Get ready for a long post, as I will attempt to cover many of the threories in this thread.
I could easily "rag" on religion in general. I could HAMMER Catholocism. Nowhere in the Bible does it say "you must confess your sins to a priest."
In the New Testement Jesus says "If you conefess your sins before me, I will confess your sins before the Father." (Dont ask me where, I just remember it says it.)
Ever heard of the Spanish Inquisistion? Turn to God or DIE. All of the Jews that refused to convert, were MURDERED. In the name of God? No. In the name of religous domination. All they effectively did was wipe out the middle class and that hurt the economy of Spain for about 500 years. Spain used to be a global power. Once they wiped out the Jews, or ran them out of the country (which were the merchants) their economy crumbled. They could no longer afford wars on foreign soil, including the "New World." They couldnt even hang on to Mexico.
The way I understand it, when God created Lucifer, he created the most powerful being with the "freedom of choice" that God could create. Basicly God created another being almost as powerful as he himself. When Lucifer decided he wanted to sit on Gods Throne, God said "Aint gonna happen. You're OUTA HERE." and banished him to the Earth.
Satan, as Lucifer came to be called after his banishment from Heaven, is the physical embodiment of Gods own weakenesses. Without Satan God could not exsist. Nor could Satan exsist without God. They are interdependant. (And yes I realise there are a zillion holes in this theory but lets just go with it shall we?
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God gave Satan the power to use people as pawns and try to sway them to his way of thinking. Hence the War in the heavens. (Read the book of Revelations.)
All this aside, I believe the power of the mind is what creates or denies "Magic" as we seem to be calling it.
Ever heard of a "Hypocondriac?" These are people who believe they are "sick." They believe it to the point that they actually become "sick." Medical science cannot find a problem, and therefore a "cure"; yet the patient is ill.
My step-mother was one of these people. Fact is she HATED kids. More than a weeks exposure to children and she'd break out in "hives." All it was, is we got on her nerves. But the physical manifestation of hives was there. Neither me or my brother had any contagious diseases. All this was created in her mind and manifested physically.
I have a friend who is really into this "metaphysical" stuff. She believes in the "shakra" which is an energy, for the lack of a better term. Shes been trying to learn how to "travel" which is what most people call an "out of body experince."
I told her it may not be the pleasant experience shes been expecting.
To put sum it up: I had one once. I had been shot with a .38 Special + with hollowpoint. That night, after I finally got put in a room in ICU, I left my body, looked at myself from the corner of the room at the ceiling, and traveled. I went to the house of the guy who shot me and I beat on his temple and until his temple hit the back of his skull. Brains were all over the nice bright green grass. Once I had my revenge I left. Just in time for a nurse to wake me up and give me pain medication. I told her what she woke me from and she FREAKED and fled the room.
I believe the fact that having killed him in my mind is what kept me from actually going back and killing him. My psyche had already been satisfied.
There is always the chance that if I had come across my friend during all this I might have killed her too. For about 10 minutes I was comeletely EVIL. There is no other term I can apply. What I did went against everything I had ever been taught. Still I had my revenege (psychologically) and didnt need to actually kill him.
Now on the science bit of this. Yes take a computer back to the dark ages and they would call it magic and burn you at the stake. Binary code was actually invented about 600 years ago, if I remember right. So there would have been one guy on the entire planet who wouldnt call you a "heretic" and burn you at the stake.
Read the Book Of Ezekial. In it they basicly descibe what we consider to be UFO's. Read the rest of it. Its quite interesting. Read the bit in the old testament where God followed the Jews for 40 years until they found the Promised Land." Again, scientists believe that they were followed by UFO's.
Magic and superstition are almost one and the same. Today we have proven that there are natural, physical causes for almost everything considered "Magical"
Levitation and psycokenesis ect..... Power of the mind, or illusion? Its documented "fact" that people have been "possessed by the Devil" Yet we still have to prove there IS a Devil, and a God for that matter.
I could go on for days [img]tongue.gif[/img]