I can personally with 100% surety answer the question, Is Magic Real, with a resounding YES. Magic has two huge problems that we are slowly but surely overcoming.
1) When you ask some with deep religious beliefs, is magic real, they answer out of the fear that has been placed in them by misunderstandings than began prior to the middle ages and have been brought forward through a rehashing and repackaging to the fears for all of these years.
2) The average person on the street, beginning with very small children and going all the way up to very mature folks such as myself, when you ask them is magic real, they answer out of knowledge they have obtained through less than truthful sources (ie movies & books).
This is an area that will be discussed in much greater details in the regular post areas of our site and each section is completed.
Rest assured the average person on the street has a view of magic that is vastly different than what it really is. This is one reason I will not teach person younger than 16, because they have no matured enough to understand it just does not happen the way it does in anime cartoons or the movies.