fundamentalist demonization of childsplay

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I cant help but notice that superstitious christian fundamentalists demonize just about everything that appeals to and inspires childrens imagination! First they claimed that Dungeons & Dragons is satanic, THEN they took aim at Santa Claus with the stupid argument that "Santa is an anagram for Satan" ..........NOW they're on their high horse about how Pokemon is demonic and Harry Potter is the "gateway to satanism" ! ! So I want to know the REAL reason why they are targetting such things and what their true motives are behind this garbage. I ask this because of the knowledge that religion seeks to manipulate people so what are they trying to manipulate parents into doing? Are they out to sabotage imagination??

Some Christians out there are engaging in well thought out perceptions of such topics, like STR.org:

Musings On Harry Potter

Protestants hate fun. It's true. "Idol hands..."

Group insanity has always been a problem.

Don't forget sex, pornography, masturbation, foreigners, etc.

Yes, I was very shocked to hear about the strike against the Harry Potter movies, books, souvenirs, etc!

They seem to equate anything pertaining to magic as pagan and anything pagan is evil or satanic.

I am not goth nor into any occult. Well my favorite colors happen to be black or anything that's dark like bergundy. I went to my grandma's church just to be with her. She's one of the nicest people if ever a christian. Anyway, I got a bunch of stares by these people.

After church, I got a few jokes by this guy who asked if I wasn't a witch in conversion. Then he asked me if some of my jewelry had any magic spells or summoned anything up sarcastically. Then he goes on his stupid long lectures about why paganism and/or sorcery is against the bible.

Know what? I think I'd rather be around pagans than Christians. At least the ones I've encountered don't start this crap about how their beliefs are better than anyone else's or assuming that I'm some sort of evil witch. Funny thing is Johnny Cash wore black and you don't see a lot of old timer Christians accuse him of anything dark or evil.

Anyway, my grandma's a Christian and I've never seen her do that so I'm not going to say all Christians are like that but geez I can't believe the amount of idiocy in her church. It almost felt like being around the Spanish Inquisition.

Just had to share that story.

For te most fundamentalist people, I think imagination is only a secondary target, but more than collateral damage. I once saw a list of subjects fundamentalist parents didn't want mentioned in school because it could lead their children to Satan. The list included judo and acupuncture. Not subjects that engage children's imagination. But judo is loosely linked with Zen Buddhism, acupuncture with traditional Chinese cosmology. That means both have some links to world views that are not based on a fundamentalist interpretation of their holy book. To a fundamentalist, anything not based on a fundamentalist interpretation of their holy book is an idea put into the world by Satan to lead people astray from the path of righteousness. Imagination could also make you think of alternatives. Alternatives are by definition error, so fundamentalists would not be fans of imagination, unless it can be well controlled in the service of doctrine, but I think that's secondary. The primary aim seems to be to make sure only the fundamentalist's world view is presented, because anything else is Satan's work.

That's a description of the most fundamentalist attitude I've seen. The position in the link by KazigluBey is far less extreme.

Well, for fundies, they could say that those things take away your mind off God, and that any writer/artist who creates a fantasy world that is not for the purpose of serving God then they would be against him, and it would be part of the devil's plan, as he is supposedly very busy, trying to win people by driving them off God at any cost.

About Harry Potter, because of magic, wizards and witches and magic conjures, as they believe it to be real and a thing from the devil, which the author probably doesn't believe in any of this.

Santa Claus, well, the Satan anagram, sounds too much, but given that Satan, according to them, a busy guy who does everything to take away the value of Jesus to people as he can and to lead them to the "wrong" way, then they have a reason to believe so. For most children, Christmas is about Santa Claus and his magic and presents, not exactly about Christ himself, and why he came, and all that stuff.

I have no doubt that plenty of ignorant fundamentalists believe magic to be real, and in particular they see anything that is modeled off of christ as being an attempt to substitute christ for someone/something else. If you literally interpret religious precepts(NOT just bible verses but promulgations of fundamentalist preachers and authors), they seem completely ridiculous and superstitious; but if you take a step back and observe how people behave when they thing these things are real you start to gain insight into what religion is Really all about! The fairytales/theology are just the icing on the cake. Religion is a subtle means of manipulating peoples behaviour. Christian fundmentalism is all about being submissive. Thats why James Dobson writes books on how to raise kids to become submissive, obsequious adults with the inclination to put the needs of society before their own needs; that is-it blatantly favors the Group over the Individual. Our society scorns escapism, and I think that anything that ignites the imagination is considered by fundies to be a form of escapism. The more in touch with the physical world someone is, the more productive they'll be towards society-or at least thats the idea.

Fun distracts people from fear and guilt - the two primary tools that organised religion uses to keep people under religion's control - and may even inspire enough confidence in people to ask questions about their religion. This may even lead to people turning away from religion entirely!

At one time, the Waltz was considered a sin - another Gatway to Hell - until HRM Queen Victoria Herself found out how much fun could be had by dancing ... being held close ... looking into another person's eyes ... and occassionaly bumping into them ...

And at no time did the ground open up and emit smoke, fire, and brimstone. Nor did the Devil drag HRM down to the depths of Hell. No ... HRM had a good time, and the Waltz became one of the most pleasant ways to enjoy an evening.

If people aren't having fun, then all they have to look forward to is religion's promise of "Paradise." This may be part of the reason that the Taliban is so dead set against any "worldly" influences distracting people from Islamic oppression - once the people learn that some of their religion's teachings have little if anything to do with reality, they will drop all pretense of religious fervour and turn to secular consumerism, wherein the money goes towards profits instead of prophets.

In the most extreme interpretations of monotheism, everything in the world is evil, and the world is fatally corrupted by Satan and his influence. Therefore, the reasonable thing to do is to get to heaven as soon as possible by shedding the fatally corrupt human body and its Satan inspired distractions. So you get suicide bombers. You sometimes hear Christians state that Satan is "the God of this world" and that Adam's sin has everlastingly corrupted the earthly realm, therefore the earthly realm must be destroyed, so pushing for a nuclear war makes sense, because afterwards a new earth will reign that will be pure and uncorrupted.

The Christian and Muslim impulses to destroy and kill are not that far apart theologically. By killing someone in the Name of God, you free them from evil, and send them to heaven. By destroying the earth, you smash Satan and his influence, and pave the way for God to remake the world in the image of heaven, or sometimes to join earth with heaven into a pure unity. Anything at all that is earthly is evil, including fun and any earthly pleasure (or pleasure and joy period), because they are Satanic. Extremism like this is why HL Mencken described Puritanism as the haunting fear that someone somewhere is happy. A life without joy is one where the only thing one has to look forward to is death. People without joy have no hope, and are easier to control.

Christian fundamentalists should STOP having children. They should just kill themselves and rid the Universe of their delusional filth.

Hold on there! Let's not commit the same "sins" as the fundies by demanding their deaths. Let's instead work to ensure that our publically-funded educational systems avoid religious doctrines altogether in favor of fact-based reason and science. This will better enable their children to learn something that does not involve assuming supernatural causes.

Eventually, fundies will be relegated to their Sunday-morning social clubs.

...I like the idea that they kill themselves. We've enough humans.

Hmm.

Granted, I think a lot of the concern about Harry Potter, D&D and stuff like that is down to there being supposed 'occult' elements in them. But, I have come across Christians deriding such things purely for being imaginative. The general attitude seemed to be 'We don't need imagination, we've got the real thing in Jesus'. Which I find rather chilling, but I think I can see where they're coming from.

I personally believe stories, myths, made-up stuff, can teach you a lot, can resonate with something deep inside you. That things can be 'true' in that deeper sense without ever being 'real' in the factual sense.

Christians of the anti-imagination turn of mind believe that there is only one magical story worth anything. Their worldview hangs on believing that a man factually rose from the dead, and they have to claim that it's historically true. And because it's the only valid one, they have to claim that any other story in which anything magical happens, is 'false' - not only in the sense of never having happened, but in the sense of being morally false, Satanic. If they admitted that fantasy can have meaning, they would be saying that a) other religions might have truth in them, and b) their own might not have to be historically based.

(Which it shouldn't have to be. If any teaching has any validity at all, it ought to stand independent of the teacher. Otherwise it's just a personality cult. I've met Buddhists who freely admit that it matters not a jot to them if Siddartha Gautama never lived; he is a symbol of the fact that Buddhahood is possible, as Christ should, by rights, whether he lived or not, be a symbol of the fact that Christhood is possible. But, teachers will point at the moon and people will go right on worshipping their fingers..)

Similarly, the Adam and Eve story has to be factual, and every other equally valid beginning-of-the-world myth (equally valid, or invalid, because anyone can tell or write whatever story they like, but we weren't personally around to witness Eve picking the apple or Raven stealing the sun or the giant Ymir emerging from the ice or whatever myth you choose) has to be 'false' and Satanic. Including the 'myth' Darwin came up with.

Interestingly, both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis - mythmakers and Christians both - came somewhere in between. Like me, they believed all myths had value and inner 'truth'. But, they believed one particular myth had actually happened, therefore was more important and valid. The anti-imagination brigade take it a step further.

Magic is defined as the ability to violate physical law at will. I mean, since *G-d* created the universe and physical law then only G-d would have the ability to violate physical law at will. So its pretty inconsistent for fundies to actually believe that G-d would allow human beings, as well as Satan, to do so because there is not a shred of evidence that this can actually be done. Perhaps they view stories about magic as people playing god which they consider to be blasphemy since to do so violates G-d given physical law. But as Gromit estutely pointed out, imagination allows the mind to consider alternatives to the fundamentalist reality/worldview and could "lead people astray from Gods covenant with man". As for Pokemon and video games being Satanic, that is just plain Delusional!