Thread: Magick VS Atheists

1. "Generally" ? Sorry dude but you represent science here, so I want concrete stuff from you. + formal logic and all that stuff.

You're probably a troll, but I'll bite.

1. Science, as with all human thought processes pertaining to reason, is based around two different types of reason.

Inductive reasoning, and deductive reasoning.

Deductive reasoning is starting from a premise, and reasoning out conclusions, such as "If the street was wet when I went outside then it was probably raining at some point within the last 24 hours." The entirety of mathematics falls under deductive reasoning.

Inductive reasoning is looking at evidence and forming hypotheses and conjectures from them, when hypotheses and conjectures gain enough empirical evidence they become theorems. A major part of any hypothesis not solely in the domain of deductive reason is falsifiability - that means it can be tested and proved.

Hypotheses are most easily tested when they imply something about the state of affairs of reality. For example, evolution and creationism - the appearance of nylonase in some bacteria and those bacteria surviving better is a good argument for evolution.

You made references to that Common Argument thread I made? That's all deductive reasoning, all formal logic is deductive reasoning. Occult claims, such as palmistry, divining for water and energy manipulation only fall under scrutiny from inductive reason. If you're asking for formal, deductive proofs that the occult will never work - no one can provide you with them because application of the occult falls 'out of reach' of only deductive reasoning.

That is not to say deductive reasoning cannot be applied to it, for example astrology takes the premise that planetary alignment and birth time can dictate personality traits - therefore someone born at a time will probably have certain traits. That's deductive reasoning, and it is used as part of occult claims. But as I've said, it would be immensely difficult, if not impossible to test an occult claim merely using deductive techniques.

Now, magic is a wily beast and there're a lot of different branches with different supposed mechanisms - just look at runes and chaos magic.

A magical result is probably best defined as "any direct physical manifestation incontravertibly and intentionally caused by someone's actions that cannot be explained through any naturalistic means."

Such as palmistry (and ironically Rorschach tests) through cold and warm reading respectively - they're magical claims, but their effects are testable and often indistinguishable from the results of people using merely naturalistic methods.

For example, ball falls to the floor. If invisible, ethereal goblins drag it down to the same spot as interacting with the Earth's gravitational field would... The former's unfalsifiable, and doesn't explain that much, from the point of view of inductive reasoning it's useless. You could however stipulate that praying to the invisible, ethereal goblins will make the ball fall - and the ball will fall.

Testing here would mean making a control group, in which two balls fell, one was prayed for by Invisible Ethereal Gobling Worshippers,, the other wasn't prayed for at all by Filthy, Dirty Agnostic Atheists. Both fall, it's concluded that praying to the goblins has little effect.

So no, the likelyhood is people will not provide you with any direct deductive proof that magic will not work. Please note however - that does not mean all occult claims are true and to demand one is very counter intuitive towards studying the occult.

tl;dr, demanding strict logic here's folly.

And the reason I raised the idea of the No True Scotsman fallacy is that we may just differ on semantics, and you can quite easily just define what magickal and occult claims are differently from me, thus supposedly invalidating an argument made against a concept.

Practicing how to make infertile and aimless arguments or what? 'Cause all I hear from you is unsubstantiated garbage.

You called all of what he wrote unsubstantiated garbage, most people would find that quite offensive - especially considering that he's been reasonably civil to you.

Originally Posted by DetonatorZ

2. I've never insulted Yoda. He's just immature and emotional, that's all.

How? I have yet to antagonize you yet you continue to call me names.
I think it is very clear who the emotional and immature one is here.

Thanks to everyone else who have been so open minded in this discussion. I am not here to disprove your beliefs. I am here because I like to have different opinions and I like getting other peoples ideas on how the world works. I myself do not believe in magic, nor do I believe in god/gods/goddess/anything of the sort. I think everything in this world will infact be explained by science in time. That is my belief! I am not telling you to believe it, or even asking you too. I am just stating it.

I personally do not believe that magic has an effect on atheists because we simply do not believe in it. In the end your argument could be that we do see the effects of a spell and just rationalize them without any thought to the supernatural and you could be right, BUT when one cannot explain a happening rationally, one might think of the supernatural, until finally the exact reason for the event is discovered, in which case it would no longer be supernatural.

Originally Posted by LandOfShadows

When a topic has Vs in the title it doesn't make it a brawl or UFC... Keep it clean please.

I'm sorry if the title has been misunderstood. I meant, of course, the effects of magick working "on" persons who share a certain belief (or non-belief, in this case). And considering you can also put a curse on someone, I thought "Versus" would be appropriate.

I never meant it as a spot for flame wars.

Originally Posted by Plarkenstorf

You're probably a troll, but I'll bite.

1. Science, as with all human thought processes pertaining to reason, is based around two different types of reason.

Inductive reasoning, and deductive reasoning.

Deductive reasoning is starting from a premise, and reasoning out conclusions, such as "If the street was wet when I went outside then it was probably raining at some point within the last 24 hours." The entirety of mathematics falls under deductive reasoning.

Inductive reasoning is looking at evidence and forming hypotheses and conjectures from them, when hypotheses and conjectures gain enough empirical evidence they become theorems. A major part of any hypothesis not solely in the domain of deductive reason is falsifiability - that means it can be tested and proved.

Hypotheses are most easily tested when they imply something about the state of affairs of reality. For example, evolution and creationism - the appearance of nylonase in some bacteria and those bacteria surviving better is a good argument for evolution.

You made references to that Common Argument thread I made? That's all deductive reasoning, all formal logic is deductive reasoning. Occult claims, such as palmistry, divining for water and energy manipulation only fall under scrutiny from inductive reason. If you're asking for formal, deductive proofs that the occult will never work - no one can provide you with them because application of the occult falls 'out of reach' of only deductive reasoning.

That is not to say deductive reasoning cannot be applied to it, for example astrology takes the premise that planetary alignment and birth time can dictate personality traits - therefore someone born at a time will probably have certain traits. That's deductive reasoning, and it is used as part of occult claims. But as I've said, it would be immensely difficult, if not impossible to test an occult claim merely using deductive techniques.

Now, magic is a wily beast and there're a lot of different branches with different supposed mechanisms - just look at runes and chaos magic.

A magical result is probably best defined as "any direct physical manifestation incontravertibly and intentionally caused by someone's actions that cannot be explained through any naturalistic means."

Such as palmistry (and ironically Rorschach tests) through cold and warm reading respectively - they're magical claims, but their effects are testable and often indistinguishable from the results of people using merely naturalistic methods.

For example, ball falls to the floor. If invisible, ethereal goblins drag it down to the same spot as interacting with the Earth's gravitational field would... The former's unfalsifiable, and doesn't explain that much, from the point of view of inductive reasoning it's useless. You could however stipulate that praying to the invisible, ethereal goblins will make the ball fall - and the ball will fall.

Testing here would mean making a control group, in which two balls fell, one was prayed for by Invisible Ethereal Gobling Worshippers,, the other wasn't prayed for at all by Filthy, Dirty Agnostic Atheists. Both fall, it's concluded that praying to the goblins has little effect.

So no, the likelyhood is people will not provide you with any direct deductive proof that magic will not work. Please note however - that does not mean all occult claims are true and to demand one is very counter intuitive towards studying the occult.

tl;dr, demanding strict logic here's folly.

And the reason I raised the idea of the No True Scotsman fallacy is that we may just differ on semantics, and you can quite easily just define what magickal and occult claims are differently from me, thus supposedly invalidating an argument made against a concept.



You called all of what he wrote unsubstantiated garbage, most people would find that quite offensive - especially considering that he's been reasonably civil to you.

Thanks for the elementary school level bs lesson. I bet Yoda enjoyed that.

If you're going to try and engage someone in a debate, please don't resort to personal and ad hominem attacks to prove a point. Because I might go home and cry and cut myself again.

If you're just trolling, good to hear.

Nah... The only trolls here are you and Yoda. You know, I know that personal experiences are nothing to you 2, but many people on this forum have had such experiences, so from that point you 2 can yap your heads off and give all the pathetic kindergarten logic and philosophy lessons you want, no one will really care. Anyway, I don't mind you 2 so have fun.....

Originally Posted by DetonatorZ

1. "Generally" ? Sorry dude but you represent science here, so I want concrete stuff from you. + formal logic and all that stuff. Oh, and clowning around with symbols from logic like you did in some former post of yours is not good enough, sorry.

2. I've never insulted Yoda. He's just immature and emotional, that's all.

Detonator, you may not be "insulting" Yoda in your opinion, but you're being generally unpleasant, and have in fact been launching personal assaults. Now, I'll kindly ask you to either state your opinions in a non-personal way (I.E. Do not say things like this "He's just immature and emotional") or stop posting here. Enough is enough, there is no room for insults in a logical debate.

Logic is a subject taught by some of the demons in the goetia.

I think the catholic church has the best answer out of all the theist when dealing with science. Modern Science did not exist during the time of jesus, correct? So how then could the bible offer up evidence without being mystical about it.
So things like the native medicine men/the shaman, had no basis of modern science. They had mysticism. And they had passed down information from passed generations on the qualitys of local herbs and their propertys, over years and years of populating the area. They did not know WHY these herbs did what they did, all they knew is that they did it, so it obviously would be attributed to "the great spirit (wakan tanka)", and the people educated in shamanism would heal the others by using these herbs in conjunction to praying to the great spirit ect. (I cannot say for their war dances and ritual prayers. Though I have never seen a rain dance bring rain and I am part of a tribe ^^)

Add modern science to that and you can take the mysticism out. The herbs cured the tribes men and women, not the ritual.

I just think in the end science will eventual explain all things. We just aren't there yet, so mysticism is still present in some forms. So even if a curse worked on me, I would still consider it science rather than mystical, because I believe it can be explained. Thus there is so mysticism, and then their is no magic...it has become science, more experiment than hinderence. Everything can be explained, eventually.

Magick isn't science.
Religion isn't science.
Science is Science and will only be applicable to a scientific worldview.
Whatever that means.


You can't really compare the two from the two different worlds. Of course they are at odds and of course you will not find a unification. How could you?

All of these things have their place in our reality. We use science to understand our outside world, or personal life experience. The best thought as to how things work is valued above others and expounded upon. I would rather chop wood with an axe than with a stone or prayer.

Religion can give us meaning to otherwise meaningless events. Sh*t happens but it lessens the blow when we have a structure to place it in. When we have some kind of device to deal with it. Some human "feeling" to an otherwise cold and impersonal universe or scientific standpoint.

And magick. Magick is the bridge between the phsycial reality we all seem to share (science lords over this domain), and the outer realms of the human experience. This place that it links to is one of feeling and emotion and power. It doesn't matter if you think this place is the inner worlds, the inner workings of the mind, the brain, or if they are outside, just beyond the world we know so well.

Not unlike other art forms, it cannot be measured or quantified. The JREF challenge would be similar to a science team calling in "artists" to "prove" art exists by producing "empirical evidence" of such a claim. These things can only be experienced by the human or human involved. You can't put on a spread sheet where you go when you hear a beautiful song, or view under a microscope the realm that trance can take you too.

You've got to feel it and live it. That does not make it any less real than mathematics or cutting edge physics. You can still summon a demon one day and calculate the next step in pi the next. Feel and live.