Sure, historically speaking, unexplained natural phenomena was often considered "magic" or the work of gods or deities. There are places on Earth where this is still so. If someone (gods forbid) entered one of these primitive societies with say, a used lighter from their glove box and produced flame without the traditional known methods required for doing so, he or she might then be considered some sort of flame deity for example, or perhaps the item itself a sacred instrument from wherever that society believes man (or who or what created man) came from or goes after he perishes.

I read an article once that comes to mind about "magical thinking", basically stating that if a supernatural being performs a "miracle" or supernatural act, it's because the atoms around or involving the act or object are changed accordingly in a nature that would produce such an effect, as opposed to say, your "tiny invisible fairies" metaphor.

Point being, the difference between what would be considered "real magic" and simple unexplained phenomena is that there would in fact be something supernatural (something not known to science that also breaks its established laws) being the driving force behind whatever molecular changes are occurring, as opposed to just some new tech nobody heard of.

For example, if science was forced to explain "karma", or one's good and bad deeds resulting in good or bad consequences absent of human intervention respectively, one theory would be, say, a hypothetical supercomputer in space with technology currently unknown that scans the entire Earth inside and out constantly and observes any intelligent being's actions, logging said being's DNA in the process. From there, it processes whether the act was "good or bad" and attaches that finding to his or her DNA file. Then, later, perhaps randomly, or perhaps even to one's next generation, applying an action that either rewards or punishes said individual, such as say, giving a murderer or son of a murderer early blindness or ensuring a good person survives an otherwise fatal incident, say, through use a currently unknown method of altering the atoms or cells from a distance, similar to how a non-contact thermometer reads temperature or a microwave ray heats an object or an MRI shows the inside of a human body. All the aforementioned objects use invisible forces that travel a notable distance to either alter matter or provide information about said matter without physically interacting with it. Point being, while the idea of that would sound absurd if one had to go by known science, it would still be hypothetically possible, thus removing the idea of "magical thinking" from something generally thought of as supernatural.

difference between philosophy and religion — MrLiminal

In religion, per the stereotype, the part of one having to actually think is removed. More generously put: a conclusion has already been reached based on fixed guidelines, none of which can be changed nor does any deep thought on any particular one produce any benefit; it's up for the practitioner to either accept or reject a given religion. I suppose this can be likened to say, consequentialism, which in a similar format offers a single premise and attempts to make the case as to why say, the opposite is false.

to a person who has “experienced” a ghost, they have experienced magic. — MrLiminal

One might prefer to call a ghost supernatural or supernatural phenomenon as opposed to the ghost itself being "magic" or a manifestation of such. Magic is supernatural, but not all things supernatural necessarily have to be magical.

Religions also often hate when you try to then use science to figure what does and does not work for sure and why what does work works, which is another place religion tends to disappoint me. — MrLiminal

From what I understand most religions tend to have, as a central tenet, a figure (or figures) that exist outside of the laws of the world we live in ie. God creating the world supernaturally, an angel speaking through a donkey, etc. This, by scientific standards, is simply not logical. But. Taking part of your theory, science would attempt to explain this (if it had to) by parallel or multi universe theory. They would both be backwards compatible and in theory could peacefully co-exist in the same reality. Like the above hypothetical on how karma and science could, in theory, be compatible, however unlikely. Fun read, very interesting to ponder and respond to.

Some random reactions. Atheism only refers to a disbelief in one thing. Gods. Some atheists believe in ghosts, astrology or even Bigfoot. Additionally, an atheist need not say there is no god. Many atheists, like me, simply look upon god as a concept that doesn't seem coherent or useful. Arguments are moot. Whether one believes in god may function more like sexual orientation - you can't help what you are attracted to. Although many of us use post hoc arguments to justify our position and in a world which often privileges faith, atheists can find they need to defend their disbelief.

to a person who has “experienced” a ghost, they have experienced magic. And because I also cannot explain it, I can only assume that my only somewhat informed explanation is correct, when it may in fact not be. — MrLiminal

Not necessarily. Some people see unexplained phenomenon and do not come to any conclusions about what they saw. The 'ghost' part is a post hoc label we don't need to use. This is the most interesting thing about supernatural claims. Are they nothing more than linguistic crutches (a sketchy heuristic) for phenomena we can't yet explain, rooted in our fear of admitting uncertainty?

From what I understand most religions tend to have, as a central tenet, a figure (or figures) that exist outside of the laws of the world we live in ie. God creating the world supernaturally, an angel speaking through a donkey, etc. This, by scientific standards, is simply not logical — Outlander

I think many people have in mind a cartoon version of god - the bearded sky wizard who magically creates stuff. But if you consider more sophisticated theology, such as that of Paul Tillich, then god is not a person, but the ground of being. God transcends the subject-object divide and is the foundation of all experience. God doesn't magically create the world we live in, God is the ultimate reality that makes all being possible. This sounds mystical and ambiguous and is much less easy to understand and, perhaps, harder to dismiss than the cartoon god. And can easily mesh with some of the speculative quantum physics mysticism that has excited so many science nerds.

However, if the adage “magic is science we don’t understand yet” is true, then the reverse may also be true: that science is magic that we do understand. — MrLiminal

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. — Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics

And yet, these devices we’re using to read and write these ideas depend on it!

:up:

:up: :up:

I should clarify that when I use "magic" I mean anything considered supernatural. I do not believe in the supernatural, because I believe all natural experiences are explainable and therefor natural. So by calling religion "magic" what I mean to say is that "magic" is the recognition and attempt to utilize a natural property or phenomenon that has either up until now resisted natural explanation or that religion has already created its own explanation for what is almost certainly natural phenomenon. My suggestion isn't that we allow religion to dictate the answers, but that we use the intuitive nature of religion as a jumping off point for further inquiry. An example of what I'm talking about would be historical alchemy. It used to be considered magic, when really it was mostly just proto-chemistry, and a lot of modern science refuses to investigate their claims on the assumption that they called it magic so it must have been wrong, despite much of what the alchemists came up with producing semi-accurate results once you strip the supernatural from it.

As another example, I have considered before that the concept of Platonic Ideals may have been Plato recognizing mental schema but attributing them to an external force instead of an internal one.

Hi, can I jump in? I'll just go for it.

In my opinion, what you folks are discussing here, is the problem known in the world of Fantasy literature as the "hard magic vs soft magic" problem. Ultimately, it's the problem of reductionism: is it possible to reduce soft magic, as a literary style, to hard magic, as a literary style? What would that even mean? Well, it would mean that you would be explaining the inner mechanisms of soft magic as a literary genre with the conceptual framework and tools provided by hard magic as a literary genre. I mean, it can be done, sure, but to quote a friend of mine, it's like you're in a boxing match against a puppy: you're going to win, it's no big deal, Fantasy literature isn't an elaborately crafted Sci-Fi simulation, it's just baseline Feudalism with Eerie Things in The Woods. Like, let's take one of the theoretical, artistic problems that they discuss: why do animals talk in works of Fantasy? There's two possible answers, one is the hard magic explanation, the other one is the soft magic explanation. The former says that they talk because they are under a magic spell, that has a mathematical formula, yadda yadda. The latter says "Why do animals talk, as in, why do Rabbits speak in English in some Fairy Tale? Because it's a Fairy Tale, they just talk, deal with it, end of story."

So, I guess my point is, why is the idea of magic important to you, from a philosophical standpoint? What do you "get out of it", to use common parlance?

Where it gets really tricky is in the ethics department, because Fairy Tales are supposed to teach you a lesson. For example, in Little Red Riding Hood, the lesson, or moral of the story, is that you shouldn't trust strangers. But the stranger is a wolf. So what's the lesson here, exactly? I don't trust wolves to begin with, you could say. I mean, the reason why I don't trust wolves is because they're dangerous animals, not because they're human-like strangers. They aren't, at least not to me. So I fail to see the point why the antagonist is an actual wolf in the story of Little Red Riding Hood. I mean, if the role of the antagonist will be played by a non-human animal, why not a fox? Aren't foxes somehow smarter than wolves? Why not a hyena? Is it because the people that invented Little Red Riding Hood were not familiar with hyenas? And if they were, did they seem too exotic? Like, you can go down this Rabbit Hole for a while, this is certainly a deep one. But my point is that, if I asked, from the POV of soft magic: "How does a wolf know a human language, and how is he able to talk to a human? And the answer is: It's just a Fairy Tale, animals talk, it's no big deal. The moral of the story is that the girl shouldn't trust strangers." But then why is the villain an animal? And if it's an animal, why is it a wolf instead of a fox or a hyena? I don't get it. Etc.

EDIT: And I think I can answer my last question. It's because wolves are "the bad guys". Like, if I was a farmer from the 1700s, and wolves were eating our flock of sheep, and my daughter asked me why the "bad guy" in the story of Little Red Riding Hood is an actual wolf, I would say "because wolves are bad, they eat our sheep, and if we let them, we cannot eat the sheep ourselves." Ok... but then, are you sure we're the good guys, then? That's a Pandora's Box by itself, I think.

That's a good way to think about it actually. I guess what I'm suggesting is that magic is real, it's just all "hard magic," and is thus explainable. Once we properly understand it, it ceases to be magic, but because most people have limited knowledge bases and experience, the world will always be filled with magic because magic only exists in ignorance. What frustrates me is the way science and religion so often approach similar truths but refuse to work together because of their ideological differences. We're learning now that the alchemists were right about an awful lot if you actually bother to follow their instructions, they were just wrong about the reasons why, as it turns out.

In regards to wolves, that's a good example of what I'm talking about. People were correctly identifying that wolves sometimes eat sheep at that this is a bad thing (for humans). However, they went way to far with this belief and started demonizing wolves like crazy, to the point where it was often kill on site and drove down their population significantly. As it turns out, most wolves just want to be left alone, and if you leave a big dumb animal out in a field alone, you can hardly blame a predator for trying to eat it. In general I take a lot of issue with the anthropocentric view of the world most people have, but that's neither here nor there.

That's a good way to think about it actually. I guess what I'm suggesting is that magic is real, it's just all "hard magic," and is thus explainable. — MrLiminal

But here's the problem. "Hard magic" is a term that people from the world of Fantasy literature just made up, on the fly, as the "Fantasy equivalent" to Hard Science Fiction. Because there are two basic kinds of Sci-Fi literature, as far as I'm concerned (I could be wrong, though): Hard Sci-Fi and Soft Sci-Fi. I'm not a Science Fiction person myself, so I wouldn't know how to "best" explain that difference. But, what I do understand, is that authors of Fantasy literature wanted to sort of capitalize on that distinction (and mediatic debate) to advance their own "cause", which is the improvement of sales of Fantasy books. Because Fantasy as a literary genre competes with Science Fiction, it always has, and probably always will (well I'm being really reckless with my language in those last sentences, but you get my point in general)

Once we properly understand it, it ceases to be magic — MrLiminal

Exactly, it ceases to be Hard Magic and instead it turns into Hard Sci-Fi. Which I, as an amateur Fantasy author, is something that I have to reject on principle, because it could affect my earnings. That being said, there's a hybrid genre called Science Fantasy, or Fantasy Science, but it's just not my thing.

magic only exists in ignorance. — MrLiminal

And that is the sad truth. Ignorance is something that should be "solved" through education, which means that if you're a Fantasy author, there is magic in your world, even if you write in the Hard Fantasy subgenre. But that means, by the rules of Hard Fantasy, that in your world, most people are ignorant. Now, are they existentially ignorant? If so, then in those worlds there is room for fantasy religions, as in, made up religions, with made up gods. Think of it like Hesiod's Theogony.

What frustrates me is the way science and religion so often approach similar truths but refuse to work together because of their ideological differences. — MrLiminal

Yes, I know what you mean. I never had that problem myself, I'm 100% on the science team. But what you describe is an experience (since you actually feel it, if it's literally a frustration) sounds like the experience that William James had when he was attempting to reconcile his beliefs as a scientist with his beliefs as a spiritualist. The solution is, from my personal POV, to abandon spiritualism and become a literalist. That's what I am, a literalist instead of a spiritualist. Think of it like the difference between the Letter of the Law and the Spirit of the Law. Which team sounds more "legit", from your personal POV? (Don't take my word for it, though, I could be wrong about this)

We're learning now that the alchemists were right about an awful lot if you actually bother to follow their instructions, they were just wrong about the reasons why, as it turns out. — MrLiminal

Yes, Alchemy was never a pseudo-science. It was a proto-science. You have three basic scientia or episteme, if you will: science, proto-science, and pseudo-science. The difference between the latter two is that proto-sciences can eventually become sciences, and this is by definition, while pseudo-sciences can never become sciences, and this is also by definition. Alchemy turned into chemistry. It's not a case of a pseudo-science becoming a science (that's impossible), it's a case of a proto-science turning into a science. Those who practiced alchemy in the Middle Ages came predominantly from the Muslim world. They did not see their own practice, -alchemy-, as magic. They saw it as scientia, as episteme. In simple terms, they never saw their own craft as Witch-craft. They saw it as similar to what the ancient Greek scientists were doing, think Archimedes or Euclid.

On the topic of wolves: I agree. Wolves should not be demonized. No animal should be demonized. Animals are not demons. To demonize animals is to commit a moral crime as a person. I would go as far as to phrase it in those terms, but I'm passionate about Nature, so maybe I'm going too far here.

What frustrates me is the way science and religion so often approach similar truths but refuse to work together because of their ideological differences. — MrLiminal

Is this the core of your argument? What is the nature of your frustration here? Just because two approaches attend to the same matters does not mean that they need to be integrated. Fascism and democratic socialism might consider the question of immigration (or for that matter, government). Does this mean they can or should work together?

Why not take us through a specific example in more detail so we can understand how you see this working in practice. Dot points might be best.

I guess my ultimate frustration is that sometimes it seems like science and religion are essentially talking about the same thing/process, but then get hung up on the specific details. As I pointed out with my alchemy example, a lot of alchemists were doing proto-science but were often labeled as cranks by both science and religion at varying times. Frankly I don't even know if I'd considered myself a spiritualist because I am pretty hard core skeptic, I just think that "magic" being recognized at all suggests a need for further inquiry, as "magic" is ignorance that can be clarified into science. So perhaps a semantic argument, but I think we should look at it more as looking for magic to distill into truth, as there will always be more ignorance.

I guess my ultimate frustration is that sometimes it seems like science and religion are essentially talking about the same thing/process — MrLiminal

Are they, though? Not trying to be a contrarian just for the sake of it, I actually have a different impression here. I mean, I understand what you're saying, but think about it as rationally as you possibly can: they're not literally talking about the same thing/process. That very same thing/process has a divine nature, according to religion (whichever religion that might be). For the scientist, it doesn't have a divine nature, it just is Nature.

I guess my ultimate frustration is that sometimes it seems like science and religion are essentially talking about the same thing/process, but then get hung up on the specific details. — MrLiminal

It would really help if you gave a recent example and stepped it through.

You mention getting 'hung up on details'. The devil is in the details. Isn't it the case that often what is most important is not the problem we are trying to solve, but the way we approach it? Method and approach are everything. For instance, I watched someone die of cancer because they believed that prayer and god would heal them. They refused to accept medical treatment.

And that said, I am not convinced that religion and science are talking about the same thing. You would need to provide examples. I have a close friend who is a Catholic Priest, in his view religion is about higher consciousness and connection to the transcendent, while science is to get work done in the physical world. He sees both as critical but separate. Perhaps along the lines of the Nonoverlapping Magisteria (NOMA), introduced by Stephen Jay Gould.

What frustrates me is the way science and religion so often approach similar truths but refuse to work together because of their ideological differences. — MrLiminal

I can't think of many cases where 'science' and 'religion' refuse to work together. I can think of isolated cases - Jehovah's Witnesses who refuse blood transfusions on ideological grounds, for instance. Catholic prohibitions against birth control and stem-cell research. But the Richard Dawkins view of science and religion being in eternal conflict is very much a sociological and historical phenomenon which has not much to do with either.

From the Wikipedia entry on 'the conflict thesis':

Before the 19th century, no one had pitted "science" against "religion" or vice versa in writing.[14] The relationship between religion and science became an actual formal topic of discourse in the 19th century.[14] More specifically, it was around the mid-19th century that discussion of "science and religion" first emerged[15][16] because before this time, the term science still included moral and metaphysical dimensions, was not inherently linked to the scientific method, and the term scientist did not emerge until 1834.[17][18] The scientist John William Draper (1811–1882) and the writer Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) were the most influential exponents of the conflict thesis between religion and science. Draper had been the speaker in the British Association meeting of 1860 which led to the famous confrontation between Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Henry Huxley over Darwinism, and in America "the religious controversy over biological evolution reached its most critical stages in the late 1870s".[19] In the early 1870s, the American science-popularizer Edward Livingston Youmans invited Draper to write a History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (1874), a book replying to contemporary issues in Roman Catholicism, such as the doctrine of papal infallibility, and mostly criticizing what he claimed to be anti-intellectualism in the Catholic tradition,[20] but also making criticisms of Islam and of Protestantism.[21]

This is obviously very much amplified by the creationism-evolution debate, especially in Protestant America. There are still debates on the forum about intelligent design.

I think if it were possible to perfectly fuse religion, science and the arts in such a way that we could intuit things beyond our understanding and then make it into something understandable and beautiful would be the pinnacle of human achievement. — MrLiminal

That would be a description of some aspects of the classical cultures of the pre-modern world, especially ancient India and China. Also consider the sacred architecture of Europe.

I think overall you'd benefit from reading more of the history of culture and the history of ideas. There are discernable themes that emerge from such studies. In particular, the philosophical consequences of the Scientific Revolution. That's where the fault lines of the religion v science really emerge. It's much more than a philosophical question, although it involves many of them.

>I think overall you'd benefit from reading more of the history of culture and the history of ideas. There are discernable themes that emerge from such studies.

I'm sure you meant this in good faith, but the history of culture and the world is literally one of my biggest lifelong rabbit holes, so that kind of stings to hear. I am aware this has not been a static thing over the years, and that there have been many examples of science and religion working together historically, which was part of why I brought up alchemy. I'm obviously talking about more modern day tensions. I think perhaps I'm not explaining myself well.

>I understand what you're saying, but think about it as rationally as you possibly can: they're not literally talking about the same thing/process.

Yes, I believe they are. At least sometimes. It's like the parable of the blind men and the elephant. We are all grasping for comprehension from a singular point of view and interpreting it through our own meat and biases. What one person considers divine may just be a lump of hard clay to someone else. But just because some people think the sun is a god, doesn't mean the sun and it's effects aren't real.



>It would really help if you gave a recent example and stepped it through.

No offense, but I feel like the treatise has several already, Alchemy being the main one. I'm starting to wonder if I explained it poorly or if people are just skimming. If I mix two things together, and consider the result science but someone else considers it a function of the unknowable divine, who is to say who is wrong? Why does a greater understanding of how it works invalidate someone else's belief in the spiritual/divine? And I'm coming at this as a hard-skeptic/atheist perspective, I just feel like scientific inquiry should also extend to religious claims. Admittedly, from a historical perspective it's usually religion bashing science and not the other way around, so it makes sense why they have tension with each other.

I'm starting to wonder if I explained it poorly or if people are just skimming. — MrLiminal

You didn't explain it poorly, and we're not just skimming. We're just asking for more evidence, arguments, or both, from you part. Let me phrase it like this: you're not convincing us. And that's fine. The only sensible thing to do, in that case, is to examine your claims, as objectively and as charitably as possible.

I already told you what I think about alchemy: it was never magic to begin with. And its practitioners never saw it as magic, if by "magic" you mean something like witchcraft.

It can be difficult to quantify magic by its very nature. However, if the adage “magic is science we don’t understand yet” is true, then the reverse may also be true: that science is magic that we do understand. If so, then magic is, in a way, real if only in that there are lots of things we collectively and individually do not understand but that still have tangible effects on reality and our lives. It is also possible to use technology you do not understand, so it may be possible to use “magic” you do not understand. — MrLiminal

It’s easy to get hung up trying to figure how to make categorical separations between religion and science , and between magic and understanding. But the central issue I discern in the OP has to do with the consequences of HOW we understand something.

For instance, Wayfarer quotes Feynman saying:

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
— Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics — Wayfarer

and then adds:

“And yet, these devices we’re using to read and write these ideas depend on it!”


What does Feynman mean by physicists ‘not understanding’ quantum mechanics? It is easy to read this as pointing to a peripheral sort of mystery that doesn’t have any impact on the achievements of physics. But I would argue that this ‘not understanding’ affects the very core of what physicists say they do understand very well. That is to say, it is not enough to claim that a science produces devices that work. We have to notice HOW they work, and remind ourselves that they can always be made to work differently. In other words , it could be that if a new approach within physics addresses and resolves the lack of understanding Feynman is referring to, it will result in devices that not only work differently than current ones, but work better. What does this have to do with religion and magic? I agree with you that in an important sense, science and religion are talking about the same thing.

They are both utilizing a framework of intelligibility to try to make sense of the world. When magic is invoked as part of an explanation, it also belongs to a framework of intelligibility. It is not as though the subject matter that magic is attributed to lacks all sensible structure, it’s just that the parts connect in only a loose , murky and partially arbitrary manner. Magic is the fiat of a mysterious black box. We find the use of black boxes not only in religion (God is the biggest of them all) but in the various sciences ( their unquestioned metaphysical presuppositions) . What would it mean to move away from a reliance on magic and black boxes, and is it even possible? I think it is, but such thinking is best done in a philosophicalmode which reveals the processes leading to the generation of the metaphysical presuppositions on which sciences and religions depend.

Thank you, I think this helps put it into words better. My argument is that religion, science and art are all frameworks for explaining reality that use different processes and vocabulary, but are ultimately concerned with parsing truth and meaning out of the chaos of reality. What one practitioner considers practical magic would be explainable science to someone else, but they are both *talking about the same process* just from different frames of reference. It's like if you say "Dog" instead of "Canine." Both refer to the same animal, just from different linguistic frameworks.

To put it another way:

Science we don't understand is "magic."
Science we do understand is not magic, it is science.
Therefore, explainable magic is science.
Corollary: Science *is* explainable magic.

If explainable magic is science, then unexplainable science slips back into the category of "science we don't understand," meaning that the only difference between science and magic is if you, the observer, believe you understand the underlying processes of what is happening. Both magic and science exist simultaneously, and can only be differentiated by an outside observer. As the quote I used originally states, highly advanced tech would be magic to cavemen, and sufficiently advanced tech from the future would seem like magic to us, but the only difference is whether or not we have some structure for investigation and explanation. So science and magic aren't necessarily opposites, they're just kind of different attitudes/states of being, imo.

I think it's worth unpacking what you mean by 'understand' in this context. As I said there's a real sense in which we don't understand quantum physics - which is why there are endless disputes about what it means - yet the principles it has enabled is responsible for an enormous proportion of today's technology and economy.

So, what do you mean by 'understand'? I think you mean 'perceive a clearly discernable causal sequence.' The principles that drive internal combustion engines, for example, are like that. And generally speaking you could say that the behaviours describable in terms of classical physics, chemistry, and other such 'hard sciences', are also clearly understandable from a cause-and-effect sequence. But in what you're describing as 'magic', the causal chain cannot be so easily discerned. We can't see why the spell causes the illness or the cure, or has the effect the practitioner claims it does. So we say we don't understand that, because we can't see how it works (even if in the practitioner's mind, the cause-and-effect relationship is perfectly intelligible.)

religion is more focused on how the strings of the system can be pulled and then inventing reasons for why some of those things kinda work — MrLiminal

Your analogy breaks down here, in that religions are not primarily concerned with producing effects or outcomes, in that same narrow or limited sense. There might often be cross-over, in that in traditional cultures magic and religious rituals were often intertwined, but religions also have an altogether different role, that of situating humankind in a cosmically-meaningful narrative framework. That is not necessarily magical or magical thinking, although atheists might often say that.

No offense, but I feel like the treatise has several already, Alchemy being the main one. — MrLiminal

I'd say you need a better example than alchemy - which is not relevant today. If this problem still exists then you shouldn't have a problem finding good current examples to demonstrate your point in action.

And I'm coming at this as a hard-skeptic/atheist perspective, I just feel like scientific inquiry should also extend to religious claims. — MrLiminal

What does that really mean? Do you think that science hasn't investigated religious claims? What would this look like today?

If I mix two things together, and consider the result science but someone else considers it a function of the unknowable divine, who is to say who is wrong? — MrLiminal

Isn't one answer generally going to be demonstrable and more useful than the other. Example? Let's take thunder. Is it the rumbling wheels of Thors chariot? Or is it the rapid expansion of air surrounding a lightning bolt? How helpful is it to believe in metaphysical chariots?

I'm coming at this as a hard-skeptic/atheist perspective, — MrLiminal

Are you, perhaps, an atheist who comes from a religious background?

My argument is that religion, science and art are all frameworks for explaining reality that use different processes and vocabulary, but are ultimately concerned with parsing truth and meaning out of the chaos of reality. What one practitioner considers practical magic would be explainable science to someone else, but they are both *talking about the same process* just from different frames of reference. — MrLiminal

Most atheists would probably argue that one set of claims is closer to being true and can be of use to us and the other set of claims is not true and leads us into false beliefs and (often) harm. Now I grant you that most religious beliefs are probably benign. But religious ideas do cause harm. Ask those effected by the Taliban or many of those who watched Trump gain massive support from evangelicals. :wink:

>So, what do you mean by 'understand'? I think you mean 'perceive a clearly discernable causal sequence.' The principles that drive internal combustion engines, for example, are like that. And generally speaking you could say that the behaviours describable in terms of classical physics, chemistry, and other such 'hard sciences', are also clearly understandable from a cause-and-effect sequence.

I am delighted you bring that up. I went through a phase where I got really into epistemology, specifically the works of Pyrrho, and it made me realize that you're right, it is very difficult to truly *know* something. At some point, everything breaks down to prior experience and our flawed physical perceptions, so what does it mean to *know* anything, especially when all throughout history things that people know as fact turn out to be wrong.

So I suppose what I am getting at, related to our other conversation, is perhaps science and magic have a non-dualist nature with each other?

>Your analogy breaks down here, in that religions are not primarily concerned with producing effects or outcomes, in that same narrow or limited sense. There might often be cross-over, in that in traditional cultures magic and religious rituals were often intertwined, but religions also have an altogether different role, that of situating humankind in a cosmically-meaningful narrative framework.

Point taken.



Reading my own words back here I find them hard to defend, and your points difficult to dispute. Apologies for my tone.

No problem. We’re all just trying to figure things out.

If I mix two things together, and consider the result science but someone else considers it a function of the unknowable divine, who is to say who is wrong? — MrLiminal

Science is concerned with right and wrong.

Religion is concerned with group unification.

If a fictional narrative unites a group then disproving that narrative will make it loose its meaning and threaten group integrity.