More on magic

“...since we are discontinuous with God, we cannot participate in his life or receive his blessings through magical means. Any attempt to do so is met in the Bible with the bitterest of denunciations. Magic is a denial both of transcendence and of personhood, an attempt to mechanically manipulate another for one's own benefit while bypassing any meaningful relationship with that other.

“Interestingly, magic is not denounced, as in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century West, because it does not work. Whether it works or not, and often enough it does, is beside the point. The Bible denounces it because it is ra`—an attempt to use the world in ways it was never intended to be used.” —The Bible Among Other Myths, pages 132-133

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Interesting insight, isn't it? Whether magic works or not is irrelevant; it is an attempt to manipulate. That is not just true of magic; one thing that immediately comes to mind is pornography. That is clearly an attempt to “mechanically manipulate another for one's own benefit” and certainly bypassing “any meaningful relationship.”

Of course, another thing that fits that category all too well is advertising. Advertising certainly isn't interested in a meaningful relationship with anything other than you wallet! And it definitely is manipulative...just an
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