(February 9, 2012 at 11:31 am)Rhythm Wrote: Sure you can, you ask for specifics about what the witch means by "good luck" and then see if you are indeed being showered by it. The descriptions of magic and spells and spirits are never without a physical (and thus observable) component to them. They are also never without origin, which is again, always physical (as in each case we can demonstrate that human beings are the origin of this or that belief or concept of what magic is or can do, and not some indescribable force of the cosmos wafting through everything undetected). Is pyschic phenomena unfalsifiable? How about levitation spells? It's always useful to remember that these aren't just words, but words with alot of claims and culture attached. If you remove the claims, and the culture, you're left with a hollow word, so it's impossible to say that "magic exists" without making some or all of the claims attached (or at least, it's impossible for the statement to have any meaning).
Perhaps we're getting stuck on our ideas of what falsifiable is. To me, and correct me if I'm mistaken here, for something to be falsifiable it must make a claim which can be tested, and (at least in theory) disproven or be able to be shown to be a misattribution of cause, which claims of magic and spells and spirits clearly do and can be.
That's my point. It is impossible to show misattribution of cause for spells and magic and spirits because science can only judge attribution to natural causes, not supernatural causes. Even if we were to find the correct natural cause, the attributed supernatural cause cannot be ruled out on scientific basis.
