>> It's not my place to dismiss anyone's beliefs. My own (whacked) belief system states that it's utterly wrong to do so, so I don't mean to cause any offence here. First off, a background. I'm atheist, and consider myself very logical. I also spend some of my time practising telekinesis, magic, and basically the control of the world around me. Whoa there, hang on. I'm obviously some sort of nut job if I believe in science and magic.

I think that I'll take a little bit of a side tangent into the idea of magic here, just because I find that your belief system in this regard intrigues me immensely. Partially because I believe in both science and magic also -- I'm not sure if I believe in magic quite the same way as you do but, well, here goes.

To me, "magic" is merely a shorthand term describing something that happens that you cannot explain. That's not to say that there *isn't* an explanation, that's just to say that we don't yet *have* that explanation. For example, if you take many of the modern inventions of today and put them into a society a few thousand years ago, then those items would be, well, magic. However, there is a cause for these things and it *is* explainable, it's just that people at the time couldn't explain it and, thus, would call it a form of magic.

Likewise, today, I certainly believe that there are many, many things that are left undiscovered. And to explain how things work... yes, there are some that we just call "magic" because it's unexplainable. (After all, what's a "Magic Show", really, other than a person who does things that, when analyzed, are explainable but those in the audience watching do not know how to explain it.) After all, it's certainly conceivable that some things just *can't* be explained by the technology of the day. Discoveries lead to new discoveries and if there are some technologies so incredibly highly advanced... then they just *cannot* be explained currently by science.

In addition, for some incredibly highly advanced concepts or things, sometimes it's just impossible to explain how an object really works using the level of technology at the time. I believe that the internal combustion engine was brought up in passing once on this thread; I'll use that as an example. Say that we took this engine back, oh, a couple thousand years and imagine the people and level of technology at the time. What would seem a more reasonable hypothesis: That a fuel injector was putting a refined oil mixture into a chamber which is then compressed by a cylinder and caused to explode by a spark caused by a potential difference in an electrovoltaic cell which causes invisible 'atoms' within the chamber to become more active and cause the gas to expand, thus driving down the piston and.... (you get the idea -- and no, I don't know precisely how an internal combustion engine works so don't kill me if some of this is wrong :-P ) OR that the thing runs because of little magic fire faeries? Clearly the second option is wrong, but at the time the first is so completely beyond the scope of the science at the day that it just doesn't seem like a reasonable explanation. Likewise, I'm sure that there are bound to be things today that can not be explained by current scientific scope and, thus, people turn to the term 'magic' to explain such occurrences.

Another little issue raised by this thread is the idea of things like creating fire in the palm of one's hand through mental power only and the idea of things like telepathy. These are things that, though I don't believe anyone right now has the power to do, I'm not discounting as impossible. I'll start with the whole idea of creating fire in one's hand. And I think that I'll start it off like this: the brain is most certainly an interesting thing, and something that current science hasn't even really begun to understand fully yet. What we do know, however, is that there are an incredibly large amount of electrical transmissions and impulses across all of it that stimulate different things. Now... if someone could figure out exactly what part of the brain controls what (and I mean *exactly* -- we lack the technology thusfar, but are making progress in it, slowly) and could control it... (which is more than impossible right now) well, electrical impulses are certainly *something*. So is it not possible that these electrical discharges can be directed by a person's thought patterns in such a way that would cause an excitation of the atoms around precise points that would cause a chain reaction leading to the combustion of the air above one's hand? If that was done, I'd say that would be creating a flame through mental ability alone. Is it likely? Hell no. The chance of it happening by chance in any given day is probably less than 9x10^99999... but *possible*.

Now, as for the idea of telepathy... I think that it's something possible of a future society, though not something that I'll see in my lifetime. Here's my reasoning: The brain, being what it is, puts out electrical impulses. This much is certainly true and has been measured by machines. Now, human beings aren't generally responsive to electromagnetic impulses, but there are creatures that are (birds, for example, tend to rely on the earth's magnetic field for migration and navigation). Therefore, I think that's a sort of ability that can be formed, even if I know not how. Anyway, if detecting very weak electromagnetic impulses became possible for humans in such a way, that ability could also be increased through time. And if we know *extremely* well how the brain works and could tell the meaning of particular electromagnetic waves emitted by a certain other person ... would that not be telepathy? (Although you'd also have to figure out how to reduce all the noise, of course, and there's a LOT of that... again, all I'm saying is that it's *possible*.)

But anyway, I'm getting a little off topic -- after all, my whole point here is that humans tend to rely on the concept of magic or superstition to explain that which is just completely unexplainable at the time. Though hopefully at least all of this has given people something to think about. And I don't think that there's anything at all wrong with thinking. :-)

-Ka"Yep, I'm still around and just as long-winded as ever"z!