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The universe is a magician and there is no magic

This analogy came to me recently and I just want to hear others thoughts on it.

Imagine the universe is a magician. In the early days of mankind, we had no idea how this magician performed any of its 'tricks'. What causes the sun to rise and fall each day? Where does lightning come from? Where did man come from? If you had never seen a magician before, it is likely you would attribute these tricks to 'magic', which is exactly what we did. We did not have the scientific understanding to comprehend these things so we said it must be magic (the work of God/s).

With the rise of science, many of the magician's tricks were uncovered as just that, tricks. Ra did not cause the sun to rise and fall, it is due to the spinning of the earth. We were not created, we evolved. etc. So as time went by, science became the masked magician revealing to us that the magician's tricks are not magical, but rather something more natural. We are now at the stage where there is only a few tricks left up the magicians sleeve that have not been explained to us by the masked magician.

There are now three members left in the audience; theists, agnostics and atheists. All three members have seen the magician's performance, and have heard the masked magician's uncovering of the majority of its tricks. The theists in the audience still believe that magic exists, and attempt to prove it by saying that it must be true because the masked magician cannot yet explain a few of the magician's tricks. This is despite the fact that the masked magician has explained every other trick without any need for 'magic' in it's explanation. They also believe that the masked magician is wrong in its explanations, even though it is clearly true and can be proven. The agnostics believe that the masked magician will never uncover these final tricks, so there is still a possibility that there could be magic behind them. The atheists however have seen that 'magic' is not magic at all, but rather just a natural trick that can be explained, and have learnt from that mistake.

Posted Dec 29, 2011, 2:11 AM UTC

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