Doesn't God use magic?

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Or he might have been an alien come down to try to teach good sense to presumably intelligent creatures. It's obvious, if that theory is true, he was over optimistic.

That always bugs me. The implication is that there is actually more than one power that people can be drawing from when they perform supernatural feats, and that even if those feats have a good end - like healing - they're evil if they derive their power from the 'wrong' source. Surely if there's any source for such power, there can only be one? (Anything else really has to be dualism, which was heresy last time I looked.)

The flipside is that things which are morally evil can be called 'good' if they derive their power from the 'right' place. It's commonly believed that casting spells to 'force' someone to fall in love with you are the stock-in-trade of Wiccans. In actual fact, the majority of Wiccans would argue that that's a bad idea, because it's attempting to override someone's free will. It's what the average person would call 'black magic'. But I notice that many Christians seem to feel there's nothing wrong in praying for someone to become a Christian, or to give up certain kinds of disapproved behavior (praying, for example, for God to turn a gay person straight). But if it's against the person's will, this is also black magic. Praying for people's death - well, don't even go there, but I have heard of people doing it, people who called themselves Christians. Excuse me?



So, um, pardon me for asking, but...what do angels appear as, then?

Really, this whole notion of demons running amok in the world and deceiving people wholesale doesn't make God look good at all. Bit like a company boss who keeps on fraudulent employees just to test the mettle of the rest of his staff. Or worse, one of those wives who deliberately hires another woman to try and seduce her husband just to see if he'll stay faithful or not. Someone who tries that kind of trick frankly doesn't deserve anyone's loyalty in their first place.

If god realy was perfect then he would alow bad things to happen, this gives us a chance to prove what we will do. I don't realy belive in the devil the way that christianity puts it, my better idea of what a 'devil' would be like would be Hades (Pluto, Polydegmon) basicaly he is very dark but he was not evil. Sadly thanks to christianity he has even been posted as being evil hence disney's Hercules. But my thought that they would be one in the same, but Christians do not like the idea that the father of mankind would do terrible things. I myself have felt some sort of energy, though I think I have even used some sort of dark magic, I am not evil and I would think that could even be the nature of it. Haveing power come from one being and only from one being sounds very much like a huge cult.

Evidently, from many incidences in the Bible and elsewhere, we mortals find some of God's actions, if not disgraceful, perhaps quite puzzling and not in accord with human morality. That's always a problem when dealing with super beings.

I was not being disrepectful about Jesus because I have the highest regard for people who practise yoga.

Good and Evil are two seperate forces on earth. God and the Devil. Angels in Heaven, demons in Hell. Mankind is sensitive to both angelic and demonic influence, and without knowing it will come to serve one of two masters. God and the Devil are competing for your soul, my soul, everybody's soul. Right this very minute, right wherever you are. They grab and reel us in through influence, never direct contact. Some people are aware of this and others are oblivious to it.

Why do you think Jesus practised yoga?

No doubt some people think that Jesus was the son of God. No doubt there are millions who don't think so. Let's have a bit of respect for a difference of opinion.

That's the way I read it in the gospels.

Do not screw around with dark magic. It's extremely dangerous. I hope to God you are not messing around with a Ouija Board. God will not protect you from the stupidity of your free will, or at least He should not be put to the test like that. Bad things happen in this world because A) People have free will, B) The world became fallen after Adam & Eve were ejected from the Garden of Eden. Deal!

Last edited by slowmutant on 03 Aug 2008, 9:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

Was there an explicit mention of Jesus practicing yoga in the Gospels? Hatha Yoga, with the postures, or another kind?

There are some problems, did hell exist before Lucifer fell from grace? How could this force have existed if god created everything and he is pure good? Who apposed god before hand? Do you think things like the kkk would go to heaven even though they were doing what they thought god wanted them to do? What about priests who molest children? What about the wars and killing that has been done in the name of god? What about the plagues that god has done to innocent people? What do you have to say about these?

I tell you what, for some reason I have found that I have some huge tendencies for the dark side of things, though I am better person than many who condemn it. From what I have felt is that things happen for reasons, I can spot between necsesry evils and lets call it real evil. And no despite I have this powers I belive that I should not bother spirits, it mostly used in judging others, and a range of things like precognition, energy reading and other things that I can not quite use properly. In highschool I discoverd something about myself, and have realised that dark and evil are seperate. I think god has shown me this so I can have a broud view, and not oe held back by simple relgous morals, but I would never upset the dead as there is a reason they are gone.

I am one of the kindst people I know, not bragging, I am always thinking of wanting to help people, but I have often been told that it would be worse to help them. Sadley seeing thing of how others feel realy messes me up, it has given me thoughts that are not my own, the difference is that I choose to help others.

Don't say I didn't warn you about using magic. The Dark and the Black are just two words that mean the same thing. Maybe it's the Devil encouraging you to use dark magic, feeding it to you and laughing all the while. If you think you're Harry Potter, I really don't know what to say.

God is the word for "origin of Big Bang and therefore causality".
Magic is the word for "thing that works as intended with an unknown or unproven mechanism".
Ergo, all miracles are by definition both unknown in mechanism and nth order results of the Big Bang.

The real problem is that most people will believe what is free, yet will have to pay to know. For most, nothing is true until a great deal of time and money has been spent on securing an "authority" (read: walking ad hominem fallacy), unless it is already believed true, in which case no amount of time and money can secure an "authority" to correct a belief.

People believe in miracles, which is usually meant to say things in violation of physics; no such phenomenon can exist, although unknown and unproven mechanisms are not implausible (e.g. lightning before Franklin). Satan/Lucifer/The Devil, on the other hand, is so far out of the realm of the possible that the term can only have meaning in the context of individual or collective belief, not in the tangible, physical world.

Belief in God is meaningless w/o a corresponding belief in the Devil. What is magic, anyway? I don't know. What is a miracle? I don't know.

slowmutant
Belief in God is meaningless w/o a corresponding belief in the Devil.

Belief in X is always meaningless, beliefs don't have any meaning per se, except that knowledge is absent.
Knowledge of X is where meaning is derived. If God has all the power, then the Devil has no power, and ergo does not exist, as all things have some energy.
A God that needs a Devil? What possible benefit could a non-existant adversary have to the creator of the universe?

What is magic, anyway? I don't know.

So in what way can it be warned against? Should we stay away from alchemy, one of the oldest types of magic? Or is it okay because it has been made known (and mundane) by chemistry as a science? As stated, magic is something that works by an unknown mechanism. If the desired result is not achieved, it is not magic. Now you know.

What is a miracle? I don't know.

A miracle is an event that occurs when contraindicated by all known mechanisms. Also, any overlap between the highly improbable and the highly beneficial. Now you know.