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In this video this famous ex-comic book writer ( Alan Moore, creator of the V character in V for Vendetta which is originally a comic book story that later became the symbol for the anonymous movement after the success of the movie) talks about many interesting subjects and ideas, among them, he talks about his own idea of what magic, art and fiction are, and proposes a different meaning to the word magic ( jump to 27:35 if you want to go straight to that, although I personally suggest to watch it all, I think it’s really worth it) Also I think in this video is presented an idea that perhaps can help to settle at last the old issue between science and spirituality, what it is and what role it may play in our lives in a way that I think can be very healthy and constructive http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xkw41UdPGY What is interesting in the concepts and ideas he presents there is that I see finally a possible way that we can reconcile the basis of religious thinking and science, in a way that they don’t get mistakenly and unnecesseraly mixed together, or that one tries to eliminate the other,they both just have different perspectives and focuses on life that are valid (look in 36:05 in the video) I think we all can agree that we don’t need to think fictional stories and metaphors that are very moving and help us think about reality and have an emotional resonance for us needs to be scientifically accurate or real for us to think they are valuable. Like any good poem that we can think of uses metaphors to express ideas without the need to be objectively real and yet touches us on a emotional level Could we say there are two definitions or two ways we can talk about something being “true”? One being the objective reality proven by empirical scientific testing and another being what is true regarding our feelings about things? They both seem to have fought against each other a lot in the history of the development of our thinking, I think they should both be valued properly without being too much of one in detriment of the other, wich generates imbalances and can generate abuse and violence between people, caused by an impossibility of understanding between them. The main problem with the concept of religion is the necessity of infliction of the dogma in others, not necessarily in the reading of reality that those beduines that created the many tales that eventually got compiled in the bible( using a common example,) did thousands of years ago(another problem of course is the morality of those societies that we clearly recognize today how primitive they were, and if we’re able to separate things we can sort out where we can see real value in those stories without the need to subscribe to that primitive morality). In the case of monotheism the necessity of trying to monopolize one view or limiting it to one single god not only limits the way you can see things through symbols and concepts (see between 45:25- 50:43 ) but also generates conflicts and I think that is the reason why, as long as religion existed, there is this attempt to try to prove those fictional stories to be objectively real, to the point we get that even today with all knowledge that we have and advancement in science there is still this attempt to try to prove those stories to be scientifically true, even though there really is no necessity of that for people to see value in them, and also I think to be scientifically precise was never ever the point in creating any of those symbols, they really were actually a form of emotional comforting for people, a way of coping with reality in the best way they could, it deals with one specific way of processing reality that has nothing to do with science but it is also important, being our emotional understanding of our own internal reality, wich you could argue is solved by self knowledge alone, but both of them are important for the processing of our world I'd argue. And I think perhaps this has been forgotten these days by a lot of people, specially by statists atheists who thinks we only need science to deal with reality and nothing else, I also think this subject has not being addressed in any of the FDR shows I’ve seen yet. I think in great part religion is actually the main guilty part for the increasing rejection by society about the importance of this form of reading reality, because they basically monopolized it and limited people to only serve these old dogmas and their priests, institutions and authority completely apart from any kind of truth with the goal of serving opportunists trying to control people for their own advantage. Another reason why people today is negligeable to the value of that form of looking at life is because art today is mainly used to numb us and accept our current reality as slaves to the state and just keep going with it (see in 29: 15 and 31:45) he also talks about self knowledge( see in 36:25 ) like I said before, there's a lot of interesting ideas in the video Hope you all like it and comment, enjoy!