What if you worship the god of critical thinking and pray by thinking critically?
In Judaism, Satan is basically a lawyer guy that Elohim hires to question him and call him on his bullshit. That may explain why Jewish people place a lot of importance on having a nice argument.
The ancient Greek philosphers were also very fond of critical thinking and they were religious. The Athenians revered Athena especially, the goddess of wisdom. So it was considered virtuous to spend your days in thought and debate.
Like, I get that your experience is with Christianity, which is not a very thought-heavy religion. But I find it difficult to believe that you’ve studied a representative sample of the world’s religions. I think you’re just repeating a trope you read online, that religious people are stupid, without thinking critically about it.
I came up with an idea of a deity, The Forbidden God, who hates worship. You worship them and they smite you. It/he/she values critical thinking and logic. You don’t have to be right, but blind faith and grovelling, smite. I’ve yet to incorporate them into some kind of short story. One day.
If your definition of “god” is something you revere, then sure, go have some gods. Have a bunch. It’s great to value things like knowledge and thought and kindness.
If your definition of god includes some supernatural power, then I’ll need some evidence.
In philosophy, the word “nature” is usually used to mean “the universe”, or “all of existence”. Within a mainstream western framework, “the supernatural doesn’t exist” is thus circular reasoning; a tautology. We can translate it as “Things from beyond existence don’t exist”. Yeah, duh! It’s an unfalsifiable claim, and Karl Popper would be ashamed of it.
Magic isn’t supernatural, because magic is part of nature. It exists. Nobody will ever be able to prove that the supernatural exists, because it’s oxymoronic. But proving that magic exists? Easy, with a robust and falsifiable definition of magic.
Magic, by definition, has to be supernatural. Otherwise it’s just physics. What we call magic is just things we haven’t figured out in enough detail to explain. Or things we’ve made up and aren’t real. The latter is the supernatural bit.
" God of the gaps" and all that.
I will happily change my mind if you can show me how that’s wrong. Though I would first ask that you give an example of what magic is.
My favourite example of magic is money. See, I define magic as “observable phenomena caused by things that aren’t real”. Now obviously the value of money is a construct imbued with illusory realness by society. But if we’re talking about genuine realness, the value of money is obviously not real. Thus, money is constructed by society as mundane, but if we call bullshit on capitalism, then our perspective changes and money is magic.
You appear to be defining magic as “unexplained phenomena, incompatible with science”. Under this definition, a Wizard casting a fireball spell in the Forgotten Realms isn’t magic, because it’s perfectly explained by science; magic in Dungeons and Dragons is caused by manipulating the Weave, which is a field that projects reality. I think that’s absurd.
And if a fraud psychic who posts on tiktok used your definition, then they would say psychic powers aren’t magic, because they claim to have a perfectly logical and scientific explanation for their psychic powers. It’s bullshit, but the point is that they’re claiming it’s not bullshit, and your definition of magic basically boils down to “bullshit”.
So while your definition is useful for communicating with other nonbelievers (Myself among them in this case), it’s not useful for communicating with believers in psychic powers, and it’s fundamentally illogical. Because it’s circular reasoning. Your conclusion is in your definition. It’s just like you said: if it were true, it would be physics. Believers claim it is physics. There’s a fundamental disconnect.
Or perhaps all that time spent on pondering fantasies is time that you have a sunk cost into, so it’s harder with time to rationalize the fantasies properly.
There’s a reason that critical thinking and structured religion are incompatible.
What if you worship the god of critical thinking and pray by thinking critically?
In Judaism, Satan is basically a lawyer guy that Elohim hires to question him and call him on his bullshit. That may explain why Jewish people place a lot of importance on having a nice argument.
The ancient Greek philosphers were also very fond of critical thinking and they were religious. The Athenians revered Athena especially, the goddess of wisdom. So it was considered virtuous to spend your days in thought and debate.
Like, I get that your experience is with Christianity, which is not a very thought-heavy religion. But I find it difficult to believe that you’ve studied a representative sample of the world’s religions. I think you’re just repeating a trope you read online, that religious people are stupid, without thinking critically about it.
I came up with an idea of a deity, The Forbidden God, who hates worship. You worship them and they smite you. It/he/she values critical thinking and logic. You don’t have to be right, but blind faith and grovelling, smite. I’ve yet to incorporate them into some kind of short story. One day.
If your definition of “god” is something you revere, then sure, go have some gods. Have a bunch. It’s great to value things like knowledge and thought and kindness.
If your definition of god includes some supernatural power, then I’ll need some evidence.
In philosophy, the word “nature” is usually used to mean “the universe”, or “all of existence”. Within a mainstream western framework, “the supernatural doesn’t exist” is thus circular reasoning; a tautology. We can translate it as “Things from beyond existence don’t exist”. Yeah, duh! It’s an unfalsifiable claim, and Karl Popper would be ashamed of it.
Magic isn’t supernatural, because magic is part of nature. It exists. Nobody will ever be able to prove that the supernatural exists, because it’s oxymoronic. But proving that magic exists? Easy, with a robust and falsifiable definition of magic.
Magic, by definition, has to be supernatural. Otherwise it’s just physics. What we call magic is just things we haven’t figured out in enough detail to explain. Or things we’ve made up and aren’t real. The latter is the supernatural bit.
" God of the gaps" and all that.
I will happily change my mind if you can show me how that’s wrong. Though I would first ask that you give an example of what magic is.
My favourite example of magic is money. See, I define magic as “observable phenomena caused by things that aren’t real”. Now obviously the value of money is a construct imbued with illusory realness by society. But if we’re talking about genuine realness, the value of money is obviously not real. Thus, money is constructed by society as mundane, but if we call bullshit on capitalism, then our perspective changes and money is magic.
You appear to be defining magic as “unexplained phenomena, incompatible with science”. Under this definition, a Wizard casting a fireball spell in the Forgotten Realms isn’t magic, because it’s perfectly explained by science; magic in Dungeons and Dragons is caused by manipulating the Weave, which is a field that projects reality. I think that’s absurd.
And if a fraud psychic who posts on tiktok used your definition, then they would say psychic powers aren’t magic, because they claim to have a perfectly logical and scientific explanation for their psychic powers. It’s bullshit, but the point is that they’re claiming it’s not bullshit, and your definition of magic basically boils down to “bullshit”.
So while your definition is useful for communicating with other nonbelievers (Myself among them in this case), it’s not useful for communicating with believers in psychic powers, and it’s fundamentally illogical. Because it’s circular reasoning. Your conclusion is in your definition. It’s just like you said: if it were true, it would be physics. Believers claim it is physics. There’s a fundamental disconnect.
There is a reason that people study religion and philosophy.
Like particle physics, a couple of YouTube videos can’t make you understand subtle concepts that evolved over generations of experiences.
Because the mind recoils from mortality and desires there to be more.
Or perhaps all that time spent on pondering fantasies is time that you have a sunk cost into, so it’s harder with time to rationalize the fantasies properly.