For older kids, this might be ok. But for our 4 year old we saw some episodes we did not feel comfortable having our child watch. Arthur (the program) tends to occasionally get on a soapbox on current issues. One episode I saw made those not in favor of "Harry Potter" type books look like fools: as if we were back in the day of book burnings and witch hunting. As one who firmly believes Potter's teachings are not in line with Scriptural principles, it comes as a slap in the face. I don't want my child being brainwashed with some of the producer's ideas of reality.
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And of course it was all of the athiests involved in witch hunting, not good clean upstanding christian folks?
Lets face it, it doesn't need much work on the part of the scriptwriter to make you look foolish.
I don't want my child being brainwashed with some of the producer's ideas of reality.
Of course not, you want your child brainwashed and browbeaten to follow in your narrow minded path.
"I don't want my child being brainwashed with some of the producer's ideas of reality."
Then Change the fucking channel!
Sounds to me that you could have learned a lesson from that episode yourself...
-N
"as if we were back in the day of book burnings"
Explain, then, how you are different than that? You want to eliminate all books that don't agree with you, the same as them.
If given the power your religion ~would~ murder the author and many others by burning them. They just no longer have that power.
"One episode I saw made those not in favor of "Harry Potter" type books look like fools: as if we were back in the day of book burnings and witch hunting."
Tim is right, you know. We should stop making them look like that. They're doing a fine job of looking like that with no help from us.
Also, if your kid cannot withstand dissenting ideas on a children's show, that says a lot about (1) the strength of your ideas and (2) your parenting skills.
Well, those that think Harry Potter is some sort of anti christian writing are fools. It's a book. It's fiction. By definition, fiction is not real. Neither are cartoons and television characters in children's shows.
Change the channel to any number of channels that are full of the christian agenda. Your god knows that there are certainly enough of those available.
"One episode I saw made those not in favor of "Harry Potter" type books look like fools: as if we were back in the day of book burnings and witch hunting"
Honest to fuck, this sort of thing really pisses me off. Are these imbeciles so conceited, so childish, so staggeringly selfish, that even when the whole world is looking at them and calling them ignorant and backwards, they have to look for other explanations besides THAT THEY ARE JUST THAT? Have any of them spent 5 damn minutes considering there just might be another explanation besides "everyone is stupid except for me"?
Great, if you feel that you and your church are too poor at teaching your beliefs and values to your own children then you must force them to hide out from other ideas until they are the age of 30, so be it, but you have to support them.
It's been a long time since I watched Arthur (scary fact- DW reminds me so much of the girl I used to have a crush on in school), but making people out to be fools for not liking something popular doesn't really seem like its style to me.
Maybe if you'd actually watched the episode, instead of seeing thirty seconds and leaping to a conclusion, I expect the real moral would have been about how people are free to read different things, or about how books are exciting but less important than friendship.
Of course, for a Christian those morals are probably just as scary.
"I don't want my child being brainwashed with some of the producer's ideas of reality."
But you DO want your child being brainwashed with YOUR ideas of reality, right?
Ah yes, the evils of Arthur????
WTF?
Are you people so sick and twisted inside, so full of hate that you see evil everywhere? The shows target audience is preschool.
Wait until he wants to watch that hedonistic Sesame Street.
Arthur?? The show with the aardvark kid that wears glasses? Really?? Okay, I'll admit I watch Arthur. It's an interesting cartoon and usually has well-written, intriguing episodes.
Arthur actually poked a little fun at Harry Potter, calling it Henry Screever. The only episode I recall really focusing on it, involved a side-character befriending a blind girl. She was really anxious about going to the Henry Screever movie with her, since she couldn't see. It showed how blind people could listen to a description of the movie as they watched it and be able to enjoy it.
So, yeah, the show does cover recent-events. But brainwashing? I've never seen them portray anything 'controversial.' Though, on the spin-off show, Postcards From Buster, you people pissed your pants over a same-sex couple being portrayed on the show with their children. So some PBS networks didn't even show it. So go screw off and leave decent, thought-provoking PBS programming alone.
"One episode I saw made those not in favor of "Harry Potter" type books look like fools: as if we were back in the day of book burnings and witch hunting."
And the reason they looked like fools was... wait for it... they are fools.
Harry Potter books aren't textbooks. Harry doesn't teach anybody to DO magic, even if magic were possible. The books probably help kids learn to read better and to be attracted to reading books, but that is the extent of "Potter's teachings."
No indeed! You want them brainwashed with ancient fairy tales and some bronze-age goat-herder's ideas of reality.
I remember an episode about this. A girl waiting for the new Henry Screever book (the show's version of Harry Potter) was boasting because she had preordered it and would have it before everyone else. It was being shipped in from some other country, or some such. It made everybody else feel bad because they'd have to wait until it came out in stores to read it.
The girl ended up not being able to read it first, because she accidentally got a braille copy, but met a blind girl at the library who read it to her.
My daughter watches that show. The point of the episode, as far as I could tell, was humility - not making fun of people just because you have something that they don't. How that is immoral or wrong is, really, beyond me.
That's because your ilk DOES still burn books. I'll never forget the news footage I saw that showed a crowd of fundies throwing Harry Potter books into a bonfire. "Heil, Hitler!" much?
I used to watch Arthur. It's a children's program; of course, they're going to teach kids about morals and values. Some of which include sharing, diversity, compassion, and acceptance. You people are nuts.
Don't be messin' with my Harry Potter! If you believe there are 'lessons' to be gleaned from Harry Potter books then you are thoroughly deranged. They are works of fiction, period. Of course for those people who can take another work of fiction (the bible) literally I can kinda see their confusion. They may not be what most would term as 'literature' but they are cleverly put together and they beat nealy anything on TV now-a-days for entertainment and cerebral stimulation. The fact that they got literally millions of kids and adults who normally don't or wouldn't read to actually sit down and crack open a book shows their real merit. -RANT OVER-
-um, NOT OVER YET- One more thing, every, and I mean EVERY person who has told me this or a similar argument against Harry Potter books (or similar) has never taken the time to actually read one. They all listen to and parrot their preachers who also have probably not read them either. ok -RANT OVER- for real.
You know, that Arthur the Aardvark is insidious.
First, you watch one episode "Just to see what it's about." Then, you get lured into another. And another. And pretty soon, you find it's harder to not watch it than to watch it.
Then before ya know it, Arthur becomes nothing more than a "gateway show" to the Hard Stuff like Sesame Street. You just know your PBS-addled kids are going to grow up watching that ungodly science show Nova, and not-right-wing-leaning news shows like Frontline.
Stop them now, before it's too late!
If she is talking about the episode about the scare your pants off books that came out BEFORE the Harry Potter books(it originally aired in 1997), so stop taking it as a personal attack, you weirdo.
unless he's referring to a recent episode, I haven't seen the series in like five years.
What the fuck is it with you people and Harry Potter? It's fucking fiction for your god's sake! It's not meant to be anything but fiction, unlike your "good book" which tries to pass itself off as reality. Quite frankly, I find Harry Potter to be more convincing.
you do realise that 'some producer's ideas of reality' are, in fact, reality, right? No? Well now you do.
As one who firmly believes Potter's teachings are not in line with Scriptural principles, it comes as a slap in the face.
What the hell is wrong with, friendship, loyality, and bravery? Thats what HP "teaches".
"As one who firmly believes Potter's teachings are not in line with Scriptural principles, it comes as a slap in the face."Under the constitution, you really have no right to say what is ok in a book (or anything, for that matter).
"I don't want my child being brainwashed with... reality"
quote-mining is fun!
Really, if you're offended by Arthur, you're just an idiot.
Harry Potter the cult leader...I can totally see it. Nice set of robes, forbidding look, he gets up behind a lectern and tells you...
...that a shitty childhood really will screw you up for life? That all evil derives from the abuse of power? That good people and bad people are easily categorized, but good people get things wrong and you can't just kill all the bad people?
Am I missing anything?
> as if we were back in the day of book burnings and witch hunting. <
Yeah, as if
> Potter's teachings < Everything is a religion to them and every body is a teacher, preacher, or messiah, for Koresh's sake!
"For older kids, this might be ok. But for our 4 year old we saw some episodes we did not feel comfortable having our child watch. Arthur (the program) tends to occasionally get on a soapbox on current issues. One episode I saw made those not in favor of "Harry Potter" type books look like fools: as if we were back in the day of book burnings and witch hunting. As one who firmly believes Potter's teachings are not in line with Scriptural principles, it comes as a slap in the face. I don't want my child being brainwashed with some of the producer's ideas of reality."
Because young people are deciding for themselves what they want to read - and what not to read - as is their right, they're choosing one form of fiction over another? All I hear from your tl;dr, Tim, is this:
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Because they consider the imagination-expanding fiction that is "Harry Potter" is infinitely superior to the lies & bullshit that is the Bible, eh? Well, boo hoo; too bad, so sad.
Deal with it.
PROTIP: The First Children Sasha and Malia Obama are big "Harry Potter" fans. Suck it, fundies.
The Bible. "Harry Potter". One has a central hero who is loved by millions, if not billions of people, has inspired generations of avid readers, sells by the shipload, and has many box-office coffer-filling films based on such. The other is a work of fiction written about fantastical - and completely bullshit - supernatural 'events' that have absolutely no relevance to the 21st Century.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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