magic or not

[sananda]

I totally agree that there is no magic only processes and systems we do not fully understand.

 

As for your comments on the placebo effect, lucky we're in pseudoscience or your thread would have been moved here

[mooeypoo]

I totally agree that there is no magic only processes and systems we do not fully understand.

 

As for your comments on the placebo effect, lucky we're in pseudoscience or your thread would have been moved here

Luck has nothing to do with it, sananda. Some of us just seem to actually know how to do the proper research for our claims. You should follow.

[sananda]

The mechanisms are understood, but again the why is just ignored and is the same as magic, just like gravity.

[mooeypoo]

The mechanisms are understood, but again the why is just ignored and is the same as magic, just like gravity.

 

Sananda, stop making extravagant claims that have nothing in them.

 

Which mechanisms are understood but ignored? Gravity is understood but ignored? How is gravity like magic? What, in all that is sciency are you rambling about??

 

Stop posting just for the sake of posting. This thread has a very clear subject to it, stick to the subject coherently or stop wasting our time.

 

~moo

[swansont]

Double-slit discussion moved

[sananda]

Sananda, stop making extravagant claims that have nothing in them.

 

Which mechanisms are understood but ignored? Gravity is understood but ignored? How is gravity like magic? What, in all that is sciency are you rambling about??

 

Stop posting just for the sake of posting. This thread has a very clear subject to it, stick to the subject coherently or stop wasting our time.

 

~moo

 

I am on point, I am just stating that anything we don't understand at the moment could be described in a million different ways, including 'it's just magic' or a miracle...

[mooeypoo]

I am on point, I am just stating that anything we don't understand at the moment could be described in a million different ways, including 'it's just magic' or a miracle...

The problem with this is that the description leads to an action or inaction.

 

When I state that something I don't understand is "magic", I am essentially satisfied with not knowing. Magic implies that it's something I *CAN'T* know (temporarily or not, doesn't matter) so if I state that something I don't know is magic, I essentially stop asking more questions about it or researching it.

 

That's not how science works, and not how science is supposed to work.

[Edtharan]

I am on point, I am just stating that anything we don't understand at the moment could be described in a million different ways, including 'it's just magic' or a miracle...

This is the Logical Fallacy: Thought Terminating Cliché (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9).

 

This kind of thinking gets us nowhere. It is valid that you could say that about science, but doing so is tantamount to saying: Lets not think about it.

 

If it is just magic, then there can be no rational explaining of it, because that is what magic is (irrational).

 

As the whole purpose of science is to reach a rational explanation, then the "we could call it magic" is entirely the wrong way to think about it.

 

To give a direct example: Aspirin.

 

Have you ever taken aspirin for any condition (like a headache)?

 

For a long time "Magicians" would treat people who had headaches, toothaches and such by giving them the bark of a certain type of willow tree to chew on (or made it into a "magic potion").

 

This was "just magic". For thousands of years people dismissed it as magic, and so no one though to think about it.

 

That was until scientists (one of them Johann Buchner) started thinking about it in scientific terms. Once they did this they discovered that the effect was real (although many of these believed "magic" cures are shown to be false or even harmful) and that there was a particular chemical called "salicin".

 

Since then, and because scientists don't think of salicin as magic, they have investigated how it works and have developed a whole range of medicines based on it, and even found new uses for it (in heart disease patients or patients who need their blood thinned).

 

This only came about because it was not thought of a Magic.

[John Phoenix]

I too cannot answer the poll without clear definitions of magic or miracles.

 

But I use this as reference. Magic is perceived as an action done by man to produce a certain outcome.

 

Miracles are perceived as an action done by a being who is the divine all knowing all powerful creator of everything to produce a certain outcome.

 

What method would man employ to preform magic? Does the voodoo doll or witchcraft use forces that we can measure and study scientifically? No. Does that mean they are not real? No. Magic could very well be real. Science can only say that they have not proven the existence of magic because there is no way to measure the forces involved. If a scientist states categorically that magic does not exist, that is only his opinion as he cannot prove that magic does not exist by his scientific method.

 

The same exact argument can be made for miracles.

 

I personally suspect that there could be miracles and even magic and that one day science will be able to measure the forces involved to determine this. However as of now science does not have the ability to do this because there may be laws of physics yet undiscovered.

 

Science has tried to measure forces similar to magic in the form of measuring mental powers like telekinesis.

[tar]

Mooeypoo,

 

I took a break from the forum. I was getting frustrated. We were not seeing eye to eye and although I appreciated your time, and learned from your posts, I didn't think you were seeing my points. And my defense was more philosophical than scientific, so I couldn't pursue my defense within the parameters of the board. So I decided to ban myself, before you had to.

 

Regards, TAR

[bombus]

That's a shame, I've just succeeded in turning myself into a frog.

[lucaspa]

Also, I agree with ydoaps. "The work of the god" means nothing to me, unless you explain what you mean by the word "god," and what kind of work you're talking about.

 

(Not trying to be difficult, just showing some problems with the question.)

 

I submit that you are deliberately obfuscating the question. "Miracle" as most people use it are events that contradict the regular way the universe works or are even a violation of the normal way the universe works. The Parting of the Red Sea or the raising of Lazarus are miracles because they go against the normal way things work.

 

Now, we don't require precise definition of "god" to know what is generally meant by the word: a deity that exists outside the universe, created the universe, can intervene within the universe, and is very powerful and knowing.

 

Since science deals only with intersubjective evidence, most "miracles" lie outside the realm of science. They are not repeatable and they left no evidence for us to study today. They seem to violate currently accepted theories, but we certainly cannot use those theories to say the event did not happen. We are saved from having to modify or discard the theory becuase the event is 1) far back in time, 2) poorly documented, or 3) both.

 

In the cases where "miracles" would leave evidence that persists to today then yes, we can test them. The "miracle" of the Genesis Flood as a world-wide event can be tested, has been tested, and has been falsified.

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I too cannot answer the poll without clear definitions of magic or miracles.

 

But I use this as reference. Magic is perceived as an action done by man to produce a certain outcome.

 

Miracles are perceived as an action done by a being who is the divine all knowing all powerful creator of everything to produce a certain outcome.

 

Very good! I like this. Yes, I agree that magic is something done by men while miracles are done by deity. However, by your definition, practically anything humans do is "magic". After all, driving my car to get home is "an action done by man to produce a certain outcome". So we need something else.

 

So magic must involve entities/forces that are not material.

 

Does the voodoo doll or witchcraft use forces that we can measure and study scientifically? No.

 

I would say "yes". We can follow a practioner of voodoo and correlate the actions of the practioner with results. Therefore we can test whether the voodoo doll does have an effect on the person it represents. So we can test whether magic is real. We don't need to know the actual forces, just like we don't really know what gravity is, but we can test that it is real.

 

Science can only say that they have not proven the existence of magic because there is no way to measure the forces involved.

 

But there is. Back to your voodoo doll. I would say that pins of different diameter would have different effects, right? So we could measure the forces involved by having the person describe the differences in pain. So yes, we can prove that specific forms of magic do not exist by the scientific method.

 

Science has tried to measure forces similar to magic in the form of measuring mental powers like telekinesis.

 

And what has been the result?

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Scientifically speaking, prayer was measured. Why? because they scientists got grants for it, obviously.

 

Actually, the initial study on IP --Byrd's -- did not have a "real" grant. Instead, Byrd got a very small amount for "research" as part of his residency in internal medicine. The study was done on a shoestring budget.

 

Scientifically speaking, prayer completely failed the measurement tests. Not only was it shown to have no effect, it was shown to sometimes have ADVERSE effects.

 

That's not what the literature says.

 

14. Byrd, RC, Positive theraputic effects of intercessory prayer in a coronary care population. Southern Med Jour 1988 81(7):826-29. http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/smj1.html http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/smj.doc

15. WS Harris, M Gowda, JW Kolb, CP Strychacz, JL Vacek, PG Jones, A Forker, JH O'Keefe, BD McCallister, A randomized, controlled trial of the effects of remote, intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients admitted to the coronary care unit. Arch Intern Med. 1999;159:2273-2278 http://archinte.ama-assn.org/issues/v159n19/rfull/ioi90043.html

15. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1627000/1627662.stm A study at North Carolina

17. http://health.medscape.com/viewarticle/405270 IP for infertile women

18: Dusek JA, Sherwood JB, Friedman R, Myers P, Bethea CF, Levitsky S, Hill PC,Jain MK, Kopecky SL, Mueller PS, Lam P, Benson H, Hibberd PL. Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP): study designand research methods.Am Heart J. 2002 Apr;143(4):577-84.

19: Leibovici L. Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients withbloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial.BMJ. 2001 Dec 22-29;323(7327):1450-1.

20. http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/324/7344/1037

21. Herbert Benson, MD,a,4 Jeffery A. Dusek, PhD,a,4 Jane B. Sherwood, RN,y Peter Lam, PhD, Charles F. Bethea, MD,b William Carpenter, MDiv,c Sidney Levitsky, MD,d Peter C. Hill, MD, Donald W. Clem, Jr, MA,f Manoj K. Jain, MD, MPH,g David Drumel, MDiv,g,h Stephen L. Kopecky, MD, Paul S. Mueller, MD,j Dean Marek,k Sue Rollins, RN, MPH,b and Patricia L. Hibberd, MD, PhD Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: A multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer. American Heart Journal, Volume 151, Number 4, 934-942, 2006.

 

The last paper is the one where you are getting the claims that prayer was 1) ineffective and 2) harmful. However, when you actually read the paper you find that is not the case. Instead, people who knew they were being prayed for had more complications. This is explained by psychological reaction, not prayer.

 

All the papers I referenced show an effect of intercessory prayer. BTW, you might be interested in the Cochrane Review of the Byrd paper and others preceding it. They found no methodological flaws and found the statistics "robust".

 

Personal prayer has universally been found to have beneficial effects. Since these effects are similar to those of people who engage in meditation, the hypothesis is that the effects are due to biofeedback from the meditation.

[Sisyphus]

I wasn't deliberately obfuscating anything. To the contrary, I was trying to preempt exactly that. People do mean different things by "god," "magic," etc. Often there's no definition at all, or an incoherent or self-contradictory one. Under some definitions, literally everything that happens is technically miraculous. Under some, it's a logical impossibility. For example, if "magic" occurs, then by definition it is not in violation of natural law.

 

You say "out of the ordinary." I know what you mean in a colloquial sense - people don't typically rise from the dead - but that isn't sufficient. Another way of putting that would be, "based on full knowledge of natural laws and full knowledge of prior conditions, something that could not have been predicted." Yet that is a fundamental aspect of quantum mechanics, and thus ultimately every event. Is every event then miraculous?

 

You also put forth "in violation of accepted laws." But what does that mean? It just means the accepted laws were wrong. Have events occured that falsified accepted laws of nature? Yes, obviously. Are they miraculous? Depends on your definition, I guess.

 

And finally you use the word "immaterial." But what does that mean, exactly? Something we can look at and hold? Is, say, dark energy immaterial and therefore technically magic? Is mathematics magic? Is angular momentum, being a property and not a substance? Is the property of being a comfortable chair? Is consciousness?

 

My point with all of this, I must iterate, is that precisely defined language is essential for coherent discussion. In fact, stating exactly what you mean by a question oftentimes makes the answer clear from the beginning, or even shows the question itself to be meaningless. Not doing so oftentimes leads to simply talking past one another until the semantic bickering is drawn out by necessity anyway. I say this from long experience, which I think you'll find that you share.

[walkntune]

Yes, but I am thinking more that if willpower/positive thinking/prayer alone could affect the physical realm (even by tiny amounts) then it would qualify as magic vis-a-vis current scientific thinking.

Why would positive thinking that effects the physical realm qualify as majic?

Doesn't positive thinking affect our performance, thus affecting our actions, thus affecting everyone's reaction?

Let's do a scientific study or actually one that has been done over and over!

Put yourself in a positive state through positive thinking and go ask a girl out!

Try again in a negative state and see if you get a similar reaction! Each of those reactions will continue on maybe even forever as it influences behavior passed on from one person to the next.You could end up married and in a whole complete physical world than the other. Suppose a friend of the girl sees you at night and is scared because she thinks your a freak from asking her friend out in a negative state so turns and runs and gets hit by a car!That affect will go on and on also since it might have caused a life to never be born and so on. Your positive and negative state affects your world tremendously and does not have to be supernatural.I believe we can communicate this energy somehow through intuition and even dogs and animals can pick up and be affected also but thats my own speculation!

 

Where has it been proven that picking lint does not help?

 

Where has it been proven that stepping over cracks in the sidewalk does not help?

 

Where has it been proven that whistling does not help?

 

Where has it been proven that abstaining from prayer does not help?

 

This being said maybe picking up lint can be proved to help if you feel lucky and positive for doing it! Just don't leave a bunch on your shirt when you ask out that girl because lint itself can cause the whole world to change!!!(smiling)! So be it to all other forms of belief!

[iNow]

"Miracle" as most people use it are events that contradict the regular way the universe works or are even a violation of the normal way the universe works. The Parting of the Red Sea or the raising of Lazarus are miracles because they go against the normal way things work.

 

Was this a miracle?

 

 

zWsQyoCMIUk

[walkntune]

This was a good example of how beliefs can change the course of a persons life and have a major impact on the world and so forth! Your beliefs will become and dictate your realities!

[iNow]

This was a good example of how beliefs can change the course of a persons life and have a major impact on the world and so forth!

 

It's also a good example of how the things which people call miracles aren't really miracles at all, and actually have perfectly plausible and naturalistic mechanisms underlying them.

[bascule]

I believe in magic, as in prestodigitation, the art of fast fingers. Penn & Teller perform it all the time.

[tar]

Knowing the trick takes the fun out of it. If you are in the audience, but puts the fun in if you are the performer.

 

What is nice about reality, is it is so huge, and so long lived, that we need not worry about ever running out of fun.

 

We are the audience as the objective viewer and the performer as the arrangement of molecules that can be an objective viewer.

 

Quite a trick. We will never run out of fun, enjoying with wonder, the complex and clever manner in which we gathered and maintained such a wonderous pattern.

 

Nor will we run out of ways to bring new patterns to life. New tricks, of human imagination.

 

Regards, TAR