[Lith]

JD- Yep, we do promote such views.

It is, sadly, just another example of a very idiotic sort of literalness on the part of far too many people, who simply cannot seem to understand the boundary between the figurative and the literal when it comes to writing.

I agree here too-that's how you end up with televangelists like John Hagee (to date the only one that's absolutely pissed me off whenever I've heard him talk) say that the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are "literal, and they represent death, war, famine, and sickness." Um, excuse me... they're not LITERAL if they REPRESENT something.

Jaire- it may not kill them, but it's still arguably bad for the soul.

mosaix- you could say that; they're both supernatural. However magic implies that the humans that practice it can command the supernatural to their will, whereas miracles are at the discretion of God, and can't be commanded by humans (in addition to the question of where such power comes from).

All churches have done a wonderful job of changing the terminology of superstition and magic so that they sound more respectable than they would otherwise.

I disagree here; the distinction predates all science and comes out of a world in which everyone had a religion, Christian or not, and rationalism as such hadn't really come into being yet.

TPA- there is one further thing about D&D that makes Christians dislike it, and that is the casting of spells within the game- the magic isn't just an element in it (or isn't just a static element); it's something you consciously decide to do. That is, you go through the motions, real or not. Whether or not that's harmful feeds back into my earlier argument about fictional versus "real" magic.

The misappropriation of words is wide-ranging and nearly everyone's guilty of it. As for Creationism- well, that's a topic for another thread, and I have some "words of frustration" for nearly everyone on that subject. All it takes is a little broadening of "day" into "era", and the entire Science vs. Creationism landscape changes. Radically. But this (again) relates to people being unable to distinguish between "literal" and "figurative", even when they have a de facto separation of the two already.

[/minirant]

[quote]Of course, as an atheist, I have objections to the notion that the words "moral" and "religious" are synonymous.[quote]Complete agreement. The morals are an afterthought of religion rather than a reason for it. You could even argue that Christianity is subversively anti-moral, since Jesus ran around breaking Jewish laws and condemning the powers of the day for taking morals over religion.

Yes, we're wary of Yoga. And Tai Chi, Feng Shui, acupuncture, and a whole lot of other stuff. Not because they don't work, but because they're systems based on theoretical energies of a mystical nature (which also feeds back into my earlier arguments of where these powers are coming from, should they somehow actually exist).

As to whether Rowling is a Christian- I read somewhere where she stated (after JPII's declaration about her lifestyle) that she wasn't religious. Which immediately puts her into a different category than Tolkien and Lewis, who were both undeniably devout. Tolkien's use of "magic" is debatable- one of his letters says that "magic" was the word used by the non-elves to describe the technology and wisdom of the elves. So there may actually be no "magic" in Middle Earth. But Lewis embraced magic as magic, and put it to use as a metaphor. (Honestly though, I think if people actually read Lewis, rather than sit back and esteem him as a modern-day example of Christian excellence in literature, we'd see a lot of changes within churches, and in my not-so humble opinion, the effect would be all to the good.)