What is your stance on magic fellow atheists ?

[Angrboda]

Is magic real?

First tell me what magic is then I can answer this.

I would define magic similarly to how Richard Carrier defines the supernatural (see below), that it is the production of physical effects by the mechanism of sheer will, that beyond the willing of an effect to occur, there is no causal connection between willling it to occur and it actually occurring. In the case of magic, there is the additional proviso that certain rituals, words, or acts could bring about a physical effect without any mediating cause. In either case, the presence of magic is attested by the connection between the occurrence of an act (mental for the supernatural, ritual for magic) without any actual causal relationship between the two. The existence simply implies that the effect is more likely to occur in the presence of the act than is otherwise explainable. My main question about this would be how you would go about demonstrating that such a thing had occurred. Science deals with demonstrating the existence of causes, not their absence. SteveII, for his part, while not necessarily agreeing with this definition, suggests that if the physical effect for which there is or can be no cause is preceded by a prediction of that effect (say by Jesus saying to the lame, "Arise and be healed"), then we can conclude that the effect was supernatural. As noted, SteveII doesn't endorse Carrier's definition, but the two do seem to dovetail in that, if the effect doesn't have an explanation, it may be reasonable to infer that the one predicting the effect also has knowledge of the effectiveness of their willing the effect to occur. Ignoring for the moment the question of whether we can determine that such preiction and effect pairs actually happened, I'm undecided on whether the pairing is or is not evidence that the willing of that person was the cause. I'm open to any comments on the matter.

There is a trend in science and law to define the word "supernatural" as "the untestable," which is perhaps understandable for its practicality, but deeply flawed as both philosophy and social policy. Flawed as philosophy, because testability is not even a metaphysical distinction, but an epistemological one, and yet in the real world everyone uses the word “supernatural” to make metaphysical distinctions. And flawed as social policy, because the more that judges and scientists separate themselves from the people with deviant language, the less support they will find from that quarter, and the legal and scientific communities as we know them will crumble if they lose the support of the people. Science and the courts must serve man. And to do that, they must at least try to speak his language. And yet already a rising tide of hostility against both science and the courts is evident. Making it worse is not the solution.

As I argue in Sense and Goodness without God (pp. 29-35), philosophy is wasting its time if its definitions of words do not track what people really mean when they use them. And when we look at the real world, we find the supernatural is universally meant and understood to mean something metaphysically different from the natural.

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So the question is: What really is the underlying difference between a natural and a supernatural explanation?

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In the most obvious case, the God of traditional theism is a pure mind, composed of nothing else but mental powers and concepts. That is indisputably supernatural. So is the ability to cause things to happen in the universe merely by willing them to happen, since that means there is no nonmental mechanism (like arms and nervous systems or graviton rays) mediating between the act of will and its realization. Such direct mental causation is certainly supernatural.

Richard Carrier || Defining the Supernatural