Premodern Christian Belief in Magic

[SpergioLeonne]

You realize modern economics isn't Keynesian? Admittedly they still teach it in undergraduate courses, I suppose because its so influential in world history and simple to get that it feels like an obligation. Similar to why you'd teach people Malthusianism. But modern economic orthodoxy is based on a thing called New Consensus which came out of monetarism that argued that it's all real shocks.

Keynes himself didn't even want budget deficits. He argued that you have to run countercyclical policy, ramp the taxes and cut the spending in booms so you can afford to pay for that stimulus. But nobody is ever going to do that in good times. His own followers, i the political world, don't understand him.

I’m at a loss to see a point where what you’ve said is at odds with my truncated version. I said Dems “cargo cult” his theories, which is to say that they promote something that topically looks like it but doesn’t contain any of the working parts.

Cargo cults are isolated populations that encountered modern militaries primarily during world war 2, that we’ve left behind and they make things that look like the technology they saw while we were there. Here’s a cargo cult plane.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I’m at a loss to see a point where what you’ve said is at odds with my truncated version. I said Dems “cargo cult” his theories, which is to say that they promote something that topically looks like it but doesn’t contain any of the working parts.

Cargo cults are isolated populations that encountered modern militaries primarily during world war 2, that we’ve left behind and they make things that look like the technology they saw while we were there. Here’s a cargo cult plane.
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My apologies, I misunderstood your post.

I assume you've heard of this "Modern Monetary Theory" shit too. The name is pure evil. This has become a thing with socialists, come up with some innocuous, authoritative-sounding name for insanity. They do it with the New Historians of Capitalism, which is the 1619 Project but with capitalism instead of America as its boogeyman (argues that capitalism was created by and for slavery).

The MMT, as I understand it, is what the Squad in Washington wants and it more or less just says you can make money printer go brrrr forever.

 

[SpergioLeonne]

My apologies, I misunderstood your post.

I assume you've heard of this "Modern Monetary Theory" shit too. The name is pure evil. This has become a thing with socialists, come up with some innocuous, authoritative-sounding name for insanity. They do it with the New Historians of Capitalism, which is the 1619 Project but with capitalism instead of America as its boogeyman (argues that capitalism was created by and for slavery).

The MMT, as I understand it, is what the Squad in Washington wants and it more or less just says you can make money printer go brrrr forever.

Yeah, I was just connecting how the stimulus concept is generally attributed to Keynes, and it was used as internet argument fodder to justify the shit we’re dealing with now.

“If we give everyone money, they’ll buy stuff, and the economy will be fixed”

Ok, but no, because the gdp is still the gdp in abstract, but you’ve divided it into more monetary units by creating more money.

That’s what I meant.

 

[Otoya Yamaguchi]

Wouldn't be supernatural if it abided by the laws of nature?

not exactly

magic is an attempt (and sometimes success) of humans cheating the laws of nature.

there is the natural world, and there is supernatural. what magic is an attempt to step outside the laws of nature as we know them, and imitate the power of God. there is a fairly bold, clear line between what humans are allowed to do and not allowed to do. these are outlined in the 10 commandments, and God's laws in general. God can do anything, and the Host is also imbued with this power. But humans are not meant to have access to EVERYTHING. the practice of sorcery, no matter what it is, is humans trying to circumvent these limits that God placed upon us.

humans were not meant to have fire. God created fire as a weapon and tool for Him and the Host (creation of the sun, angels having swords of fire, God appearing as fire, Jesus using fire for "baptism" and all that). fire was taught to us by fallen angels (see the Book of Enoch...the real one)

but its the METHOD, not necessarily the result, the defines something like "magic" or "sorcery"

supernatural stuff abides by the laws of nature, but its a "chapter" of reality we werent meant to see. in fact it could be argued that the original intent of supernatural phenomina (something like fire) was meant strictly to be utilized by God and the Host to aid and serve us, as we were intended as God's perfect and most treasured creation

God still follows the laws of nature he created, he can just manipulate them in different ways than we can, in ways we cant even really comprehend. humanity is JUST NOW starting to barely even understand how space-time works.

im digressing and getting off track, but essentially, think of the entire collective of physics and nature as big room. well, theres a room where people are meant to be, and behind a locked door, theres more shit. that "more shit" is the supernatural. the practice of sorcery is just trying to find ways into that room, typically with the help of a demon or some other kind of "entity". magic is the act of petitioning a demon for something, typically for superficial or material gain (like money or success or lust, etc etc). keep in mind, demons answer this call for these material things, but God does not. because God knows you dont need them

and going into that room can have varying consequences depending on God's judgement. if you dont know any better, well then you dont know any better. if youre ramses II and you KNOW youre doing bad shit, and insist on keep doing it after multiple warnings...well, the punishment is more severe

all that said, it still can be tested and done and the results are documented.

 

[Otterly]

I am not interested in it being a philosophy, I am only interested in knowing the truth.

There is a difference between science being the truth and science being a method/tool to get us closer to the truth. Modern society thinks the former is true. Trust the science! Etc.
@The Ugly One yoi say in your Op that magic was universally seen as demonic. I’m sure it was by the authorities but what about the general population? I always had the idea that there was a blurred line between herbalism and the kind of hedge witch stuff and that one might have seen small charms and herbalism as a more prosaic everyday magic? Or was it all just straight up seen as demonic?

 

[SpergioLeonne]

There is a difference between science being the truth and science being a method/tool to get us closer to the truth. Modern society thinks the former is true. Trust the science! Etc.
@The Ugly One yoi say in your Op that magic was universally seen as demonic. I’m sure it was by the authorities but what about the general population? I always had the idea that there was a blurred line between herbalism and the kind of hedge witch stuff and that one might have seen small charms and herbalism as a more prosaic everyday magic? Or was it all just straight up seen as demonic?

Math can’t exist without an epistomology to set basic rules and terms.

Math is a necessary system to quantify many things. I assume some people would assume that math is in opposition to philosophy? Maybe it really IS sad that schools stopped teaching formal logic. The nomenclature of formal logic would make the point, at least, by looking visually similar to math

Saying “I want science without philosophy” is saying “I don’t want to understand the answer, I want it to agree with me.”

Also!

“Supernatural” means outside of nature. Anything that has an origin outside of nature is supernatural.

The supernatural HAS to exist unless someone is asserting our universe has existed infinitely, with no beginning. No scientist I’m aware of is arguing that.

Whatever you attribute the Big Bang or capital C creation to be, it’s supernatural.

Aquinas’ third proof was essentially calling on this. “Whatever created the universe is what I call God.”

Physicists are theists and they don’t all know it

 

[Otterly]

Math can’t exist without an epistomology to set basic rules and terms.

Math is a necessary system to quantify many things. I assume some people would assume that math is in opposition to philosophy? Maybe it really IS sad that schools stopped teaching formal logic. The nomenclature of formal logic would make the point, at least, by looking visually similar to math

Saying “I want science without philosophy” is saying “I don’t want to understand the answer, I want it to agree with me.”

Agree, although if I was being a pedantic git I’d say that maths exists regardless, we just can’t talk about it or use it without that epistemology. Science is the same I guess. I do remember being told that I’d be learning more new words as I embarked on my first degree than the average language student. Always wondered if that was true.

I’m very saddened to see what’s happened to science over the last decade or so (maybe even more…)

Nobody ever answers the question when I ask about consciousness. Maybe they assume The science has an answer, when we don’t really even know what question to ask. I think Dawkins calls the idea ‘non overlapping magisteria’ doesn’t he? That there are some questions science simply cannot answer

 

[SpergioLeonne]

I think Dawkins calls the idea ‘non overlapping magisteria’ doesn’t he? That there are some questions science simply cannot answer

Idk, I can’t stand Dawkins. His books were all insults.. “The Blind Watchmaker”? Go fuck yourself.

Like, God is defined as unknowable. However many spacial dimensions there turns out to be, we’re competent in three and have a very limited capacity to observe the fourth.

I’m pretty sure that “quantum” whatever does NOT break causality, but shit like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is just an oblique observation of things inferred indirectly from very real spacial dimensions we don’t have the hardware to observe.

With an infinite upper limit to complexity, how the fuck does Dawkins think he’s smart enough to know what God is, does, looks like, or wants?

Fuck Dawkins, all pomp

 

[Otterly]

Idk, I can’t stand Dawkins. His books were all insults.. “The Blind Watchmaker”? Go fuck yourself.

No, I’m not a fan, too smug.
But it’s a concept he names, and disdains as a fudge but I think is true. There are some thing science cannot answer. God is one of them. I suspect consciousness may be another.

 

[SpergioLeonne]

No, I’m not a fan, too smug.
But it’s a concept he names, and disdains as a fudge but I think is true. There are some thing science cannot answer. God is one of them. I suspect consciousness may be another.

Right, so it makes sense for us to classify consciousness as derivative of God .

I don’t have well formed ideas about consciousness, but I’m relieved to know that it’s very, very unwieldy to try to compare our brains to computers. We can’t even identify -all- neurotransmitters, some of them are temporary gas bubbles, even. Hundreds of thousands of different types of signals compared to on/off

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Math can’t exist without an epistomology to set basic rules and terms.

Math is a necessary system to quantify many things. I assume some people would assume that math is in opposition to philosophy? Maybe it really IS sad that schools stopped teaching formal logic. The nomenclature of formal logic would make the point, at least, by looking visually similar to math

Saying “I want science without philosophy” is saying “I don’t want to understand the answer, I want it to agree with me.”

Also!

“Supernatural” means outside of nature. Anything that has an origin outside of nature is supernatural.

The supernatural HAS to exist unless someone is asserting our universe has existed infinitely, with no beginning. No scientist I’m aware of is arguing that.

Whatever you attribute the Big Bang or capital C creation to be, it’s supernatural.

Aquinas’ third proof was essentially calling on this. “Whatever created the universe is what I call God.”

Physicists are theists and they don’t all know it

I haven't been following htis strand of conversation, but a lot of the general public doesn't know what philosophy is, exactly. They think it's "what doth life" and what not. (I once made that Xavier reference to a supposed philosophy major and he took that as a serious question.) Of course philosophy and science really are the same thing, it's just we broke it up into finer and finer slices and changed the name. Get a similar thing, I suppose, with people's smug rejection of social sciences, although philosophy dealt with that too in the early days.

General public doesn't know exactly what a math proof is either. I never ran into that until well into college. I knew there were such things as proofs, but I didn't have any real image in my head of what one looks like. It turned out that while I was a never a good computer I was great at mathematical logic. Set theory. I suspect a lot of people out there would thrive in math if they were exposed to it that way. More like computer programming than anything else, except instead of building a machine for a purpose you're explaining the machine. Incidentally, economics is the same thing (start with axioms and work proofs to build a whole system of internally consistent logic capable of making predictions).

 

[Thomas Talus]

The supernatural HAS to exist unless someone is asserting our universe has existed infinitely, with no beginning. No scientist I’m aware of is arguing that.

I've seen some stuff thrown around, not in actual journals or anything like that but more in IFLS/New Scientist boosterist spaces, claiming that the universe is infinitely cyclical because eventually all the dispersed matter/energy will re-attract and collapse into a new point that becomes a new Big Bang. If you remind them that this goes against thermodynamics, they just handwave it as the law not applying over a long enough timeline.

 

[Otterly]

Right, so it makes sense for us to classify consciousness as derivative of God .

Yeah that was my (clumsily made) reply to @Catler when he said why would we use a supernatural explanation - alter we don’t for a lot of things. But for consciousness I think it’s actually a more solid explanation than any of the scientific models we have

but I’m relieved to know that it’s very, very unwieldy to try to compare our brains to computers.

There’s a reductionist opinion that thinks that if can just pin down the action of every neuron and molecule we will understand consciousness. There are those who think it’s an emergent property which is still reductionism imo. There are several broad groups of people all bickering about it and they can’t even agree on what consciousness IS. They can’t even agree on a definition!
There is nothing more fun than earnestly listening to them argue and innocently saying… ‘so like a soul?’ And watching them get apoplectic. If you can’t even define what you’re trying to explain then you cannot use science to explain it becasue science, as @Thomas Talus points out is a process that uses if—> then operators to gain tentative ‘then maybe … ‘ kind of gains.
I think the idea of living in a world where everything is explainable is a bit depressing tbh.
ETA @The Ugly One we are derailing your thread which you started to avoid derailing another thread. Why don’t a start a new thread to argue about whether scum e can explain the universe and we can go back to talking about pre Christian magic in this one? My apologies
Sperging on philosophy of science to be continued here:
Thread 'Can science explain everything?'
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/can-science-explain-everything.184196/

 

[SpergioLeonne]

There’s a reductionist opinion that thinks that if can just pin down the action of every neuron and molecule we will understand consciousness. There are those who think it’s an emergent property which is still reductionism imo

I’m a stubborn determinist, but I think that there’s an information density horizon where you would have to displace things to observe them that functions as a limit of what it knowable.

Like, perfect information would make for perfect prediction, all signs seem to point that way, and Heisenberg uncertainty is what people quote at me when I ask if they can show that randomness actually exists. So to my prior message, I say again, I don’t believe that Heisenberg disproved causality. It’s likely we’re observing a small part of a large system in that, that is based in the causality of a system beyond our perceptual limit.

Anyways, the information density problem means, I think, that some things are always going to be unknowable, and God is at the top of the ladder

For the sake of adding a metaphor, I’m going to add to this since I’m home from work and the thread is paused.

So, as things stand, we have a fairly good idea what the weather will be like tomorrow. We derive that from a number of satellites, terrestrial weather stations, etc.

If we want to know the weather a month from now, we’d have to have vastly more equipment out there to gather and process data points, to have a finer resolution regarding knowing temperatures and pressures in layers of the atmosphere, etc etc etc

If we wanted to know the weather one year from now, maybe we’d need to factor solar activity, cloud modeling and the albedo effects from it, we’d for sure need even more weather stations and satellites.

What if we wanted to know the weather on a day 100 years from now? We’d probably need to know the status of the core of the sun and have a more precise understanding of the fusion going on in there, we’d have to maybe factor if there were going to be any bursts of radiation from space crossing between us and the sun, if meteors and comets were going to cast shadows and alter the energy input, and by now the satellites are making a noticeable impact on the amount of sunlight hitting earth, the weather stations are interfering with wind patterns, so is general surface erosion and desertification, etc etc etc

And eventually you get to a number, say ten thousand years from now, I want to know what the weather is going to be. But I can’t. There’s no more earth, we blocked out the sun completely with satellites. Not really, but something like that, right?

So you’ll run into a situation like that in all sorts of areas. Consciousness might remain hidden behind the veil of complexity

 

[teriyakiburns]

@The Ugly One I appreciate you going out of your way to respond. It's clear you know more about this than I do. It's a pity the thread went so off course.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Yeah that was my (clumsily made) reply to @Catler when he said why would we use a supernatural explanation - alter we don’t for a lot of things. But for consciousness I think it’s actually a more solid explanation than any of the scientific models we have

There’s a reductionist opinion that thinks that if can just pin down the action of every neuron and molecule we will understand consciousness. There are those who think it’s an emergent property which is still reductionism imo. There are several broad groups of people all bickering about it and they can’t even agree on what consciousness IS. They can’t even agree on a definition!
There is nothing more fun than earnestly listening to them argue and innocently saying… ‘so like a soul?’ And watching them get apoplectic. If you can’t even define what you’re trying to explain then you cannot use science to explain it becasue science, as @Thomas Talus points out is a process that uses if—> then operators to gain tentative ‘then maybe … ‘ kind of gains.
I think the idea of living in a world where everything is explainable is a bit depressing tbh.
ETA @The Ugly One we are derailing your thread which you started to avoid derailing another thread. Why don’t a start a new thread to argue about whether scum e can explain the universe and we can go back to talking about pre Christian magic in this one? My apologies
Sperging on philosophy of science to be continued here:
Thread 'Can science explain everything?'
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/can-science-explain-everything.184196/

Consciousness is epiphenomena. Can explain the physical mechanism of how a brain reacts to stimuli, how it works. Can observe that people more or less agree with each other on what the sensation is and see that it always is associated with the brain doing X. Still can't explain why you feel and aren't just a flesh automaton. That's the mystery at the bottom of it all. I know some scientists believe the hard problem of consciousness isn't actually hard, but it seems to me like they just understand how it's posed.

World's all in our heads. I think the closest thing to objective truth is just for our observations to be as consistent with each other, and logically internally consistent, as possible.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

I think Dawkins calls the idea ‘non overlapping magisteria’ doesn’t he? That there are some questions science simply cannot answer

Pretty sure that was Stephen Jay Gould, not Dawkins. Dawkins is the kind of nigga who thinks that science is an exhaustive description of reality, if not reality itself.

 

[SpergioLeonne]

Pretty sure that was Stephen Jay Gould, not Dawkins. Dawkins is the kind of nigga who thinks that science is an exhaustive description of reality, if not reality itself.

That is a thing that bothers me.

There are a lot of people who seem to think we’re one or two discoveries away from having a full understanding of the universe.

As far as we know, the universe is infinite. Nothing says the next particle CERN smashes is going to be the smallest possible fragment of matter. The ‘edge’ of the universe can’t be observed because you’d expand it by observing. We’ve seen nothing to indicate the end of complexity

 

[Fek]

Okay, so I want to suggest that "magic" never really went away. In fact, it's so commonplace now that it takes a great deal of effort for most to realize they're under its spell in some fashion every single day of their lives. Hear me out:

Magic is classically cast by "spells", yes? It is spoken into existence. It is a phrase that changes or influences something/someone (whether yourself or another). When one uses it for selfish gain, it is often referenced as sorcery. I'd wager most are aware of what one suffers not to live, to put it biblically.

So! If it is spoken into existence, can influence another human, and can be used for selfish gains (with respect to sorcery), then the mere fact it can be swept under the rug so handily proves how well of a job it's doing. Most are constantly barraged with it in today's society. Constantly. People are falling under "spells" cast by those who seek to manipulate them into agreeing to do what they wish.

Really give it a thought. If your mind is outraged at the idea, try to work through it.

That commercial you heard on the radio, saw before your online video, read on the billboard on the way into work, etc? All of those are attempting to influence your mind into doing things you wouldn't otherwise be doing, and they're not doing that shit for your benefit. They're actual flippin' sorcery.

The politician on the screen lying to one's face? The very same politician voted into office later that year in spite of the lies? Why in the world do people do that!? Why is it so commonly understood yet people keep doing that shit anyway? How insane is that??? Spells. People are under spells. Sorcery. Magic.

Sure, it's not turning lead into gold (the folly of literalism) or chucking fireballs. But it's real, it works, and you, dear reader, are likely suffering from it to some capacity without possibly realizing it.

 

[Otterly]

Pretty sure that was Stephen Jay Gould,

You are right, it was. My bad sorry.
I’m still curious if magic was universally seen as bad, or if there was a type associated with minor healing efforts that was seen as not exactly demonic, but perhaps not entirely always ‘good.’ You got it he local hedge witch for a charm to cure your gammy leg and you get some prayers and something to rub on it. Essentially a blend of magic, prayer and some herbs. Was that seen as demonic?