Magic and religion?

Question

magic and religion can not be easily distinguished...what are the reasons??

Answer 1

Well..it was God who invented the frogs..it was the magician who tore out its eyes and made a soup of the whole thing.

Magic is a phenonema that we lesser folk don't have - the ability to conjour up something out of nothing is amazing..I'm sure I can cook an omelet..but with frogs eyes??..No way! Magician pull rabbits out of a hat..It is Gods way of telling the rabbit to stay in the hole and be safe..the rabbit is religous to this belief. Both have 'large' books and they make good step-ups to the top-shelf at the library. One good book deserves the other?

Answer 2

One way in which a lot of anthropologists have differentiated magic and science is while both are explanations for certain phenomena in the world they offer different types of explanations.  Magic doesn't really replace scientific thinking. In cultural systems with strong traditions of magical thinking, it's not that members don't understand the technological or "scientific" reasoning for why something happened, magic provides the answer as to *why* it happened at that particular time.

For example, let's say a house is being eaten away by termites and one day it collapses killing a person. Everyone will understand the technical reason that the house collapsed (termites); however, magic or witchcraft might be evoked to explain why it happened at that particular moment with the person in the house.  It's rather similar to Western ideas of coincidence.  

That said, I think it's very hard for us to distinguish the two modes of thinking because essentially they are both modes of logic and so much depends on the context and use (to say nothing of the perspective of the person determining what is magic/science).

Answer 3

I dont know why they arent easily distingushed, maybe the universe didnt expand enuf for them to seperate. Everything was  the same a long time ago. I think thats where "om" came from.

They arent easily distinguased in a critics mind, but there are logical reasons. I believe they are both ideas that spawned from science. For magic, quantum physics can be used to explain it all(even though the chances are highly unlikely, like 1/100000000000000..., who knows), but i doubt there were quantum physics over 2000 years ago. Steam operating a train might seem like god making it move to many...

Answer 4

I think they can be easily distinguished, as both are delusion.

Answer 5

Both seek to explain phenomena that society cannot answer otherwise.