“I see what you mean,” she said, “but I don’t know. I still believe in something, even though it’s not an organised religion. I like to leave room for the magic in life.”
I made a mental note that believing in untrue things equals magic.
Actually, I love magic. I used to do magic shows as a kid. I learned how to get a line of patter going, and how to misdirect the audience. I still know quite a few card tricks. My favourite YouTube clip right now is this one of the Microwave Man. I can’t figure it out yet — there’s one thing in the way of my explanation.
I really like Penn & Teller. Their cable show “Bullshit!” is being carried on Channel 9, though in the TV Guide it’s tastefully listed as ‘Penn & Teller: BS’. (One of the nice things about Australian network TV is that they run American cable shows in their regular line-up.)
Have you noticed that the best skeptics are magicians? Harry Houdini spent his later years debunking psychics and their phony seances. Famous debunker James Randi started out in conjuring. Maybe it’s because the magician-skeptics know how to fool an audience, but they’re honest about their deception — you know it’s entertainment. They have no patience with dishonest magicians (like Uri Geller) who con people into thinking that the magic tricks are real.
Magic works because it exploits our assumptions about what we see. We think the coin has been passed into the other hand. We assume the hat is empty. We imagine that we’re free to choose any card, when the magician has tricked us into picking just the card she wants.
“But when you’re talking about saving the magic in life, you have to remember that magic isn’t real,” I concluded to my friend. “Magic is someone fooling you.”
She looked glazed.
“Um… sorry for the extended philosophical exposition,” I said, “but you triggered a keyword.”
“You owe me a coffee now,” she said.
It was worth it!
20 August 2006 at 5:41 pm
Being done with religion, you could redirect your attacks of skepticism to other realms.
Sometimes it is needed – too much sentimentalism is sugary.
20 August 2006 at 6:34 pm
Magic (tricking others or yourself) can be useful in many ways. Example: I have no beleif whatsoever in tarot cards. However I do use them often to get a diolog started with someone needing help thinking through their choices in life. It can be a fun way to direct a productive stream of thought.
20 August 2006 at 6:54 pm
That’s a use of magic that I have never thought of.
20 August 2006 at 8:07 pm
This might be a good starting place for a discussion between Clinical vs. Scientific approaches to a problem.
It may also help move us away from a merely religious discussion.
Science is the tool we use to predict future outcomes. It helps us cull ideas down to “what we can know”. A clinical approach is more about what can practically work in a given (not hypothetical) situation. That puts everything on the table as a tool to solve a problem. So, if religion helps a particular individual, let’s say, not kill anyone then yea, that tool worked and is valid in that situation. If believing that the solutions to a problem brought up during one of my tarot readings actually came from a 10,000 year old spirit we had channeled and that solution helps someone get more joy out of their lives then Yea, that’s valid in that situation. Humans are very complex and no one path is going to work for everyone.
21 August 2006 at 12:28 am
May – Haven’t even started yet.
Jeff – That’s a great use for tarot. I have actually done the same thing with horoscopes — all of them, not just the one for my sign. Like once it said something would happen in a relationship, and my mind flashed on a totally different relationship than I thought it would, and I thought, “Why did that come up for me?”
21 August 2006 at 2:31 am
Jeff: a minor quibble.
So, if religion helps a particular individual, let’s say, not kill anyone then yea, that tool worked and is valid in that situation.
I am going to claim that religious belief systems don’t even do that.
Christian checks Bible, and says “Dang! Well, looks like I can’t murder the dad-blamed varmint. Have to find another way.”
Do people refrain from killing people because a belief system tells them not to? Or is it because they have an internalised moral code?
To help you, try saying the following: Thank goodness religion has prevented so many murders!
The end result of an unprovable yet cherished belief system is always blood. Scientists simply do not kill each other over theories because the facts are out there for examination. I won’t say that scientific discussions don’t get heated, but actually that usually happens in the areas where the facts are in dispute! But in religious conflicts, when crunch time comes, and something’s at stake, and the other guy won’t agree, the fallback position is violence.
21 August 2006 at 2:54 am
Do you guys watch the west wing?
(I’m slightly obsessed) There’s this cool episode where Penn and Teller do a magic trick in the whitehouse and ‘burn’ the american flag.
Also, have you come across this English dude called Derren Brown? He’s some freaky NLP guy and master of manipulation. Very cool.
21 August 2006 at 3:04 am
wow,
your really pissed off you hung in there so long, aren’t ya my man.
Ya know if you keep taking phrases out to make your point I’m going to have to be so careful with my wording I’ll get all bound up inside. Comments denote conversation. Not dialectics. I don’t want to have a forensics match with you, I just wanna talk, dude.
Having said that (with a big smile on my face) I have to say that your sling back was great. A minor quibble-minor indeed.
By the way, before I go on I also have to say that while it was bit sneeky of you to be so charming with Alarik you were in fact being very cool with him and I found his personal attacks on you a bit out of place and unseemly. You can bite when you want, hell you can backhand with silk, but you mostly didn’t. He seems smart enough that he should have given you the same respect.
“To help you, try saying the following: Thank goodness religion has prevented so many murders!”
Must have taken me ten minutes to recover from that one. My stomach still hurts from laughing. And no, you would never hear me say that, of course.
I would say that there are many people in this world that religion actually does help be more moral. This is on the micro not macro level. Many hardened criminals have “religious conversions” while in prison and do come out better people. I’m not saying that makes it true. Just that it can work and does. Maybe some people need help internalizing a moral code, or didn’t get enough of that kind of help when they were children.
Anyway, to tell you the truth I know almost nothing about terot, I just make the shit up. But boy have I seen it help someone through a difficult time.
Dan. I am really glad to be talking with you again and hope we continue. Much love.
21 August 2006 at 3:25 am
Thanks, Jeff.
I’m sorry if I made you feel mad. I get on these topics once in a while.
I meant what I said about alarik‘s posts though. I do value people who have something different to say because I learn a lot more that way. But the quest for knowledge can be adversarial at times, and to be honest, I kind of enjoy that aspect. It’s the ideas I’m attacking, though, not the person. So muchas smoochas to you.
I guess if tarot (I don’t know) prevents a suicide somewhere along the line, at least the person is still alive. And being alive is a good thing. Who’s entirely free of self-deception? Not this guy.
Jeff and I use this blog like email, except everyone can read it. A little strange, isn’t it?
21 August 2006 at 4:10 am
Oh hey, I didn’t mean anything as a personal attack in that exchange. I hope it didn’t come off that way to you Daniel.
I disagree with your opinion about faith and science, but I certainly have no problem with you as an individual (I’m going to be paranoid now about how I phrase things.)
To take a tangent from the religion debate though, what sort of magic were you most interested in? I had a friend who was brilliant with closeup card magic (reformed pickpocket, very dextrous fingers ;P) but I’ve always preferred mentalism. I was given a copy of Anneman’s books when I was a kid and got hooked on Banachek’s routines later on.
I never did quite master spoon-bending though.
21 August 2006 at 5:00 am
No, no, we’re all a bit on edge. Do over, everyone!
I always liked closeup magic with coins and things. Also card tricks, because I could learn those and people would be amazed. I haven’t seen a lot of mentalist acts.
I sort of like the big stuff, too; vanishing planes and that. But there’s something about having someone right there doing something inexplicable! Assumptions are never noticed until disconfirmed. And sometimes they’re buried too deep to find. Computer programming is a good exercise for that.
21 August 2006 at 5:07 am
sorry Alarik. I’ve always fumbled in the middle of Dans good conversations with others. I’ll take the blame on that one. I was enjoying the exchange between you two however, so please don’t feel paranoid. My bad.
21 August 2006 at 5:23 am
One last question before my eyes close out here on the west coast of Amerikkka.
Dan, are you saying that science informs us to not accept even the possiblity that a “God” might exist?
21 August 2006 at 5:34 am
Depends on if you’re going straight philosophical or stochastic.
Philosophically, ‘no God’ is the default position, just as ‘no blue fairies’ is the default position. These can be overturned with evidence.
Stochastically, I’d say there’s a vanishingly small but still non-zero probability that supreme beings or blue fairies might exist.
The Prefab Sprout song on iTunes at the moment has this lyric:
“Here’s something to dwell upon
Now we’re living, next we’re gone.
So if you’ve love, please pass it on.
Cause it’s a disbelieving world,
But sensitive as any girl.”
21 August 2006 at 2:41 pm
But more importantly, who was the girl and how was the coffee? 🙂
“Here’s something to dwell upon
Now we’re living, next we’re gone.
So if you’ve love, please pass it on.
Cause it’s a disbelieving world,
But sensitive as any girl.”
Nice, let me pass mine on to you.
21 August 2006 at 5:00 pm
How did you calculate the small probability?
Rather than to wait for an answer, I’ll observe the interaction between you three.