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

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.

There should be a disinction made between scientists and Atheists. There are usually a range of views on any subject among scientists, whereas Atheists uphold the dogma that "There is No God." In this sense Atheism is more like a religion, though it is one to which some scientists subscribe.

The "go and prove it to yourself" argument is sound reasoning on an individual basis, but there are gaps in the process of proving something that may not be fully grasped by the one attempting to do so, or other factors getting in the way. At any rate it is far more common to hear the skeptics demand to be zapped than to hear them request a reasonable argument or any amount of experimental suggestions.

To anyone that maintains a strictly materialist Atheism, I submit a very simple challenge to be settled by reason.

If we are merely organic creatures, whose every motive is purely biological in origin, devoid of spirit, we ought to be little more than complicated robots. We would seek out pleasure and hope to avoid pain, and for all our apparent reasoning and imagination, we would only be following the dictates of the brain and its chemical soup. Life would be a matter of response or reaction, with no will , spirit, or mind beyond that produced and contained by the body.

I do not believe that our choices, the act of directing the activity of the body and its thoughts, is a product of the environment. Choice, or will if you wish to call it that, is not necessarily a product of biological promptings. To the Atheists I would ask, "Are you nothing more than the slave of your body, your diet, your hormones? Is there no intelligence directing your life beyond that?"

I believe there is an intimate, individual, and inherent intelligence that is not produced by the body, which guides the brain rather than is made or ruled by it. This is a matter for reason, for self-analysis, not for lab tests and dog-trick proofs. Let them who would proclaim themselves stooges of fate, robots and zombies devoid of spirit, come forward and dispute the power and presence of the soul.

I believe there is an intimate, individual, and inherent intelligence that is not produced by the body, which guides the brain rather than is made or ruled by it. This is a matter for reason, for self-analysis, not for lab tests and dog-trick proofs. Let them who would proclaim themselves stooges of fate, robots and zombies devoid of spirit, come forward and dispute the power and presence of the soul.

This is very interesting, Imperial, as having now read your Open Journal, I remember at one point that you wrote that you were doubtful of the idea of a soul. Was it the Goetia who provided you with sufficient evidence to change your mind on the idea, or other observations among humans?

At any rate, for someone who is as cautious in these areas as yourself, to come down on the side of the existence of a soul does, I feel, at least give strong encouragement to the concept's validity.