GOD a dit:
"You're clearly missing the point, and I'm sorry I seem to have offended you somehow."
Please explain your point and no you didnt ofend me .
Well not quite that religion doesn't exist, after all billions of people practice it.. but I can understand how I gave that impression.
More two different points, one short and one long: Religion, magic, and belief systems are practiced in many different forms and paths. At their heart they are all about the experience, the perception of the participant. When enough people join into the practice it becomes a consensual reality in that they have similar shared experiences.
I've had this discussion with people whom I know who practice magic (I don't) and for myself I would define it as a way of perceiving how the world works through a mixture of metaphor, belief and ritual that is used to achieve some sort of perceptual outcome. It isn't as simple as believing the I Ching works. I don't believe in divination per se but I can still bring something out of the experience. Hence if you can't get into the mindset, it won't work for you anyway.
Let's pretend Capitalism is black magic. Think of someone locked into the mindset of capitalism and the American dream, very much a mass consensual reality, a sprawling perceptual self-reinforcing feedback system, with the believers not possessing the lexicon, or even the perception to comprehend other possibilities. Their world is the suburb, the local wal-mart, their boys who are off to war, and that is the way reality has always been as far as they are concerned. And because reality is this way, and their beliefs are as they are, it self-reinforces. Nothing challenges their way of life because they are "right" and everything else is "weird, strage or wrong".
Now lets take this a step further, and imagine being able to move through different belief systems.
Being able to explain the experience by various psychological processes really doesn't ruin the "magic", at least for me, it would just increase the intrigue and I would welcome research though I'm not sure how you test shared subjective reality
Anyway I'm no expert on the subject, this is just what I have garnished from reading on the subject and being around those who delve into these sorts of things for the past couple years. I'm sure someone who knows more of the subject can put it more eloquently or correct me where I am mistaken...