Can a Magician Teach Us About Religion


Watching a magician's show is seeing what we believe to be real but what is not. Nonbelievers see religious people as believing something is real which is not. Religious people see nonreligious as having disabilities because they cannot sense the presence of something the the religious know to be real, the god. In Christianity there is even a diagnosis for those who cannot sense the presence of an invisible being, nonbelievers suffer from a "hardened heart."

In an article a magician tried to understand why people think that when he tosses and catches a ball two times, people believe he tosses it a third time when he does not. He thinks that because his eyes pretend to follow the ball upwards and he produces the ball which he has hidden in another hand under a table people believe they saw it tossed in the air.

In the Old Testament it was promised God would send a person who would free the Jews from domination by the Roman Empire. Several Jews went about the country side preaching this and that. One, who we now call Jesus, was selected as the promised person. The most convincing case for the person being the predicted one were made long after he was dead.

This person certainly did not free the Jews as promised. What he supposedly preached, an approaching end of times and circumcision, were dropped from the religion shortly. But, like the two tossed balls, minds were trained to think certain things were happening which it appears were not.

It seems to me religious leaders have always employed diversionary techniques similar to magicians. We would be wise to take what is claimed with skepticism.

http://nautil.us/issue/70/variables/a-magician-explains-why-we-see-whats-not-there

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