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.
Why did you choose that?
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?
And how do you know that? Through magic?
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.
See, this is why I often say that white atheists are culturally Christian. You guys are so unwilling to step outside the set of definitions and the worldview of Christianity. You believe in everything except the god. And I assure you, there’s a lot more to Christianity than just the god. There’s a whole philosophy to how the world works that white atheists entirely accept without question. And you, right here, are openly unwilling to reject a Christian definition of magic as ineffable. You know that the reason Christians decided magic was ineffable was cause they say their god is, right? The entire reason you’re taking your current stance in this argument is that you’re parroting a Christian theological assertion.
This community might as well be called Christian Memes based on the average user demographic.
How are you seeing skin color though?
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.
Yeah, yeah, christian views are varied. But you see, when I use the word postchristian, I’m describing the sum total effects of 2000 years of christian actions. In particular the middle ages drive towards seeing magic as the work of the devil and the canon ban on Artes Prohibitae in the 1450s, which eventually culminated in the witch hunts famously including Salem. The magic-accepting christians failed to effect the cultural changes necessary to prevent KidnappedByKitties and others from thinking magic is ineffable.