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Freckles & Doubt ([personal profile] freckles_and_doubt) wrote2010-05-06 12:59 pm
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J. K. Rowling is watching you from where she waits, eternally in the void between worlds.

My Standard 5 class hangs around on Facebook, currently commenting on a class photo in which we're all ickle and stuff. Today someone mentioned that one of my friends from back then has subsequently grown up to produce ten children. She was brighter than I am: her O-level results kicked mine to the curb, and mine were pretty OK. She didn't do A-levels. She went off to secretarial college, got a job, got married before she was twenty, and presumably started procreating immediately thereafter, if she's racked up that kind of sprog count. She was deeply religious, as was her husband, and horribly enmeshed in Rhema Bible Church. It makes me want to cry. It's quite possible that she's blissfully fulfilled and contented, but I am heartsore to think of all that intellectual potential that never went anywhere.

Fortunately, talking about tears and intellect, an antidote is at hand. I have just spent an entirely hysterical hour reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which is a Harry Potter fanfic which leaps gleefully, boots and all, onto the totally ginormous logical flaws all over the series, and proceeds to surgically dissect them on strict rationalist principles, with frequent reference to science and logic. It made me laugh until I cried. Seriously. There were actual rivers of actual tears. I cannot recommend it in high enough terms. Rowling's absolute absence of actual thought about the structures and logic of her world have always infuriated me: this is an extremely joyous-making response.

Also, the disclaimers at the head of each chapter are genius.

Edited to add: Damn. Fic jumps the shark with excessive syrupy emotion in Chapter 18, although not before delivering a trademark snarky slapdown of Snape's incompetence as a teacher.

[identity profile] schedule5.livejournal.com 2010-05-07 01:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Perhaps those intelligent people sufficiently interested in the finer points of theology have grasped the point that responsible governance does not involve excessive procreation. Or maybe even just those who are willing to apply a little critical faculty to accepted dogma. But the vast multitudes of followers of the Judeo-Christian religeous traditions have not. I have been told by more than one orthodox Jewish woman that the purpose of life, or at the very least, of a woman's life is to reproduce. In the Catholic, Muslim and Jewish religious traditions specific behavioural practises (like, ooh, no contraception!) exist to ensure maximum procreation. Against this background, most people are going to believe that God intended for them to multiply like rabbits. And as far as I can see, even just the suggestion that unchecked human procreation threatens the planet is often viewed as a vicious attack on both God, religion and personal freedom.

[identity profile] tngr-spacecadet.livejournal.com 2010-05-07 07:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Too true! Anyway, I've found that sometimes those vociferous followers have never so much as cracked open a copy of the religious text they purport to follow; or which is possibly worse, take things wildly out of context to support their position. "But where does it SAY that?" is one of my favourite lines for such occasions.