Indeed, if any view is plausibly accused of being “magical” in the sense in question, it is
atheism itself. The reason is that it is very likely that an atheist has to hold that the operation of at least the
fundamental laws that govern the universe is an “unintelligible brute fact”;
as I have noted before, that was precisely the view taken by J. L. Mackie and Bertrand Russell. The reason an atheist (arguably) has to hold this is that to allow that the world is
not ultimately a brute fact -- that it is intelligible
through and through -- seems to entail that there is some level of reality which is radically non-contingent or necessary in an absolute sense. And that would in turn be to allow (so the traditional metaphysician will argue) that there is something which, as the Thomist would put it, is pure actuality and
ipsum esse subsistens or “subsistent being itself” -- and thus something which has the divine attributes which inexorably flow from being pure actuality and
ipsum esse subsistens. Hence it would be to
give up atheism.
But to operate in a way that is ultimately unintelligible in principle -- as the atheist arguably has to say the fundamental laws of nature do, insofar as he has to say that they are “just there” as a brute fact, something that could have been otherwise but happens to exist anyway, with no explanation --
just is to be “magical” in the objectionable sense. In fact it is only on a
theistic view of the world that the laws of nature are
not “magical”; and the Mackie/Russell position is (as I argue in the post linked to above) ultimately incoherent for the same sorts of reason that magical thinking in general is incoherent. As is so often the case, the loudmouth New Atheist turns out to be exactly what he claims to despise -- in this case, a believer in “magical powers.”
Of course, there are other senses of the word “magic.” For example, the term is also used to refer to phenomena that are paranormal or occult, but not intrinsically unintelligible -- phenomena which do have an explanation, but where the explanation lies beyond the everyday material order of things and is to a significant extent closed to our investigation. Now, as I indicated earlier, there is no necessary connection between the “supernatural” (in the theological sense) and the “magical” in this paranormal sense. Someone could be a theist and reject all alleged paranormal phenomena. And someone could be an atheist and believe that there
are some genuine paranormal phenomena. (
C. D. Broad was one example of such an atheist. I do not know whether
Stephen Braude would call himself an atheist, but his interest in the paranormal does not seem to be motivated by any religious concern.)