The universe didn’t force you not to believe in magic. You could have spent your whole life believing magnets are magical stones, that the electromagnetic force is magical energy, and that computer engineers are wizards who conjure spirits from magic. And you could have been 100% factually and scientifically correct.
But you chose to believe that magic is by definition not real, because you didn’t want to live in a world of whimsy and wonder. You defined magic as supernatural, in opposition to the natural world. While every scientist knows that nature is just a word for everything that exists. You chose to define magic in a way that it wouldn’t exist, denying it through tautology and not through science.
Why did you choose that?
Because I like knowing exactly how and why something works, and by extension knowing that if I wanted to, I could make another one just like it, or one that uses the same principle to do something slightly different, or that if I take the one in front of me and modify it just here I can make it do something completely new. I like science because I love knowing. I love taking things and making them do things they couldn’t before. That’s why I became a programmer – because I could do that to computers – and what got me so excited about open source. The idea that if I find something that doesn’t work exactly the way I like, all I need are the right skills, and I can change it so that it does. If I hear someone say they wish something that doesn’t exist existed, all I need are the right skills and I can make that happen. I am a scientist. I am unstoppable. I can change the world on a whim, and naught but my own ignorance stands in the way.
I will never understand the mindset that sees something it does not understand and decides it would rather think of it as something beautiful and unknowable than try to understand it. Why do you accept the world as it is? Why do you accept that there are things we cannot know when you think of all the good we could do if we knew them?
The artist looks at something that exists and sees that it is good. The engineer looks at something that exists and knows that it could be better, and a piece of their soul cries out to make it so.
I didn’t say magic is unknowable. You did. I said the opposite. Why did you choose to ignore me and define magic as unknowable?
Because if you’re just going to come up with your own definitions for words that already have meanings, why have a language at all?
Magic has been considered knowable for thousands of years across hundreds of distinct cultures. It’s only Christians who think magic is ineffable, and that’s because their god is ineffable and they have weird hangups about magic in relation to their god. I wanted to talk to some normal people, but all I can find here are Christians like you.
EXCUSE ME!?
I just gave you a two page paper on how much I loved science and how I thought the idea that we should simply accept the natural order was insulting. What about that, apart from the fact that I defined the word “magic” the same way that just about everyone in the Anglosphere defines it, said bible-thumping who-are-we-to-question-God’s-plan lunatic to you?
Face it. The people in this comment section are normal people. If everyone you meet is an asshole…
If you’re not a Christian then stop pushing Christian ideas about magic. Simple as.
Here are the 8 definitions DuckDuckGo provides for the word "magic".
magic /măj′ĭk/ noun
adjective
transitive verb
To which of these definitions do you refer? If none of them, do you believe the dictionary refuses to accept non-Christian ideas about magic?
If redefining the word “magic” in a very Tumblrina way to refer to anything that you think is cool and want to marvel at brings you joy, and calling things magic even when you know how they work is your aesthetic, go right ahead. I’m all for it. I may even join you. But please be upfront that redefining a word is what you’re doing.
Duck Duck Go isn’t a dictionary, it’s a search engine. I prefer Merriam Webster: an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source
I was trying not to sound pretentious by saying that that definition was pulled from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, but if you want to be pedantic, two can play that game.
By your definition, the fact that Donald Trump still has half the United States rooting for him after being convicted of 34 felonies could be considered magic. Extraordinary influence? Check. Seemingly from a supernatural source? Well, he clearly sold his soul to something, otherwise he’d still have one. Nuclear reactors could be magic too. Extraordinary power? Most reactors are in the megawatt range. Seemingly from a supernatural source? “Yeah, turns out these rocks are constantly tearing themselves apart at an atomic level and put out a ton of heat while doing so.” Hell, if I didn’t know how wires worked, enough so that it seemed supernatural to me, I could call the fact that electricity got to my house at all magic. The definition depends on what you consider “seemingly supernatural”, which if you’re ignorant enough or willing enough to ignore how things actually work, can be anything. It’s so broad as to become meaningless.
More to the point, to call something which you know to be natural “seemingly from a supernatural source” is to deliberately obscure its actual origin. To pretend you don’t know how it was made for the sake of joyous whimsy. Circling back to my earlier point, I like knowing. I derive joy from knowing exactly why something works. It’s fine that you don’t.
Terry Pratchett famously said that it doesn’t stop being magic just because you know how it works. Good on you for agreeing, but I do not.
For the record, though, at least in my view, calling e.g. the operation of a computer “seemingly from a supernatural source” is rather invalidating to the hard work of the decidedly natural people (like me and, assuming you weren’t lying about that degree, you) who put time and energy into making it work the way it does. Whether you intend it to or not, it very much says, “This is a wondrous piece of technology! To all appearances, God made it!”