Religion and Magic: One and the Same

Magic or religion: it is all one. Theologians themselves dispose of the matter by calling everything they do an act of religion, including even such operations as bedizening themselves with high-sounding titles and dignities, superior to any ever claimed by Christ, and laying taxes upon the faithful for their own aggrandizement; if that is how they feel about it, let them have their way. Their earliest forerunners, we may be sure, wasted no time upon such bandying with words. They were aware of no difference between magic and religion, but practised both with easy consciences. 

--H. L. Mencken Treatise on the Gods, 1930

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Impossibility of Illogical Thought

Thought can never be of anything illogical, since, if it were, we should have to think illogically. It used to be said that God could create anything except what would be contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is that we could not say what an 'illogical' world would look like. It is as impossible to represent in language anything that 'contradicts logic' as it is in geometry to represent by its a coordinates a figure that contradicts the laws of space, or to give the coordinates of a point that does not exist.... In a certain sense, we cannot make mistakes in logic.... Self-evidence, which [Bertrand] Russell talked about so much, can be dispensable in logic, only because language itself prevents every logical mistake.--What makes logic a priori is the impossibility of illogical thought. --Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus   3.03, 3.031, 3.032, 5.473, 5.4731 (H/T: Roderick T. Long )      
Read more

Is He Having a Laugh?

According to the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, the government is God's appointed agent on earth, and each of us owes it allegiance and obedience. If that's so--and I for one don't believe either part of that statement--I'd like some believer to explain what God had in mind when he arranged things so that one of the two major-party clowns running for president will be elected in November. Is He having a laugh?
Read more

Freedom-Saturated Language

Determinists--deniers of free will, that is--apparently don't listen to themselves or read their own words. If they did they'd see that we human beings have no escape from freedom-saturated language. Think of words like should , deliberate , presume , intend , and so on ad infinitum. It is just impossible to speak or think as though determinism were true. And that says a lot. Our freedom is self-evident. You cannot demonstrate it because to demonstrate anything both  presupposes  and requires  freedom. You confirm freedom each time you set out to disconfirm it. "Today I plan to write out my proof that we have no freedom." Nonsense!  In contrast, we are perfectly capable of getting through a day without using God-saturated language.
Read more