Why Don’t Christians Believe In Harry Potter?
Over the weekend, the latest Harry Potter movie came out. While I will hopefully be seeing it later in the week, it did remind me of a conversation I had with a fundamentalist Christian friend. In the conversation, he demanded that I tell him why I don’t believe in Jesus Christ. Before answering his question, I asked him why he didn’t believe in Harry Potter.
I know it sounds silly, but it really is a valid question when you think about it. Both are characters in a series of books. There is absolutely no evidence that either exists or existed, and there is a convenient way to explain that lack of evidence.
For Christians, there is no evidence for Jesus because that would somehow negate free will. Belief in Jesus must be through faith, not evidence so God through his divine power and plan made sure there was no evidence for any of the miracles of Jesus. The fact that there are no contemporary accounts of Jesus must just be part of God’s divine plan.
As for Harry Potter, he lives in the Wizarding World which is shielded from Muggles (us) through magic. The Ministry of Magic is made up of some of the most powerful wizards and they have to make sure that their existence is hidden from the Muggles. So of course there is no evidence for Harry Potter’s existence in the Muggle world.
Okay, it is true that we know that a woman named J.K. Rowling wrote the books and that she claims they are fiction. But who is to say that someone from the Ministry of Magic didn’t put a spell on her making her say that? The authors of the Bible on the other hand are largely unknown. We know that Paul wrote much of the New Testament, but we also know that much of the Bible has been changed over time. For the record, Paul never claimed to have met Jesus (at least not in the flesh) and that the Gospels which do claim first hand encounters with Jesus were not even written by who they claim to be written by. Doesn’t that make their accounts just a little suspect?
My point here is that there is just as much evidence and reason to believe in Harry Potter than there is to believe in Jesus. So why don’t Christians believe in Harry Potter?
Related articles
- Magic, Faith, and Belief in Harry Potter (theotherjesus.com)
Filed under: delusion, god, Harry Potter
