“Stated simply, magic is … the religion of the other.”
— Suzanne Preston Blier, quoted in Yvonne P. Chireau, Black Magic: Religion and the African Conjuring Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), p. 3.
Chireau offers this quotation as a caution to academics against “value-laden assumptions” when studying a religious or cultural tradition. In particular, Chireau is warning against assuming that a dominant religious tradition (e.g., Protestant Christianity in the United States as practiced by white Anglophones) is normative. If you tacitly accept the norms of the dominant tradition, you will be tempted to make judgements about a different religious tradition with different norms; you may even be tempted to call the other group’s religion “magic” in a pejorative sense.
Obviously, the same principle applies in any situation where one is making judgements across cultural (or even subcultural) boundaries. One example of this is when people who accept scientism (which must be distinguished from science) as normative make judgements about other religions, calling them “magic” or worse. Of course, from another perspective, scientism is grounded on unquestioned assumptions, as should be obvious from anyone who has been exposed to Godel’s work on unprovability; and those who expect scientism to answer all questions and provide all meaning will be seen by some of the rest of us as mere practitioners of magic.
Your arguments here appear a bit extreme.
We may not be able to judge MANY claims made by different religions or philosophies. For example, it seems impossible to provide definitive proof for or against various definitions of God, or whether there is life after death, etc.
However, if a religion makes some specific claim about THIS world — for example, it claims that by engaging in a particular ritual, I can accurately predict the future — that is a claim subject to a scientific test. If it fails the scientific test, the claim is false.
Similarly, if a religion claims the world was created in 7 days, or is only 6,000 years old, or that evolution did not occur, those are claims that can be shown to be extremely unlikely. It can’t be completely disproven. For example, as was argued in the past by some, perhaps the world was created 6,000 years ago but with all the evidence for a more ancient past created along with the world. This is impossible to disprove, but seems implausible.
Similarly, I think it is a minority belief among scientists, even atheist scientists, to say that science “answers all questions and provides all meaning”. That’s a straw man that is an extreme view only held by a few.
In other words, the fact that we can’t make definitive judgments about SOME things doesn’t mean that we can’t make SOME judgments about other things.
The fact that we should always be willing to rethink our assumptions based on argument and evidence, and should be open to truths from different traditions, does not mean that everything held by all traditions is equally valid. At the same time, we should try to understand what different religions and philosophies held by people can do to help them live meaningful lives, even if some of their assumptions are not literally true. If you’ve seen “The Book of Mormon”, which I regard as a very Unitarian musical, the argument is that what most matters about religion is whether in the context of this world in the here and now, do the doctrines and practices of a religion help people live more meaningful lives? That is always a useful question to ask.
Tim, it sounds like you did not notice that I distinguished between scientism and science. With that in mind, if you re-read the second paragraph you will see that paragraph is only addressing those who practice scientism, that is, those persons who believe that science and only science can answer all human questions.
The point I am making, then, has little or nothing to do with the arguments presented in your comment. I am saying that we should be careful bringing judgements against someone else whom we accuse of having ungrounded assumptions; because we all make ungrounded assumptions.
Dan, I’d like to include this post as part of the Nature’s Path blog – probably during the last week of December when some of our regular writers are taking some time off. I think that this post should get some interesting responses as many of our readers consider magic to be part of *their* religion.
Also, I’d like to post your article on nightly prayers on the Monday following Thanksgiving.
David, go for it!