(xkcd)
From PZ Myers:
It's like the old joke, "What do you call alternative medicines that have been shown to work? Medicine." What I'm asking here is what should you call supernatural explanations that actually work and lead to deeper understanding of the universe…and the answer is science.
You can extend this to all pseudoscience. If it worked, no one would be more enthusiastic about it than scientists, since it would open up a whole new area of research. If it worked, it would be science.
If fortune-telling worked, fortune-tellers would be the wealthiest people on the planet - and not just from fleecing the gullible. If people really could talk to the dead, they would learn things that no one living knows - and easily produce the evidence to demonstrate that. Think about it. Nothing would be easier than to conclusively demonstrate that you could talk to dead people, if indeed you actually could.
And as a practical matter, possessing any of these magic powers would be a huge survival advantage to human beings. Therefore, the ability would have quickly spread through our population thousands of years ago, becoming stronger all the time. We wouldn't have to wonder if ESP existed, because it would be obvious. If it really did exist, everyone would be using it as commonly as we use our hearing and our eyesight.
Believing in these things now is just wishful-thinking, just the gullibility of fantasy-prone personalities. It's just magic. And magic is either a clever trick or pure fantasy, never anything real. Enjoy fantasy in fiction, if you wish. I certainly do. But I never mistake it for reality.
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