Lord of The Rings VS. Harry Potter?

[Eärendil the Mariner]

I was just wondering what you guys think the difference is between the 'wizardry' or 'magic' in Lord of the Rings & Harry Potter (if you think there is a difference) & why many Christians think that its ok to read LotR, but not HP? I've never read HP, nor have I seen the movies, so I don't really understand why some think that HP is bad, but that LotR isn't.

[iminlovewithedwardcullen]

I think its the same piriciple as magic but the Hp books its just a bit more open, they go to school to learn it when in LOTR they get it passed down the generations but i dont think theirs any differnce, this is coming from somone who's read both BTW!

[Lord of Light]

Okay, first I'll start with the topic of wizardry and magic. In LOTR, the "magic" if you will, that Gandalf, Radagast, the Elves, Saruman, and Sauron all possessed were from a higher power. Gandalf's, Radagast's, Saruman's, and the Elves', all came from Iluvatar, also known as Eru. Remember how by the third book, Saruman had basically lost his power? That was because he was using it for the wrong purposes. Sauron, however, got his power from another source. From Morgoth, who would be the equal of Satan. And there is actual known power from Satan, horrendous though it may be.

Now, one of the main things that bother people about HP is that the morals it teaches, such as lying, cheating, etc. are not moral, but immoral. It teaches children to do the opposite of which they should.

[Lila]

Well, I've never read or watched LotR, but I have a pretty good idea of what "kind of magic" they use in the books. As far as I'm concerned, all "magic" is the same. I'm not against it. I'm against witchcraft, but that's something different altogether. (And yes, I'm well aware that they use the term 'witchcraft' in the HP books, but I don't think that stuff is really witchcraft).

What I don't understand is why so many people are against HP because of the magic, but many of them welcome the magic in LotR with open arms. :confused:

[iminlovewithedwardcullen]

Yeah and the whole thing about teachin kida to lie and stuff well dont you get a bit of that in every book not just hp??

[Lord of Light]

Yeah and the whole thing about teachin kida to lie and stuff well dont you get a bit of that in every book not just hp??

Not so. In many of the books I've read, including the Redwall series, the Ranger's Apprentice series, the LOTR trilogy, and many others, they all stressed honesty, especially the Ranger's Apprentice series. And I'm going to make something very clear right now: much of modern literature does not teach good morals, which is why you must be VERY careful in choice of what you read.

And as I said in my first post: the magic in LOTR came from a Higher source, while in HP they never really say where its from. Iluvatar in LOTR was basically, God, who can give power to individuals. And also, Satan can give power, like Morgoth gave power to Sauron.

And Lila...I want to point something out: you have neither read, nor seen the LOTR movies/books, so I recommend you not try commenting on that, as to understand LOTR you must have read the Silmarillion to understand where the magic came from.

[Lila]

And Lila...I want to point something out: you have neither read, nor seen the LOTR movies/books, so I recommend you not try commenting on that, as to understand LOTR you must have read the Silmarillion to understand where the magic came from.

Okay, I'll take your advice...

[Darth Sparhawk]

I disagree about the thing that HP teaches wrong values. In HP books the heroes do what they must and what is right, not what is necessary legal at the time. In my country, before the fall of communism, people tried to cheat the totalitarian rule, because they wanted to listen to western music or to hear unbiased news report. This is not wrong. It is the same with Harry and his friends - they cheated Umbridge and the Dark Lord and it was the right thing to do.

[Solya]

I can't remember a whole lot about the magic used in LotR, because I never made it through the Silmarillion, so I can't really comment on it that much. It's been ages since I picked up a copy of the books. :) The magic coming from either a good or evil source does seem pretty okay. Was it ever explained why some were gifted with this while others were not?

In the HP books, which I'm far more at home in, it is never stated where the magic comes from. I personally think the magic in those books is a 'neutral' force which some people are born with. It depends on a person's beliefs and choices what they do with it. The importance of choices, in particular, is stressed a lot throughout the series because of the similarities and differences between Harry and Lord Voldemort. There's a reason why children need to go to Hogwarts or similar schools, because the accidental magic they do when they are younger might grow out into something uncontrollable when they are not taught how to control it.

There's nothing wrong with the HP series as such. I personally never understood why people judged the novels so clearly while they did not even resemble real-life magic/witchcraft. As for the morals... I agree with Darth Sparhawk... there's nothing wrong with the books in that respect either. You can see the Christian undertone in all of the books, but especially in the last one of the lot.

[Cris_DanRadcliffe]

HP does not do the witchcraft itself. Yeah some things are immoral like what LOL(:D:D) said

[Lord of Light]

I am not condemning HP because of the so-called "witchcraft". From what I have seen, it teaches less about it than many websites, or even other movies. And about "cheating to do the right thing"...is choosing the lesser of two evils ever good? I don't believe so. Also, one reason many people have a problem with HP(I've seen this in people I've met personally) is that they want to understand where the magic comes from(which in HP it never really says where). Still others refrain from watching any movie that has "magic" including LOTR and other movies.

Also, Darth, doing what you must is not always right. In countless movies, a character "does what he must" and morally, its wrong. I can understand if its to save friends, especially if you're the only one who can do it. But there are limits to it.

[Xenithar]

You have to remember that both series are works of complete fiction/fantasy. I didn't really find anything wrong with HP when it dealt with the story(although I couldn't get through the seventh book), and I started reading LotR but couldn't quite finish the first book (I plan to later, though), and thought that it was an excellently detailed and plotted out story.

Usually any fantasy, from LotR to HP, contains some form of magic, good or bad, and whether the stories themselves are trying to teach good or bad morals is completely up to the reader. Of course, if the author goes out and says that they're TRYING to teach something about good or bad morals, magic, etc., that in itself can change a reader's perspective on a book. Whether that was the intention of Rowling or Tolkien, I can't say because I don't know enough about either :p

A thing about writing is that the writer often includes their own values and ideas in a work, and most of the time it's absent minded when it happens. I admit: as an author I often expound on morals in my books, but I leave it up to the reader whether to look for them and judge them or not.

[Lord of Light]

That is very much like many RPGs(Guild Wars, WoW, not the stuff here). They all have magic, which eventually gets boring. I would love to see an RPG without the magic, but with the weapons and armor only, the person being able to design his character without limits of height, weight, build, etc.

[bruiser]

The magic lineage in Harry Potter, I believe, has to do with family genetics. If you look back, most of the kids that do have magic in their blood and have parents that know magic, know magic themselves. As for the kids that do not have parents that know magic, it still could be genetic. For example: If the gene for magic is recessive [it would have to be.] Two parents that weren't magical could still produce a child [As long as they have both a dominate and a recessive trait] that would have magic in their blood. Mrs. Granger for example: Her parents would both have a dominate and a rescessive trait for magic, Granger was born with both recessive traits making her able to do magic. I would do a punnett square if I could, and I'll try to later.

As for doing the 'lesser of two evils'. I don't think that they were doing the lesser of two evils. Now saying that you must understand that I am talking about Potter, Granger, Ron, and the other 'good guys'. As far as Voldy goes he and his crew are evil, point blank evil. I would like someone to point out where the good crew did the lesser of two evils. I mean I may be proven wrong.

My two pennies.

[Darth Sparhawk]

But there are limits to it.

Which Harry Potter books do not cross.

[Solya]

Bruiser, those were very wise words. :) I too believe that the magic in the series is largely heriditary in nature. None of the witches and wizards we meet in the series chose to have such abilities, but all of them try to make something out of what they have been given.

In Harry's case, what he has been given is his courage and his fierce loyalty to the side he considers to be the good side. The things that drive him are friendship and love. Harry knows right from wrong. This is most noteably seen in the first novel when he rejects Draco Malfoy's offer of friendship. He was marked as Lord Voldemort's equal as an infant, but his choices do not follow Voldemort's lead at all. Voldemort attacks Harry multiple times through various means in order to finish what was started on that fateful Halloween night when the boy lived and the Killing Curse rebounded upon Voldemort himself.

Tom Riddle, too, grew up as an orphan. Yet, his life is defined by one single line which he utters when he is only eleven years old: "I can make them hurt if I want to." During his schoolyears at Hogwarts, he does not befriend anyone. He merely has followers. At the age of sixteen, he murders the only relatives he's got left. He becomes Lord Voldemort. He fights against the fact that all men must one day die. He wants to be the most powerful wizard in the world.

When it comes to choices in the Harry Potter novels, one only needs to look at these two characters. One of them is forced into a position he never wanted, hunted down by a Dark Lord whose only motive for chasing Harry is a prophecy, and who has been protected from his childhood years onwards by love. The other is already causing harm to others as a child, dissatisfied with his birth and heritage, wanting always to be the best of the best... and eliminating anyone who stands in his way. It are never their abilities, or where their abilities come from, which define who these characters are. It is their choices that do.

Does Harry Potter teach the wrong values? I personally disagree. We are, as readers and viewers, merely given a choice between what's right and what's wrong. We, however, see the world through Harry's eyes. We see the world through the eyes of good. We are not allowed to make the switch to the dark side because of that. And in all of the instances in which Harry and his friends do something stupid... every time they do something that is slightly morally objectionable... something happens which makes them reflect on the choice they made and it makes them see that it was not the right path to take. They, like us, learn through trial and error. These books just show the reality of life as a teenager. They show what happens when you don't know who you can trust and what happens when your loved ones are being threatened by darkness. Nothing more, nothing less.

[iminlovewithedwardcullen]

^^^I LOVE YU!!!! YOU THINK LIKE I DO AND YOU KNOW HP WELL!!!!

Anyway, i think that if you go around trying to avoid books that lie ect then you will never read anything because the plot of most books is gd versis eveil or something like that, even Angus, Thongs and full-frotal snogging(only exaple off top of my head) has some because its her verses this girl for a boy so i recon you should just read and just make sure you know your beliefs and dont let what you read influence them!!!

[bruiser]

Bravo Solya. I know that I couldn't of said it any better than you.
Thanks, by the way. I try.

[Solya]

And you succeed, dear one. ;)

^^^I LOVE YU!!!! YOU THINK LIKE I DO AND YOU KNOW HP WELL!!!!

Hahaha, thank you. :) I know HP well indeed, because of my re-reads of the novels and the discussions I've always had about the novels. I wrote fanfiction back in the day, too, so I had to get my facts straight about the books anyway. ;)

Anyway, i think that if you go around trying to avoid books that lie ect then you will never read anything because the plot of most books is gd versis eveil or something like that, even Angus, Thongs and full-frotal snogging(only exaple off top of my head) has some because its her verses this girl for a boy so i recon you should just read and just make sure you know your beliefs and dont let what you read influence them!!!

Yeah, it's mostly about good versus evil. I think that our strength of character is actually defined by the way in which we handle these novels and often also movies. Do we run away from them, or do we confront them head-on? Do we judge them without ever having seen or read them, or do we judge them after our experiences with them?

The only real concern I have about this is that we need to make sure our children are not harmed by these books and movies (and songs, just to link back to a post I made in the 'Despicable Songs'-thread). I would never let a teenager see the new Batman-movie, for instance, and I would not let my child read some of the books I enjoy reading nowadays. I would not want my child to play violent computer games, nor would I want my child to be confronted with horror and violence on screen or on paper. We first need to shape our children with the light of the positive and with God's way before we let them confront the things we can handle as adults.

[Lord of Light]

Anyway, i think that if you go around trying to avoid books that lie ect then you will never read anything because the plot of most books is gd versis eveil or something like that, even Angus, Thongs and full-frotal snogging(only exaple off top of my head) has some because its her verses this girl for a boy so i recon you should just read and just make sure you know your beliefs and dont let what you read influence them!!!

I am not saying you should avoid books that have lying and stuff in them. I am saying that more often than not, the books I have read with those in them, tend to bore me, usually ending up with me setting the book down before I've gotten half way. I have read a quite a few books with lying in them that are VERY good literature. And I would like to point out, you can have a good vs. evil battle without much of what are put in modern books. I have read probably well over 3000 books in my lifetime, and over 60% of them were rather boring to me, about 30% were okay, but only 10% were EXCELLENT literature. Which I disagree with some of the lists for the "Top Ten books in America", but that's another topic which I will leave out for another thread.

[Lioba]

I think, the main point in HP is not magic, but it´s very much about how different kinds of people treat each other, you could see parallels in racisme or religious fanatisme. The situation in the last two books really reminds of a country under a totalitarian system. If the laws of a system are against fundamental moral principles their might be the necessity to break them.
Here especially the last books have some good aspects.What can also be said in favour of HP is, that some characters are very differentiated .
But I personally dislike is, that people always come in the situation that they must break rules for doing something good- even in the first books, when the general situation is okay.And I personally think, that Dumbledore really demands to much from Snape in the end and that their might have been a better way out of the dilemma.

[inkspot]

We locked a previous thread about Harry Potter and the Bible because passions seem to run very high on this issue. I, for one, do not mind the discussion, but let me say before I add my opinion.

1. No one gets banned for expressin an opinion. Least of all would I bad anyone for expressing their opinion about HP. I am the mod least likely to ban anyone, so no one needs to be afraid of disagreeing with me.

2. Many sincere Christians say that young lives have been ruined by reading HP, and because I hear this from friends whom I know would not lie, I must assume this is the case. I personally have never met anyone whose life was ruined by reading HP.

3. Trying to do spells and really practice magic in the Real World, in our world, is wrong and evil. It puts your soul in danger.

All of the above reflect my true beliefs, so no one needs to be afraid I am going to ban you, and no one needs to fear that I think it's OK to do witchcraft. Okay?

As to the question of the thread, the difference between HP magic and LOTR magic, I see no difference, and I think we see the same magic in CON when Lucy does spells, and Professor Cornelius admits he is a magician. In each case the "magic" is just there, and it can be used for good or evil. The good guys use it for good purposes. This doesn't make the books themselves evil.

As for the comment that in HP we don't know where the magic comes from ... the casual reader of LOTR (90% of the readers I would say!) don't read Silmarilien and don't know anything about Iluvatar=God, so I can't say that this not knowing where the magic comes from makes HP any different from LOTR.

And there are more quotations from the Bible in HP than in LOTR. :)