It's an interesting question, and I think it's best considered the context of times and settings in which the idea of magic was taken seriously. I also doubt that there's a lot to be gained by looking for a full-blown definition, but we can learn something by looking at broad commonalities. First on the bit about magic words and rabbits. If it turned out that saying the right words in the right way could make rabbits appear in hats, then we would have discovered a new regularity in the world, though whether we had discovered a new law of physics is a lot more doubtful. After all, the regularities of the special sciences aren't usually classed as laws of physics, even though physics has to be consistent with them.* We might want to say that this regularity is "natural" because all the events take place in nature (saying the words, the rabbit appearing...) but it wouldn't follow that it wasn't magical. Older notions of magic explicitly included a concept of natural magic. What counted as ...

Let me be the curmudgeon without, I hope, being too curmudgeonly. I'm glad you've found happiness and meaning. And I'm not going to say that your changed state isn't due to God. But it's at least possible that the change is due to belief in God, and not God himself. As a sort of evidence for this, people with differing and mutually incompatible religious beliefs have been known to find happiness and meaning in those beliefs, even though as a matter of logic, some of those beliefs are wrong. (If you believe X and are happy on that account, I believe Y and am happy on that account, and X and Y aren't consistent with one another, at least one of us is wrong about his actual belief.) Indeed: atheists can't prove conclusively that God doesn't exist. But that's perfectly consistent with atheism being all things considered the most plausible view—the one with the best arguments, evidence, etc. That said, I have a lot of sympathy for what you're saying. I don't "get" militant atheists. Overall, I'm...

Here's one kind of answer that a theist might offer. You might think, seeing through a glass darkly as you do, that if you only had the power, you'd wave your wand and cure cancer. In fact, however, the argument would go, doing that would bring a host of consequences that you can't even begin to foresee. And it might be that if you fully understood the consequences (remember: the universe is a really complicated place), you'd see that all things considered, you wouldn't want to do this. That may not seem very plausible to you, and I'm inclined to agree. But the larger point is that according to some theists (Peter van Inwagen, for example), if we think we know what would really be the best way to set up a universe for the benefit of its inhabitants, we're fooling ourselves. To make this a bit more plausible, keep in mind that for these same theists, our life on earth isn't the end; the apparent evils of our fleshly existence are only a part of a much larger story. I think that this is a...

I think it's a bit optimistic to say that physicists are close to proving the existence of a multiverse, but we can set that aside. There are different ideas of a multiverse in physical theory, but none of the ones that cosmologists take seriously call for showing that literally every possible "universe" exists. Rather, what's at stake is the idea that the totality of the Universe writ large contains relatively isolated sub-parts that have many of the characteristics of the physical universe as we usually think of it. In particular, the values of various physical "constants" would vary across the different sub-universes. But the important point for your question is that this is entirely about physics and has nothing to do with God. God, as usually understood, is not a physical being at all, but a being who (among other things) underwrites the existence of physical things. God doesn't exist within this or any other physical universe on the usual theological view. Put it another way: if the God...

Just to add a bit to what my fellow panelists have said (all of which seems right to me.) Even if God can't be seen or heard or touched in ordinary sensory ways, many believers would claim that they have experiences of God. There's a vast literature on this topic, but one interesting recent contribution is by the anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann: her book When God Talks Back gives a detailed account of how some people, as they understand it, learn to experience God. You can read a brief synopsis HERE (Scroll way down if the page appears not to load properly.) You might say that these people are mistaken, and you might (or might not) be right. You might say that they are deluded, but unless you simply mean "mistaken," the word "deluded" doesn't add anything. There's no reason to believe that such believers are mentally ill by any reasonable criterion. As it happens, I'm not a theist. But over the years, I've come to the conclusion that many atheists have a mistaken picture of the...

Interesting. It's true that we do sometimes rely on assumptions, premises or whatnot that we simply take for granted. In fact, it's hard to see how we could avoid doing that; otherwise we'd end up in an endless regress of justifications. We could use the term "worldview" for broad premises that we use this way, but I'm not sure the term adds much so I'll leave it aside. But there's another question that leaves an ambiguity in what you're saying. Is the theologian offering an argument that s/he think should persuade a non-believer? Or is he offering arguments that a believer might accept whether or not anyone else does? If your asking this person "Why do you believe that homosexuality is wrong" then pointing out that it's a consequence of other assumptions that the person accepts and sees as more basic is fine. In that case, he's simply setting forth the internal logic of his view. Whether or not you accept the first two beliefs, there's no circularity in saying "The Bible represents God's...

A familiar old question! If the only reason I behave well is that I'm afraid I'll be punished if I don't or rewarded if I do, then my motives aren't moral motives at all. The fact that an all-powerful being commanded me to do something might give me a self-serving reason to do it, but by itself, it wouldn't provide a moral reason. That we can be moral without religion is clear from the fact that so many non-believers have deep moral commitments. Of course, that leaves open the possibility that they're somehow confused, but the crucial point is this: if there's no basis for morality without God, then adding God to the story doesn't change things. As for what the basis might be, there's a lot that could be said. But to take just one sort of consideration: I know that I don't like it when people treat me in hurtful ways. I also know that there's nothing special about me in this respect; my pain doesn't obviously count for any more than anyone else's. And I don't just know this intellectually; I...

I'm guessing that by "personal philosophical beliefs" you mean not just philosophical beliefs that someone might happen to hold (such as the belief that numbers exist as Platonic objects, for example) but beliefs and commitments about matters that someone takes to be of great personal significance—the kinds of things one might build one's life around. To clarify: I might think that numbers really exist as abstract objects, but if I were talked out of that belief, not much about how I live my life would change. For many religious people, on the other hand, religious beliefs are part of their core. A committed Christian, for example, might well think that if she lost her Christianity, there's an important sense in which she wouldn't be the same person. However, as you apparently recognize, religious beliefs aren't the only ones in that category. Ethical commitments are a good example. Many people with deep ethical commitments are not religious, and yet those commitments are every bt as important to...

An interesting question. I think the answer is yes: there's a way to offer the sort of criticism you have in mind. It would be to argue that by Catholicism's own lights , the reasons for excluding women from the priesthood aren't satisfactory. Catholicism isn't just a closed system with no canons of evidence and argument. Indeed, Catholicism presents theological arguments for its view that only men can be priests, and those arguments are open to examination and scrutiny. Another way to put it: not all Catholics agree that women should be excluded from the priesthood. They think that the internal arguments for a male-only priesthood are weak. Whether they're right or wrong about this, their view isn't incoherent. Of course, this is just an example of a larger point. It's often possible to criticize a view whose larger presuppositions one rejects by pointing out that the view doesn't do well by its own standards. In the example at hand, there are things one would want to take into account...

I can't speak for the theologians, but it does seem to me that we don't need to go down this path. Suppose that God, if there is one, is the greatest conceivable being. That might mean that God possesses the maximum of all kinds of goodness (though even that is tricker than it seems), but it doesn't mean that God possesses the maximum of all characteristics whatever. After all, the greatest conceivable being presumably wouldn't be a sadist, let alone the greatest possible sadist. The slide in the argument seems to be from "God is maximum goodness" to "God possesses all qualities." However, many qualities have nothing to do with goodness. There's a somewhat different argument hinted at in your suggestion: that God is all things, hence must embody all qualities. Apart from wondering about the relationship to perfection, one obvious question is what would it mean to say that God is all things. If it means that God is literally identical to each thing, then the doctrine would have nothing to...