I say ban Harry Potter, the amount of stick I'm getting for having the same surname is beyond belief.
Heard there's at least one woman out there called Gretha Ogg who isn't too greatly chuffed with Terry Pratchett, for the same sdort of reasons...
 
Burning elephants, huh? I was wondering... i hear Terry Pratchett was a bit miffed the religious right haven't caught on to his books yet and got round to burning any - he said while he deplored the burning of books on principle, it would be a validation of his beleifs and a rite of passage once they got round to it. (He suspected his collaboration with Neil Gaiman. Good Omens, was the most likely candidate - as that parodies the idea of the Armageddon and the End of Days, a shibboleth that American evangelicals treat as of massive importance; on the way there, it takes pot-shots at Biblical scholarship, church history and practice, American evangelism, and the good-evil dichotomy.) another Pratchett book, Small Gods, was about the way the earthly structure of a religion gets so all-powerful and oppressive that not only the message gets lost - so does the God. A wallop not just at Christianity but also Islam, and to a lesser extent, Judaism. Maybe stuff like this is too cerebral to the book-burners...
 
Burning elephants, huh? I was wondering... i hear Terry Pratchett was a bit miffed the religious right haven't caught on to his books yet and got round to burning any - he said while he deplored the burning of books on principle, it would be a validation of his beleifs and a rite of passage once they got round to it. (He suspected his collaboration with Neil Gaiman. Good Omens, was the most likely candidate - as that parodies the idea of the Armageddon and the End of Days, a shibboleth that American evangelicals treat as of massive importance; on the way there, it takes pot-shots at Biblical scholarship, church history and practice, American evangelism, and the good-evil dichotomy.) another Pratchett book, Small Gods, was about the way the earthly structure of a religion gets so all-powerful and oppressive that not only the message gets lost - so does the God. A wallop not just at Christianity but also Islam, and to a lesser extent, Judaism. Maybe stuff like this is too cerebral to the book-burners...
And of course they would have to buy the books to burn so sales would have gone up!
 
Burning elephants, huh? I was wondering... i hear Terry Pratchett was a bit miffed the religious right haven't caught on to his books yet and got round to burning any - he said while he deplored the burning of books on principle, it would be a validation of his beleifs and a rite of passage once they got round to it. (He suspected his collaboration with Neil Gaiman. Good Omens, was the most likely candidate - as that parodies the idea of the Armageddon and the End of Days, a shibboleth that American evangelicals treat as of massive importance; on the way there, it takes pot-shots at Biblical scholarship, church history and practice, American evangelism, and the good-evil dichotomy.) another Pratchett book, Small Gods, was about the way the earthly structure of a religion gets so all-powerful and oppressive that not only the message gets lost - so does the God. A wallop not just at Christianity but also Islam, and to a lesser extent, Judaism. Maybe stuff like this is too cerebral to the book-burners...

A "religious" group protested against Good Omens - eventually (thanks to the miniseries). And got it wrong.

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/terry-pratchett.22254/page-3#post-1870390
 
Been reading one of the more strident anti-Potter sites, as referenced here. Utterly horrible and no apparent sign of Christian charity or compassion anywhere. Some of the stuff, when you go further and deeper, is... uggh. No self-awareness or nobody to tap the author on the shoulder and say - "Do you really think this is a good idea? To say, with no indication that you've ever examined the idea in the light of reality and events still within living memory, that Israel has a biblical mandate and permission from God to exterminate all of its Palestinian neighbours? And you even assign a figure of six million as the number of the Ungodly and heathen who are to be thus killed? By Israel? And you see nothing wrong, or out of place, or incongrouous, or just plain insanely wicked, in this? Ugggh.



"Israel's Prophesied Annihilation of the Palestinians"
 
Burning elephants, huh? I was wondering... i hear Terry Pratchett was a bit miffed the religious right haven't caught on to his books yet and got round to burning any - he said while he deplored the burning of books on principle, it would be a validation of his beleifs and a rite of passage once they got round to it. (He suspected his collaboration with Neil Gaiman. Good Omens, was the most likely candidate - as that parodies the idea of the Armageddon and the End of Days, a shibboleth that American evangelicals treat as of massive importance; on the way there, it takes pot-shots at Biblical scholarship, church history and practice, American evangelism, and the good-evil dichotomy.) another Pratchett book, Small Gods, was about the way the earthly structure of a religion gets so all-powerful and oppressive that not only the message gets lost - so does the God. A wallop not just at Christianity but also Islam, and to a lesser extent, Judaism. Maybe stuff like this is too cerebral to the book-burners...

I am a person of faith. specifically Christian. But I love both of those books and they should be a reminder to religionists of all flavours to stay humble about our beliefs.
 
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