Theories of Magic: Introduction, and the Atheist Challenge

Posted by: Thexalon 7 years, 9 months ago

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This is the first installment of what is intended as a series on theories (or more strictly speaking, hypotheses) of magic. Theories of magic are of course distinguished from the practice of magic: The goal here is not to describe particular techniques, but rather mechanisms by which magical practices could conceivably work in our present-day industrialized and scientific culture.

What is Magic?

Before we can get into how magic might work, we must first define what it is we are talking about. Our working definition: Magic is the use of spiritual and ritual activities intended to accomplish some sort of change in the universe. Somebody who attempts to do this is a magician (they may have other titles, fancy hats, and so forth, but for our purposes this simple word will suffice). This activity requires a couple of beliefs about how the universe works in order to be effective:

1. Spirituality in some form exists. An atheist who believes that nothing spiritual can exist cannot do magic, because spiritual activities can have no physical effects on the aspect of the universe that the practitioner is hoping will change. In other words, you have to believe that lighting a candle and praying does something other than making you feel better.
2. The chosen spiritual forces are able to change the universe. That means that whatever the magic practitioner is interacting with must be powerful enough and interested enough to actually make something happen. Interactions with powerless beings is of course of no use to anybody, and that explains why those attempting to do magic in interaction with other spiritual forces or beings tend to choose beings that have long records of interaction with humans. In short, that need for a powerful spiritual force is why more people attempt magic via Yahweh or Apollo than they do to Xufulimizan (a name that did not exist before this article was written).

Both of these beliefs, of course, are completely unproven. And indeed, they are most likely unprovable, for reasons that will be explored throughout this series. Nobody has ever been able to provide demonstrable evidence that any ritual or spiritual activity has had any non-physical effects on anybody or anything. James Randi had a $1 million prize available for quite some time for anybody who demonstrate any kind of supernatural effect whatsoever, and so far nobody has been able to do so under rigorous testing conditions.

The Atheistic Challenge

James Randi's prize brings up a serious challenge to magic's existence as a force in or affecting the universe, one that absolutely must be addressed at the outset. As Randi, and other noted atheists such as Michael Shermer and Richard Dawkins regularly point out, in the face of no available hard evidence of any sort of spiritual anything, there is at least a question as to whether magic believers are simply deluding themselves or being deluded by others.

The answer to that challenge comes in two parts:

1. Science definitively lacks the means to completely determine the behavior of the universe. As of this writing, there are known limitations of physics, where certain kinds of problems cannot be solved by science and mathematics. There are also limits to what aspects of the universe can be observed: No tool available to science allows cosmologists to see the conditions that caused the Big Bang or what occurred inside a black hole. And there is an additional problem that the universe appears to change based on human observation. And to make matters worse for atheists, Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem states that mathematically speaking, no matter what we observe in the universe and accept as axiomatic (that is, treated as true without mathematical proof), there will be true statements about the universe that can never be proven. These limitations give magic room to operate without violating the laws of the universe as known by science. This is sometimes known as the "God of the Gaps" argument, although it should be pointed out that none of this series of articles presupposes any particular belief system or monotheistic higher power.
2. There are enough collective human experiences of what appear to be magic that some sort of explanation for them seems necessary. Parapsychology strongly suggests that there is indeed something along the lines of effective magic occurring, although exactly what that something is is of course open to debate. To simply discard religious and spiritual thought as self-delusion in the face of such extensive testimonial evidence is foolish.

So what are we left with? We know for certain that those seeking to disprove the existence of magic have no way to completely verify their claims. As for magic-believers, we know that as of this writing they have not succeeding in verifying their claims either, although in their case the possibility still exists that new evidence may come to light. Seeing as how one side of the argument leads to an end to exploration, investigation, and discussion, while the other side leads to a beginning of exploration in an entirely new direction, this series is going to work under the assumption that magic is a force operating, albeit subtlely, in the universe.

One Last Point

Although this should not have to be pointed out, remember that not all changes to the universe occur through magic. If the leaves are removed from my lawn by me raking them into a pile, bagging them, and leaving them for the trash pickup, that isn't magic, that's simply human physical work. If instead I attempt to move the leaves by praying to the wind to please blow them somewhere else, then it becomes magic again. Physical actions are often the simplest and most effective way to make changes to the universe, and even the most skilled magician will not ignore simply using their own bodily actions to solve their problem.

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