The universe didn't force you not to believe in magic. You could have spent your whole life believing magnets are magical stones, that the electromagnetic force is magical energy, and that computer engineers are wizards who conjure spirits from magic. And you could have been 100% factually and scientifically correct.
But you chose to believe that magic is by definition not real, because you didn't want to live in a world of whimsy and wonder. You defined magic as supernatural, in opposition to the natural world. While every scientist knows that nature is just a word for everything that exists. You chose to define magic in a way that it wouldn't exist, denying it through tautology and not through science.
Because magic has in common verbiage typically been used to describe phenomena we don't know the mechanism behind.
And all those other things we do understand the mechanism behind. Along the way to understand how we figured out standards that elevate physical phenomena from imagined ones, and slowly we found that there's very little room left for the unknowable to affect our reality.
So if the word magic is to have any distinct meaning, there's only left "that which isn't real enough to affect us".
But you're of course free to redefine words as feels useful to you. I find flying, quantum teleportation, and cognition magical, but that more describes the wonder and awe of the inner workings of my world, rather than if it's real or not.
I do agree. I was trying to match the poetic language of OP and convey that we have no proof of supernatural or imagined claims, and thus the narrow sliver of naturalistic reality is where we must investigate phenomena. But you know, in a way a symbolic minded troll would understand.
It is not so much that we do not know the mechanism, it is that the mechanisms have been demonstrated to have no effect beyond psychological in those predisposed to believe in it having some cause, or the easily swayed.
While some things many now call magic did have grains of truth in them, those grains of truth stuck and developed eventually into say elements of medicine and chemistry.
Divining Rods provably do not work. This has been studied.
Astrology and Zodiac readings have no demonstrable, plausible physical effect on anything on Earth, beyond the Moon anyway. Their effect is only present in the minds of believers, this has been greatly studied.
I have personally worked in a university news room where the Editor would just make up the horoscopes for each week by bullshitting whatever he wanted, and then have to sit through conversations with people reading said bullshit horoscopes and planning and interpreting their lives based around them.
Prayer has no effect on the world beyond the mind of the practitioner, this has also been studied.
Much, though not all of the actual physical and material recipes of Alchemy do not work, or do not work as described. The bits that did work eventually became parts of the foundation of Chemistry.
Tarot, Psychic Readings, Fortune Telling, Prophecy, combine basically creative subjective interpretation or prediction with a primed audience that can often then interpret vague predictions as having been accurate when some mundane random event later occurs.
Of course magic only has an effect on the mind. The mind is the only thing of whose existence we are assured. Descartes said Cognito Ergo Sum, and in this he was correct, but his argument that Deus Ergo Veritas is nonsense. There is no perfectly good god, and therefore Descartes' argument that there is reality is wrong. Experiential reality is a product of the mind, assembled according to processes we do not understand. We cannot yet account for the sudden appearance of sensation as a result of neural impulses. And cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that we never will, because neurons are an invention of the mind, not the other way around.
That's a very postchristian view of magic. For most of human history, magic wasn't unknowable. It factored into the daily lives of billions of people who felt they understood it to varying degrees, that it could fundamentally be understood, and that some people understood it better than others. If magic can't be understood, then what on earth were witches, shamans, druids, wise women, sages, gurus, priests, and medicine men supposed to be doing? Nah, humans have always believed magic was knowable. It was only christians who hated magic which didn't come from their god, and who persecuted practitioners of traditional magic from other cultures.
Personally, I hate the effect christians have had on our culture, and I refuse to let them redefine terms that have existed for thousands of years. I reject their definitions of magic. Magic is knowable. It always has been. Magic is subject to the scientific method, like everything in this world. I'm sure you know this and agree with me, that everything is knowable and everything is governed by science. So by choosing to define magic as unknowable, you chose to define it as unreal. Why did you choose that?
If you have issue with me using only 12 - 18 centuries old definitions, I welcome you to have this talk in pre-christian times, although I might be busy then.
Magic has existed throughout and within Judaism and Christianity.
Sure, different forms of it have been suppressed and accepted to varying degrees based on time, place, your social status, etc, but magic has played an important role throughout the entirety of those religion's histories.
And it certainly was not only Christians who hated magic that did not come from their God.
Just in the Abrahamic faiths alone, there are Christian Occultists that were criticized and persecuted by other Christians, Jewish Occultists that were criticized and persecuted by other Jews, and Muslim Occultists who were criticized and persecuted by other Muslims.
And that is to say nothing of pre Christian Rome's persecution of the many varied druids and shamans of Europe north of the Alps.
Hell, we even have decent documentation of religious upheaval in ancient Egypt based around opposing cults with opposing gods and opposing magic.
You seem to be critical of post-christian worldviews, as you say, but your ideology seems to be akin to fascism:
Make up an ahistorical, vague, idealized past, with mythical 'good times' that were disrupted by the advent of the desecrators, in your case, christians.
I did not define the word magic. Society did that. My choice is to communicate effectively, which means largely respecting the established consensus on which words mean what. If you'd rather render yourself ineffectual by using your own personal alternate definitions for established words, that is your choice, but it's not a choice that aligns with my or most other people's priorities.
Besides, "magic" only has whimsy associated with it because we restrict it to fake things. If we'd been calling electricity "magic" all along, "magic" would be mundane and you'd be over here complaining that we don't use a more whimsical term like "etherics" or "thaumaturgy" or "electricity."
As for wonder... what the flippity floppity fuck are you even talking about? The scientific world is full of wonder. Wonder is what drives science in the first place, and it has nothing at all to do with terminology. If you look up at the night sky and are too distracted by vocabulary to feel wonder at the pretty lights shining across unfathomable temporal and spatial distances, well, that seems more like a deficiency in you than any sort of flaw in which arbitrary sounds and squiggles we've picked out to describe things with.
You are being willfully obtuse. Atheists didn't choose the definition of the word. Magic is a catch all for things that are not explained by a scientific process. Computing is not one of those things. You don't understand computers because they are a black box. Therefore it is tempting to call the result magic. But you had better sure as hell hope that the effect of computers are reproducible, every single time, because if they are not, the world as we know it ceases to function.
Because I use logic and rationality to observe and define the world around me as opposed to unfounded delusional thought. I didn’t “choose” to define magic as unreal, it simply is.
It’s not that I “don’t want to live in a world of whimsy and wonder”, I just don’t believe in the supernatural, and am not going to waste my time convincing myself of something that doesn’t exist. Same reason I don’t believe in a god.
Suppose we lived in the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Suppose our neighbour is an elf, my girlfriend is a halfling, there's a dragon living in yonder mountain, and in the castle tower there is a wizard who ponders a magical orb and creates magic potions. Clear, undeniable magic, as you and I currently define it. Would your arguments not be equally applicable in such a world?
If dragons, wizards, and elves were part of the natural world, then they would not be supernatural. And thus, because you choose to define magic as supernatural, they would not be magic. So even in such a world, you would continue to say magic isn't real.
If you and I cannot even imagine a world that has magic, then your claim is unfalsifiable. It cannot be empirically tested; any possible result will be used as further evidence of your tautological theory. Therefore, your theory is scientifically meaningless. It may be true, but it doesn't scientifically matter, because it doesn't tell us anything new about the world. It's just a pointless linguistic game.
But we don’t live in a world of dragons, elves, etc. There are no wizards or potions or magic. There are no spells or incantations any more than there are midichlorians or the force. If those were real, then yes, you could say magic is real. But there are no supernatural forces, only natural phenomena which can be explained by science.
it isn’t necessarily meaningless, as the nonexistence of magic or the supernatural further reinforces the fact that everything can be explained by the very real laws of physics, whether or not we have the current ability to do so.
Our ancestors would’ve thought electricity is magic, but it’s not. They would’ve thought machines are magic, but they’re not.
Your statement about this being a pointless linguistic game is true. You are trying to argue that things which are not magic can be called magic, but you are wrong. By its very definition, magic is a supernatural force. You can’t call something supernatural when it isn’t, that’s just blatantly false.
You’re free to use the word however you please, but don’t act surprised when people call you out for being objectively wrong.
Sure. I can go with this. I actually once met a woman who jokingly referred to herself as a half elf.
She had a rare genetic condition that caused the uh... not the outer lobe of her ear, but the little inner thingy that you can push on to close your ear canal...
... that thingy kept developing something sort of like a non malignant cyst... not quite that, but basically, it made that part of her ear keep growing.
Sort of the inverse of an elf ear. Not the outer lobe growing to a point, but the opposite part.
How can that be explained? Magic? Did she slip through from the DND realm?
Nope. Long medical history, lots of study.
But... would you call that clear, undeniable magic?
If you've got a tummy ache, and I know enough about the ingredients and creation process of pepto bismol to create a weird, pink, strange tasting concoction that you slurp and then wow poof 5 minutes later, no tummy ache...
...is that magic?
I am not being facetious. I have literally no idea what your definition of magic is as you refuse to define it, only attack others by asserting that they tautalogically believe magic is not real.
As Terry Pratched put it, magic is the knowlege of obscure things, knowing stuff the others don't know. That's why you call computer-savvy people "wizards"
Because reality is way too complex and we need to have clear, well documented, error-proof ways to understand it. Wonder and amazement can follow after the understanding of what is true. Is alway better to have "boring" but clear terminologies and a well documented way to expain phenomenon, instead of mixing "Facts" with "Romance" just because we like the sound of certain words. Also, the term "magic" is just a filler, a " deux ex machina", it didn't explain nothing.
By definition, it is merely manipulating reality through supernatural forces. If magic was real, we would still call it magic. We just would not say "magic isn't real." Because remember: At some point in time, people believed magic was real.
No, that's nonsense. Supernatural means not real. The natural world is a scientific term for all that exists, and supernatural means nonexistent. If fire breathing dragons were natural, they wouldn't be supernatural, would they, you silly? You'd still be denying the existence of magic.
Supernatural just means beyond science or understanding.
Magic could exist and people could still not understand why. Just like many concepts and natural forces in the real world, such as consciousness that we don't understand at all, and yet we still understand it is real.
So much your thoughts here depend on definitions of words that you might want to crack open a dictionary and actually see what the definition of them is.
Wh... why are you telling me what I believe and think?
Also, no, you would not be scientifically accurate in describing computer wizards as summoning spirits from magic rocks, because spirits are not a scientific concept.
Spirit means many different things to many people, such that few will 100% agree on its qualities on properties. It is basically a religious concept with an extreme amount of variance depending on who you talk to, generally it could be said to be a sort of 'essence' of a person or thing, but some would even disagree with that.
What does or does not have a spirit? People? Animals? Rocks? Only magic rocks? Water? Concepts (Zeitgeists)?
What does a spirit do?
How does it do what it does?
How can you know whether it is present?
Is it limited by time and space, temporarily and spatially localized?
Or is it in many places at once, or does it persist through time?
Do spirits have personalities?
Do they have forms, or bodies?
What you mean by spirit?
I don't know, but I also won't presume to know someone else's thoughts.
Anyway, I did not define magic as anything, though I love studying the esoteric and the occult and learning what different peoples in different times have believed.
There are many forms of magic. Some of them relatively simple in both exercise and effect, others vastly complex and purporting astounding powers and abilities. Alchemy (Spiritual Purification / Inner Alchemy / Gnosis Englightenment and Proto Chemistry), Divining, Scrivining, Tarot, Evocation, Wards, Spells, Charms, Hexe/Curses, Secret Languages... theres so much more.
What typically differentiates magic from non magic for most people is probably the idea of a well understood, provably reliable causal mechanism.
In the past, when little was understood, concepts from religion, folklore, philosophy, mathematics, medicine, chemistry... much of this was jumbled together such that dividing those listed ideas into their modern constituent concepts would be anachronistic for to varying degrees for different places and time periods.
Over time, more and more ideas were tested via experimentation, experimentation itself became more rigorous, and our understanding of those causal mechanisms, and technological use of them, increased dramatically.
I would say that 'Magic' can be said to be the ideas, that were not found to reliably have a reproducible effect, that were found to not be functionally useful beyond creating an experience of profundity to the practitioners.
As an example I can attempt to speak Enochian to evoke Metatron to aid in sealing some particular demon by using the Lesser Key of Solomon, but this will not actually do anything unless I convince myself that it has in fact done something, that there was a demon to be sealed, etc.
It would be extremely helpful if you could describe precisely your conception of magic so that an actual discussion could be had, as that seems to be what you are looking for.
In my experience with magic believers/practitioners, all of them will tell you that their specific conception of magic is correct and nearly all others are wrong, so it is quite difficult to avoid accidentally strawmanning them.
But uh, you later switch to a different meaning of the word magic when you describe it as a wondrous and whimsical way to experience the world.
Personally, I find wonder and whimsy through understanding the vast intricacies of nature as science describes it.
How wondrous it is that we live in a world where the laws of optics allow a crepuscular ray from a burning star, following the laws of nuclear physics, to illuminate a lonely grove of plants, whose biology is wonderfully complex.
In closing, I do not know what you mean by magic.
Could you perhaps describe magic as a concept, or some specific instance of it or magical procedure?
Because I like knowing exactly how and why something works, and by extension knowing that if I wanted to, I could make another one just like it, or one that uses the same principle to do something slightly different, or that if I take the one in front of me and modify it just here I can make it do something completely new. I like science because I love knowing. I love taking things and making them do things they couldn't before. That's why I became a programmer -- because I could do that to computers -- and what got me so excited about open source. The idea that if I find something that doesn't work exactly the way I like, all I need are the right skills, and I can change it so that it does. If I hear someone say they wish something that doesn't exist existed, all I need are the right skills and I can make that happen. I am a scientist. I am unstoppable. I can change the world on a whim, and naught but my own ignorance stands in the way.
I will never understand the mindset that sees something it does not understand and decides it would rather think of it as something beautiful and unknowable than try to understand it. Why do you accept the world as it is? Why do you accept that there are things we cannot know when you think of all the good we could do if we knew them?
The artist looks at something that exists and sees that it is good. The engineer looks at something that exists and knows that it could be better, and a piece of their soul cries out to make it so.
But I absolutely love and agree with your perspective, too. I think we went too hard into understanding the physical side of reality while rejecting the role of spirituality with the Enlightenment.
I believe physical reality is just one side of a coin.
We need to regain a spiritual view without giving up how we understand physical reality, and without all the literal trappings of organized religion.
Why are people hating on this? OP is right! Non of you have any idea what gravity is, besides being some attractive force that starts existing with mass. How? Why? Wtf even is it? NON OF YA KNOW! How is that different from a wizard utilizing limited knowledge of "magic" to create a fire ball spell? All the wizard knows is that some words and imagining some flow inside the body mixed with a bit of contraction produces sparks out of the finger tips. How? Why? Wtf even is it? The wizard sure as hell can't tell! But can utilize this knowledge to predict processes and make new things! Just like a scientist! Scientists are just a lot more advanced since they view stuff like peer review as a necessity.
This goes hand it hand with the quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.", read some old legends and be absolutely bored by what they considered magic.
In conclusion scientists are wizards. To a certain extend engineers too, since they practice said "magic". I mean many iconic wizards in stories didn't invent the spells and rituals they use.
Actually, in Dungeons and Dragons wizards understand magic very well. It takes years of academic study in order to cast a single cantrip. Magic is governed by the Weave, a sort of field that extends across the multiverse and carries arcane energies of life, necrosis, law, order, good, and evil. For a wizard, spellcasting is based on intelligence. Book smarts and deep understanding.
Didn't cross my mind that there are settings that explain EVERYTHING. D&D qualifies as less "magical" than real life! xD
Honestly it brings me great joy thinking of me and my programmer buddies as little mages, and wizards respectively. Creating my own world inside my lighting infused rune stone.