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@noah-cochran

If I am understanding your question, yes I think so.

Thank you so much for going more in depth into your concepts and beliefs on the subject. It has cleared up some confusion on my part and some pre-conceived assumptions. And thank you so much for being so gracious with your response. You are correct that over the internet tone of voice can easily be misconstrued, and I was truly worried that I had overstepped or been a bit too aggressive in my response.

(It’s been a rough week for touchy subjects. As a teacher, I’ve been dealing with students calling their friends racial slurs, then got in trouble when I elucidated what words they were not supposed to say – because I am a white person. Even if I was telling them what not to say, I was the one who got in trouble and had to officially apologize. ugg…. anyway. neither here nor there….)

Although we see the issue differently, there are a lot of points we do see eye to eye on. In fact, I would argue that in all the major, important parts of the debate, we agree. We only disagree on the minutiae or minor applications – which are important and can make big differences, for they are matters of application, but… well, lol. I hope that makes sense…

I won’t belabor the point, but with the question of where does magic come from in the Harry Potter books, (and it is a common trope for fantasy magic) it’s treated as part of the world. (awww… just wrote a bunch, then had it accidentally get deleted… will try to recreate it…) This can be evidenced in that before Harry Potter even goes to the magic school, he uses magic reflexively but doesn’t know how to control it. If you search it, Rowlings created the fantasy world in such a way that the magic is within certain people, and only certain people. Yes, those people have to learn how to use and control it, but the same could be said of any talent or ability. Yes, she used the vernacular of witches and magic and sorcery and divination and all that; however, the magic stems from inside the person. Each person has different strength abilities for different magics and can hone their skills with practice, etc. Those without magical blood cannot produce or do magic, even if they have the right incantations or wand movements or potion ingredients. Very different, in my mind, from real world demonic power. But that may just be my opinion of the differences making the distinction.

Another, more perfect example, would be C. S. Lewis’ Narnia, which is full of magic. Some of the magic is good, and some is bad. If I remember correctly, for Narnia, magic is in the land as well as all who inhabit the lands of Narnia. Some use it for good, while others use it for evil – though you could also argue that it was God (or the God figure of Aslan) who created and allowed the magic to inhabit the land and people as it did…  (though at the same time, you could also similarly argue that those fantasy stories that don’t specifically innumerate where the magic comes from – as in those that typically stem from within the person – you could argue in those systems, that God created those people with the magic within them… and thus gifted them with the powers they have….. but, that does get rather close to playing with semantics, as you said…)

I guess a lot of the debate really does come down to vernacular and how things are defined. But at the same time, it is difficult, if not impossible, to alter the general definitions of common place words based upon issues within debates such as these.

(I had similar issues this week, in fact, with the racism issue. One student flat out told me to my face that she didn’t know one could be racist to a white person. This came up when I explained why calling a white person a cracker is wrong. They also argued that it was perfectly fine for a black person to call a black person the ‘n’ word because you can’t be racist to someone of the same race. I tried arguing that you can, but even a fellow teacher thought the same thing, which boggles my mind. She said racism was based on power struggle, and two black people are of equal power. I had trouble understanding where her definition came from, and I disagreed with her, but it left me dumbstruck that such different definitions were in common use in the public schools. … anyway, this too is neither here nor there… just venting a bit. lol. but still, a good example of the power of the difference of definitions….)

whelp…. yeah…… I was only going to write a short response of thanks and just a smidge of clarification…. yeah… oops. lol.

Again, I wanted to thank you for the graciousness of how you handled this conversation/debate. And for putting up with my long rant…