Magic, Matter and Qualia

Book excerpt: Magic illusions are all about misdirection: making sure that the audience is looking away from what's really going on. For humanity, both religious faith and scientific materialism misdirect us away from truth and reality. Magicians claim to pull rabbits out of empty hats. The God of Abraham pulls a whole universe out of nothing whatsoever, while scientific materialism performs the greatest magic trick of all by abolishing God and pulling the entirety of existence out of its opposite – non-existence – through nothing other than a random accident, with no conceivable explanation or sufficient reason. Scientific materialism puts all magicians to shame. It manages to magic life out of lifeless atoms, and mind out of mindless atoms. That's some trick!