The End of Magic

Posted by KC

June 27, 2007

Sam Harris has an entertaining article up at Huffington Post where he takes reviews of the latest crop of atheist books and changes the wording to make them sound like something out of the Middle Ages about Witchcraft.

My personal favorite:

“The danger is that the aggression and hostility to [magic] in all its forms… deters engagement with the really interesting questions that have emerged recently in the science/[necromancy] debate. The durability and near universality of [witchcraft] is one of the most enduring conundrums of evolutionary thinking… Does [spell-casting] still have an important role in human wellbeing? … If [sorcery] declines, what gaps does it leave in the functioning of individuals and social groups?… I suspect the New [Skeptics] are in danger of a spectacular failure. With little understanding and even less sympathy of why people increasingly use [the evil eye] in political contexts, they’ve missed the proverbial elephant in the room. These increasingly hysterical books may boost the pension… but one suspects that they are going to do very little to challenge the appeal of a phenomenon they loathe too much to understand.” –Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian

Put that way, it’s so very obvious how ridiculous the defenses of modern theology and god belief are. Yet, day in and day out we insist these people are not speaking gibberish in the defense of absurdity. Annoying to say the least.

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