It seems some people require examples, since they do not understand concepts. In particular, many fantasy geekboys come here and say that magic cannot be quantified. Perhaps they do not understand what quantification is, or how numbers apply. Allow me to provide an example:
Quote:
A fantasy wizard has a magic spell which is said to make him invincible. Let us further suppose that we see him use it against a foe who can throw lightning, and it seems to work.
The magic geekboy would look at this and conclude "yes, this spell makes him invincible. We know because he used it and it worked. Therefore, God
himself could not overwhelm this spell."
An empirically-minded (read: scientifically minded) person looks at this same evidence and says "if we had not seen the spell in action, we would not know whether it works
at all. Now that we have seen it in action, we know that it works well
enough to block or at least redirect a lightning strike. We can use data from normal lightning strikes as a rough estimate for the energy and power levels involved, and this would represent a lower limit for its capabilities."
Any
further extrapolation of its abilities is unreasonable unless you assume literal semantic inerrancy on the part of the source. And bear in mind that even if one
does assume literal semantic inerrancy on the part of the source, all you have to do is find a
single flaw in the literal semantic inerrancy of the entire book (or comic series, or entire series of books, etc) and that house of cards comes crashing down.