Apologies if this has been explicitly covered, it came up while I was driving home.
Arthur C Clarke once wrote (though it is occasionally attributed to Asimov)
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
In that way, I believe in magic. My computer is, in its way, Magic, as are many other items in my life which, deconstructed, I would have no idea how to start repairing. That is magical to me.
Do you believe in Magic? if so, what is it to you? is it a religious or spiritual experience? or is it just something that you see an expert do that you can't fathom?
Do you believe in Magic?
There does not exist a single thing that has been explained to have any form of magical or supernatural explanation. There is very little that exists which has not been explained by some form of physical phenomena. Personally, I have looked up and learned a lot of the details on how computers actually work on the inside, and it's actually amazing how "simple" they are once you get down to it. Just sets of systems that are working together to process numbers. Minecraft is an amazing tool to use to learn a bit about that. If you have the game look up "how to build a redstone adder in minecraft". Then "minecraft computer", and you can learn all the workings. Now, you still couldn't repair the thing, because that takes millions of dollars on the processor level. However, it's not magic at all. I find less joy in appreciating the magic of the world around me, and more about appreciating the amazing complexity of the hundreds, thousands, even millions of processes going on every second in my life for something as simple as typing these words on this computer, or creating the thoughts that drive me typing those words. And on top of that, we exist in a universe where the most/next most complex thing to what is around us every day is a fancy shape of rock, at least in the range of light years. Those millions of orderly actions are not only amazing, they are rare and unique. Perhaps you would consider my appreciation of that sort of thing magic. I don't really, but I have spent too long talking to people who actually believe in "real" magick to ever use the word.
I do not believe in magic. Also, f-u for getting this song stuck in my head all day long.
I believe the human animal is a very interesting one. We are capable, through power of the mind alone, of all sorts of nifty things. We can alter our perception of pain, increase or decrease our white cell count, and make all sorts of other changes to the biochemical soup that is our body, with proper mental stimulus. That's the placebo/nocebo effect, and it's capable of some crazy stuff. People with deep spiritual convictions can actually heal faster from traumatic surgery because of prayer/meditation. I like your computer analogy. The 'sufficiently advanced technology' quote is a personal favorite of mine. In a way, we're creating this strange new world where our primary 'religion/god' is technology. It's a part of everyone's life, like it or not. Some people are our shamans or priests, who speak the sacred (meaning 'apart') language and intervene when things go awry. Like bioemerl, I believe with enough study there is probably nothing that we are capable of perceiving that cannot be explained by natural law, including the behavior of actors with 'free will.' That being said, I have a fascination with 'Magick.' I'm very interested in the traditional religions/beliefs of my finnish/swedish ancestors, before the Christians got to them. I'm interested in the strange similarities that crop up in mystical traditions around the world. I wonder what dark memories lurk in our species past that drive us to express and experience a lot of the same patterns of thought/feeling/belief. I marvel in mandalas, and fractal imagery, and when I take psilocybin I have an intense perception of the 'sacred geometry' that these images attempt to replicate. It's hard to describe the feeling when you suddenly grasp the dizzying understanding meant to be conveyed in 'turtles all the way down.'