Outstanding observation, dear brother in Christ!
"Magical thinking" is solipsistic thinking:
Solipsism; from Latin (solus, meaning "alone", and ipse, meaning "self"). [1] is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. The external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. As such it is the only epistemological position that, by its own postulate, is both irrefutable and yet indefensible in the same manner.The magical act is sourced and does terminate "in an initial point of magic" — in the "magic word" — of the magician. Magicians construct illusions, or false realities, for the purpose of persuading us they are real. They might just as well: they consider there's nothing demonstrably "real" outside their own minds anyway.
What I find increasingly troubling is that science seems gradually to be losing its historical self-concept as a collaborative, intergenerational, open search for the truth of natural reality, a search which is ultimately a broadly social enterprise. Both Einstein and Bohr (among many others) conceived of science as ultimately belonging, not to the scientists, but to the people.
What we seem increasingly to be finding nowadays is the cult of expertise, in the form of some kind of closed priesthood, that excoriates and tries to punish all non-comforming views. And such folks regard "the people" as generally ignorant, who wouldn't grasp the glories of what the high priests are working on anyway. So don't let them know what you're doing.
Just dazzle them with your "magic."
But the only thing magic is good for is the construction of Second Realities....
Thank you ever so much, dear brother, for your trenchant observation!
Spirited: The following quotes and commentary will shed light on the situation described by betty:
"I suppose the reason we leaped at the origin of species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores," confessed Sir Julian Huxley, former president of UNESCO and grandson of Darwin's colleague Thomas Huxley. (Henry M. Morris, The Troubled Waters of Evolution, Creation-Life Publishers, 1974, p. 58)
Of Darwin's theory that everything ascended (evolved) upward out of self-generated matter, the great Christian theologian Charles Spurgeon pointedly observed,
"There is not a hair of truth upon this dog from its head to its tail, but it rends and tears the simple ones. In all its bearing upon scriptural truth, the evolution theory is in direct opposition to it. If God's Word be true, evolution is a lie." (Spurgeon, Hideous Discovery, July 25, 1886)
Evolutionist Suzan Mazur seems to agree with Spurgeon. In her book, "The Altenberg 16: An Expose of the Evolution Industry" she looks at the rivalry in contemporary natural science surrounding attempts to discover the elusive process of evolution. Her book openly acknowledges the unresolvable problems surrounding evolution and natural selection and documents these concerns with statements from leading evolutionary scientists. Mazur comments:
"A wave of scientists now questions natural selection's role, though fewer will publicly admit it." (p. 20, "Desperate attempts to discover 'the elusive process of evolution,' reviewed by Walter J. ReMine, Creation Ministries International)
She describes evolutionary science as a modern day quest for the Holy Grail that is very much about posturing, salesmanship, stonewalling and bullying. It is a social discourse involving hypotheses of staggering complexity,
"...with scientists, recipients of the biggest grants of any intellectuals, assuming the power of politicians while engaged in Animal House pie-throwing and name-calling..." (ibid)
Evolution books are hyped like snake oil at a carnival:
"Perhaps the most egregious display of commercial dishonesty is this year's celebration of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, the so-called theory of evolution by natural selection, i.e., survival of the fittest, a brand foisted on us 150 years ago." (ibid)
Mazur admits that genes and natural selection have little to do with long-term changes in populations. Here she not only calls attention to the existing censorship against non-Darwinian ideas but tells us why it happens:
"The commercial media is both ignorant of and blocks coverage of stories about non-centrality of the gene because its science advertising dollars come from the gene-centered Darwin industry. At the same time, the Darwin industry is also in bed with government, even as political leaders remain clueless about evolution. Thus, the public is unaware that its dollars are being squandered on funding of mediocre, middlebrow science or that its children are being intellectually starved as a result of outdated texts and unenlightened teachers." (Mazur, p. ix, ibid)