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Originally Posted by TremendoS  Not sure if this is the right place to post, but I feel it is related to theology.
Recently, I have stumbled upon a website of one practitioner of Black magic, who charges an obscene amount of money for his services. He has a lot of satisfied clients who give him referrals, and praise his abilities. He makes a claim that black energy predominates on Earth, and that white energy exists mainly in higher dimensions. As he says, he has mastered the skill of manipulating this black energy to the point where he is able to direct it for different purposes in one's life.
What do you think about this claim? Do you agree that black energy is the master of our dimension? |
As a matter of terminology, I recommend avoid “black energy”, or any phrase containing the word “energy” that isn’t referring to the physics concept (that is: the potential to do work; to apply force to a moving body) – upon seeing phrases like these, a lot of people with math/science/technical background assume negative things about their users’ education, comprehension, and credulity. Rather, I prefer the first phrase you used “black magic”.
Though we likely understand what’s meant by black magic and white magic, it can’t hurt to sketch brief (and by no means definitive) definitions of terms:
- White magic follow the moral principle of helping others – the golden rule of “do to others what you’d like done to you”
- Black magic follows the moral principle of hurting others to benefit oneself – the rule of “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”.
As you’ll find from my and others’ posts at hypography, from a large body of scientific testing, and from polls of the general public, along with most people, I’m convinced that all un-faulty test reveal that neither white not black magic actually give rise to supernatural occurrences. Every credulously cast magic spell that’s been objectively tested has been shown to have no objectively real effect, while intentionally faked magic spells have been shown to have subjective effects indistinguishable from non-faked ones. As the common aphorism about voodoo goes, magic can only hurt (or help) you if you believe in it (and know when it’s being done).
From a scientific perspective, then, the claim that black magic works, and is more effective than white magic, is a claim about the relative effectiveness of two opposite moral systems: helpers vs. hurters. It can be restated in the question “do cruel, other-exploiting people do better than compassionate, other-serving people?”, or pithier ones like “do nice folk finish last?”
Though it’s a great oversimplification to describe an actual, practical moral philosophy as purely black or white in this sense – nearly all people believe it correct to be selfish in some circumstances, altruistic in others – I think it’s possible to answer these questions both scientifically and intuitively.
Scientifically, a correlation can be shown between altruism and personal well-being. Studies show that “nice people” who help their neighbors are in turn helped by them in times of need, have less stress-related illness, and self-report greater happiness and contentment than “mean people”. Theoretical models of social interaction show that cooperative communities where individuals put the needs of others and the community as a whole above their own win when competing with equal or larger populations of selfish individuals who put their own interests first, and suggest that, as a species, the predisposition for altruistic social behavior has been evolutionarily selected for. In a very real sense, goodness appears to be encoded in our genes.
Studies also show that self-described “practitioners of black magic” are more likely to be subjected to informal and formal social sanctions – shunning by their neighbors, and incarceration by their governments.
Intuitively, I, and I think most others, feel a sense of inner conviction that being good is the key to succeeding in the here and now, and that, rather than winning in the end, bad people usually come to bad and early ends. Intuitively, many “good” people feel an urge to and justified in helping this come to pass, which they act out in behaviors ranging from helping other good people, shunning bad ones, or even a literal witch burning.
So, while the color of magic dominating our world is a shade of gray, it is, IMHO, much closer to the white end of the grayscale than the black.
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Whitish-gray vs. blackish-gray 
