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To: cothrige
Esactly right.

This may be related: some great thinky person (was it maybe Jacques Ellul?) said that people usually pair together Religion=Magic and Science=Technology, when actually Religion and Science make a true pair, and Magic and Technology make another.

Why? Because Religion and Science are based on an obedient search for truth, i.e. an obedient conformity to the known facts. We respect the facts; we live in accordance, or in harmony with them. We make logical conclusions from them; we may even draw reasonable inferences from them. But the facts rule: the facts are "magisterial".

Magic and Technology, on the other hand, are based on the usefulness of something: "I'm doing this because I think it'll work. That is, it may work for me." It is not based on a desire to actually respect the bigger facts, the bigger laws: empirical technology, like magic, may not be based on a coherent and fully-fleshed -out understanding at all, or even a desire for understanding: only a desire for immediate-term profit, advantage, gain.

So if something is a religious/moral fact (e.g. "the directly intended killing of an innocent person is always prohibited as murder") it is something you have to obediently live by, whether it "works" for you or not.

25 posted on 04/01/2013 1:58:29 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o ("You can observe a lot just by watchin'." - Yogi Berra)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

Very interesting, and I think that makes definite sense, at least from one perspective. Of course, I may be biased. I happen to be a person of faith, and as far as my incredibly stunted mind is concerned, most technology is magic anyway. Even old technology. More than fifty years ago somebody figured out how to take a moving picture with sound and send it invisibly through the air to a box in people’s living rooms. Magic! Gotta be magic. :-)


26 posted on 04/01/2013 4:22:17 PM PDT by cothrige
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