VigilanteHamster said:
There is no such thing as 'white magic', though... that's how Wicca snares people. Wouldn't the same principle apply to D&D? (Never mind all those verses about imagination... as far as I could see, the Bible NEVER said anything good about imagination!)
Don't get too caught up in terminology.
I recently played a game in which my character, who is considered a wizard by some, used special powers to send messages to people in distant places, faster than the flight of birds. He has been known to make images manifest in remote locations by the special powers he has. On other occasions, he's been known to fly from one city to another, once again, at speeds which are frankly hard to imagine in concrete terms. Frequently he uses elaborate rituals to summon desired objects to his person; he performs the ritual, and the object is brought by "messengers" within a week.
In case it's not obvious, that character is me. I send email, I have a web page with some graphics on it, I fly on planes, and I order stuff online.
When we talk about "magic" in a Biblical context, we are really referring to the category of things we understand to be made to work in some way by demons, presumably as a "quick and easy" alternative to faith.
In a D&D game, we are assuming the availability of a "technology" which, although it is structured very differently from our own, has the same basic properties; it has predictable effects, it's widely available, and it has no inherent moral qualities. It is called "magic", but it's really just a kind of technology. You could use different words and it would be "psionics" or "nanotech", or whatever. No difference.
I think that understanding this is very important to understanding how gamers generally understand "magic" in games. They're not talking about the stuff that the Bible condemns.
Just an honest question...
