What about just not knowing, and accepting that we just don't know?
    That doesn't mean we don't continue to try to know more and understand more, and as we learn or know more revise our beliefs and theories based on new knowledge. Over and over again, in our attempts at understanding 'how things work'and what is the underlying 'truth', principles' or scientific 'laws', what we had previously come to accept as 'fact' or 'truth' based on the most advanced knowledge of the day, continuously has proved to be only one step toward a further understanding, or even away from understanding, back into mystery again.
    Bill, I don't have the training in philosphy that you do, but however precisely one attempts to assign meaning to a word or concept, one will rarely, if ever, find universal agreement about that definition or concept. It seems to me that your position is also based on 'belief'.
    'Belief' is about accepting as true what we do not have enough information to know to be fact. 'Belief' is universal to the human experience and necessary to be able to function in the world, because none of us have the time or capacity to look for 'proof' of everything. It is necessary, to a certain extent, to operate as if many of our 'beliefs' are fact. But I think it important to recognize when we are operating out of 'belief' and assumption. Many beliefs may turn out to also be true, they are just not necessarily true.

    'Magic' that is not trickery or illusion is simply a phenomena that we don't yet understand.

Uhhh...I guess this has turned into thread drift. Sorry. And I bet some one on some thread has said pretty much the same thing before.

Janie