The article hit on this exact point with a rather interesting quote: "I should note that disenchantment should not be confused with secularisation. The sociolog

The article hit on this exact point with a rather interesting quote: "I should note that disenchantment should not be confused with secularisation. The sociological evidence suggests that de-Christianisation, while usually equated with secularisation, often correlates with an increase in belief in spirits, ghosts and magic – not the reverse.". The article is more about animism than magic. Personally I find the confident, sometimes bordering on militant, rejection of animism by some to be no less peculiar than the no less confident adoption of others in religions undoubtedly invented by men. Why? We know that our brains seem to drive most of our decisions through various complex interactions with the rest of our body. And when these actors are manipulated, our behaviors thus change. This seems like a clear enough argument for determinism that would clearly run contrary to animism, but there's one little problem. "Me." I am standing here believing that I am the one choosing my words, formatting my text, conveying my thoughts. Why would I be observing this, imagining myself to be the one engaging in such actions? If you write a program to generate a pseudo-random number I think everybody would agree it's quite absurd to imagine some being briefly flickers into existence, imagines himself picking a number, and then flickers back out of existence. Yet how does this notion become any less absurd as the program becomes more complex? You have to engage in extensive hand-waving and appeals to unknown and untestable facts to argue against animism in this case. Quite ironic then that it is this same behavior that people use as a critique of animism. Don't take this as an endorsement or condemnation of either side. If anything it's an an appeal against radicalism on either side: believe what you want, try to persuade interested others if it gives you satisfaction, don't escalate beyond that.