ipl-logo

Williams's Criticism Of Supernatural Magic

978 Words4 Pages

He defines next stage magic as that where the performer use illusions so you think he had done a supernatural magic while actually what he did was a clever trick based on some known ideas or rules. He contrasts it with supernatural by saying about it that it at least does happen but not like the audience think. He mentions how this is sometimes used by what he calls “charlatans” to actually deceive audience (pathetical appeal) (Williams, 2012). He heads now to the third type: poetic magic. He defines it as the magic of the beauty of nature you see with a natural landscape, an artistic sight at night all of which happened by natural laws what he calls the magic of nature. Now he begins his attack and criticism of supernatural by saying it is against science and reality. He states that supernatural does not explain nature – he did not argue why - and he claims it could prevent finding an explanation. He defends that by arguing the supernatural explanation is a lazy explanation and claims it prevent natural explanations or searching for them comparing it to a lazy investigator (pathetical appeal). …show more content…

He introduces that by arguing against supernatural magic as a cause of existence of complex objects –symbolized as why a prince cannot turn to a frog- because they are too complex to be there simultaneously. Again red herring fallacy as he introduces an argument against complex useful objects coming by chance which is irrelevant to the issue of supernatural as a cause. He uses the fairy godmother as the hero of his example –meant to clarify and convey the concept- to show his statistical useless (we mentioned why) argument. To further support his statement of weakness of probability of getting something complex and useful by chance, he gives the example of probability of a useful arrangement of play cards (logical and pathetical

Open Document