Magickal Counterargument To Atheism, I think I've figured one out Options

One of the things which has really held me back, as far as attempting any magical work of my own is concerned, and continues to do so, is at least a partial, intermittent tendency to try and hold my belief system subject to Richard Dawkins' approval. At first, it seemed like he was unavoidably, inescapably right; he seemed unassailably impossible to argue with.

I finally realised something, though; and that is that I virtually never read about anyone claiming anything on here that they don't also maintain that they've actually done. It strikes me that in a very real sense, a lot of the people in this forum are actual scientists themselves, in terms of the continual experimentation with evocation and other similar areas.

The other thing I realised is that contrary to direct experience, most atheistic arguments against God's existence (or the existence of any reality outside the physical) is based primarily on theoretical/logical abstractions, rather than direct experience. Dawkins talks about whether natural selection can or can't be used to discredit creationism, as one example, but it's still completely theoretical and hypothetical, and the reason why is because none of us have a time machine to allow us to go back 4.5 billion years and conclusively observe what actually happened, and so because of that, we can argue about that point theoretically as much as we want, but we still don't really know.

As a direct contrast to that, when people talk about evocation, as an example, they usually give direct experentially based reports of their experiments. One of the things that bothers me about contemporary science is that when its' advocates discredit certain things as unscientific, they generally disregard their own rules. The main rule I'm talking about here is repeatability.

If Darkmage or Imperial Arts write an account, for example, of calling up Marbas or Vassago, and mention Marbas or Vassago as manifesting in a certain way, if I then go to the Goetia myself, perform the same experiment myself in the presence of others, and depending on either an astral or physical manifestation, get verification from said other witnesses as to the consistency of the manifestation, particularly if I have not told them what to expect first, then that to me counts as valid scientific repeatability. It is empirical in the original definition of the word; I am relying directly upon the evidence of my five senses; in this case, primarily sight and hearing, probably.

I get the distinct impression that that is why Imperial in particular seems to be so very careful about doing everything by the book, where the Goetia is concerned; because he is considering it repeatable, but because, when you're exploring a process that you don't necessarily understand the mechanism behind, that someone else has recorded, if you change things, and the process then doesn't work, you have no way of knowing which specific alteration(s) to the process caused failure. Thus, if something is to be repeatable, if you don't completely understand the mechanism behind it, the only way to ensure consistent results is to reproduce said process to the letter.

Imperial does that, and according to his testimony, he gets specific results. Dawkins might counter that I have no way of knowing whether or not Imperial is lying about his results. My counter to that is that I have a perfectly sound means of finding that out, or if not finding out whether or not he is lying, at least finding out to my own satisfaction, whether or not his results are repeatable for me personally. The Goetia and all of the necessary reagents are equally potentially available to me, and I can, if I so choose, go and perform my own experiment and attempt to reproduce Imperial's results. If I am able to do so, then I have collaboratively and empirically proven, in the only ontologically possible and valid way, that the mechanism behind the Goetia does in fact produce concrete, repeatable results. Magic, I am realising, can and does hold up to empirical scrutiny.

Dawkins might also respond that any sighting of an apparition/evoked spirit would automatically count as delusion by default, and mass delusion in the case of supporting witnesses. I would argue in response to that, that logically speaking, a person is just as subject to visual hallucination when they look into a microscope and see bacteria, as they are when they see manifested entities.

It is therefore impossible, in my own mind, for science to claim that acorporeal reality demonstrably does not exist, purely on the basis of it not being detectable by external/mechanistic means. What atheists are forgetting when they make that claim, is that even mechanistic support for the existence of something ultimately falls back to being reliant on the physical senses; you still need to look at a computer screen or microscope for such, and as I have already said, I refuse to accept that the senses of a sane witness are necessarily any less reliable in their own house or loungeroom (the environment for evocation) than they are within a laboratory.

This post has been edited by Petrus: Feb 11 2009, 06:55 AM

I just found out that Atheism has no foundation, like religion. We (as humans) have not figured out a scenario that can prove it. Meaning we have DNA, but DNA cannot reproduce itself so we've found RNA which is a protein based compound that can reproduce itself and is a cousin to DNA. However we are yet to figure out how to produce a scenario in which RNA could come out of the compounds of the beginning of the earth, or from a meteor. Until we find that gap, which I believe possible (but I also believe it's possible to find a god through scientific means) anyone's guess is feasible.

Edit: Sorry for the double post.

This post has been edited by Dancing Coyote: Feb 18 2009, 05:21 PM

I just found out that Atheism has no foundation, like religion.

Strong Atheism has a foundation, Dancin'. It's just that, as Darkmage pointed out, said foundational premise is a logical impossibility. It is impossible to prove a negative assertion.

You guys might find this link interesting:- http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/magick/texts/evidence.txt

It led me to start reading a bit about aether theory; the scientific angle on what seems to be Bardon's "Akash," element. And what do you know; it turns out two scientists once tried to find a way of measuring it in 1887. They tried to detect a form of aetheric crosswind which they assumed would be generated due to the Earth being in continual motion, in terms of the orbit around the Sun. Turns out they did consistently pick something up, but the number was exceptionally small, and also wasn't always exactly the same; so small that the rest of the scientific community at the time apparently wrote it off as being within the margin for mechanical error, and the experiment was declared a failure.

Still, apparently Einstein ended up making the statement at one point that, without the existence of aether, his theory of general relativity would be, "unthinkable."

I don't understand the physics of it entirely, but for some reason I've had some optimism that the atom smasher that started up at CERN might possibly find some evidence for aether's existence that they'd be willing to look at, as well. If it does, there is basically our confirmation.

Truthfully, I believe in it already; when a friend and I were collaborating on producing his second servitor, and I had my hand out to provide initial energy to it, the thing started sucking that hard that as well as a real pull on my arm, I ended up with heart pain. I had to pull away and stop for a bit; and that wasn't the only time I've felt a very distinct pull when feeding servitors, either.

I've also had a number of other sensations which I can't account for when performing the Middle Pillar, too. When it mentions visualising the ball of light, at times it feels as though I've got an egg in my throat, and usually something bigger when it reaches my stomach...it's weird.

You guys are probably also very used (moreso than I am, truth be told) to the feeling in a room when you've asked your God(s) or another positive entity to be present, and how the atmosphere in the room very noticeably softens, and sometimes also gets a few degrees warmer. The softness is a tactile sensation, almost...but not quite.

I have no idea how any of that could be quantified in a way atheists would be happy with; don't know even if it can be at all. All I know is, what I get with that is real, sometimes it's disturbing, and I've had it multiple times, as well. I also don't believe they can chalk it up to suggestion, since the MP only tells you what to look for in a visualisation sense; the description sure as hell doesn't mention anything tactile.

Truthfully, I really don't understand, when I think about it, how science actually could have missed this. I'm a raw newb; I'm only doing the fairly basic GD exercises so far, and what that mate of mine and I did in my old temple was pure, informal Chaos...and if I'm getting the above just from that, then surely that means there's something here which is sufficiently obvious that it would be given a second look.

Apparently not, however. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)