Is Witchcraft Real? It is Not!
Witchcraft traditionally means using magical powers to affect objects or people by casting spells. Witchcraft used to be seen mostly as a bad thing that went against God, with witches using their powers for ill, and as a result there have been witch hunts, resulting in many innocent people being killed. In modern times witchcraft is seen in a mostly more positive light, such as with Wicca, which is regarded as a kind of pagan religion whose followers have good intentions.
One question that may be answered quite differently by scientists than by ordinary citizens is this one: is witchcraft real? Belief by non-scientists in the magical powers of witches had been on the decline in the last century as science gained prestige, but recently this trend has reversed with the emergence and spread of New Age philosophical ideas. But scientists have consistently held that there is no credible evidence that magical powers of any kind exist, and they further argue that such powers are not consistent with what we know about physics. New Age philosophers say both of these claims are untrue, but in my humble opinion, they are wrong.
The argument about physics is one that can’t be adequately covered in a short article like this one, and in any case arguments about theory are much harder to resolve than arguments about facts. So, regarding the evidence argument only, the main rebuttal from the New Age thinkers is to say that the scientists explain away or ridicule evidence for things like ESP that really is out there, because they have a bias against belief in these phenomena and want to be able to maintain that there is no “real” evidence. A bias claim like this doesn’t seem unreasonable; what’s to stop scientists from doing the same kind of explaining away of evidence that theologians of the 19th century did regarding fossil evidence because they didn’t want to believe in evolution? One of the two main answers to this claim is that while bias influences scientists just as it dies other people, scientists are more aware of the effect of bias and more committed to using controls to counter its influence, precisely because they are scientists.
The other answer, which is easier to defend, is that if you examine the objections that have been made by scientists to specific evidence that New Age thinkers say is solid, those objections don’t look unreasonable. To cite one example among many, a scientific study concluded that infertile women who were prayed for doubled their pregnancy rate. The biggest objection to the study raised by scientists was that one of its authors went to prison for fraud, and that sounds like a reasonable criticism to me. The true answer to the query “is witchcraft real?” is “it is not.”
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Tags: Is Witchcraft Real, Real, Witchcraft
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