Why is God the fairy tale?

Seeker,

Can't answer that for you. I'm not an atheist.

Santa Claus is a being about whom beliefs have changed over the years, who cannot be shown to exist outside of the imagination of children, and who defies the laws of physics to give gifts to good boys and girls, and a lump of coal (or nothing) to bad ones.

God is a being about whom beliefs have changed over the years, who cannot be shown to exist outside of the imagination of his followers, and who defies the laws of physics to peform miracles and give eternal life to good people, and punishment (or non-existence) to bad ones.

It is certainly difficult to study science until you can understand the ways the universe may have come into existence, forming spacetime, forces, particles, stars, and everything else.

But the most outlandish theories are not as ridiculous as saying that a God just "happened" to exist who had exactly the right knowledge, desire, and ability to make our entire universe pop into existence, out of nothing, by magic. Why do you suppose that he created hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars and planets, just so he could create life on this one small planet? If he is omniscient and can access information instantly over 15 billion light years, he is in serious violation of the laws of physics.

There is no "right" way to evolve. The are billions of ways for life to evolve, and none of them is "wrong."

Exactly how is the earth in danger "2 or 3 times a week"?

The day I will see a photograph of god I will take part in any debate about his existence. Until then he/she/it is just another cute story.

Re: Why is God the fairy tale?

Yes it is ridiculous to compare the two. Santa is based on a real historical figure.

You are presenting a false dichotomy as well as a strawman.

I am not sure what idea you are referring to, but as for creationism, there is nothing 'logical' about it. We have bits and pieces of data from many fields of science that point us toward several possible hypothesis as to the mechanics of life and the universe. With these hypothesis, and without ever losing sight of the evidence, theories are drawn out. If the theory fails to fit the evidence, it is discarded. What we are left with is the most honest, albeit incomplete, model of reality.
Now lets compare this a model of reality that has no basis in demonstrable fact and can't stand up to any kind of external scrutiny, and in fact is shown to be inconsistent within itself.
The only reason anyone would find the second choice 'more logical' would be either a poor understanding of the subject material or a poor understanding of logic.
Take your pick?

Terry - our planet is missed by meteors this regularly by what is in cosmological terms a hair's breadth. Kinda scary when you think about it.

Dok S - sorry what do you refer to as my strawman? Btw I'm not a creationist. I'm fully up for evolution. I just don't see why the idea that God started it is more ridicuous than the idea that it just happened.

Seeker,

Finally, someone that understands that each side could be viewed as at the very least, not valid, by the other side! Bless you!

It is because in the absence of any evidence, the probability of any proposition is inversely proportional to its complexity. (Or proportional to its simplicity)

A working mind alone (with no simple mechanism proposed to explain its forming), ignoring the other posited attributes of the deity, is sufficiently complex to make the probability of the proposition negligible. Among the two outlined options, a bunch of disorganized matter appearing out of nowhere and a fully functional sentient being with superpowers appearing out of nowhere, I find the first one less extravagant.

Einherjar,

I can even handle that. I just have a problem with those that absolutely cannot see both sides at all.

I have no clue as to whether God wiggled His nose or used evolution. I don't discount the possibilty.

My above argument is the one Frank Apisa doesn't follow, he stubbornly insist that in the absence of any evidence all propositions must be held to be equally likely regardless of their complexity. I think not as complex propositions seem to me like many simple ones rolled up into one.

(I exclude "designed" deities, as well as any that may have been formed by some simple process, by definition for the purpose of that argument.)

Anyway, this is why I consider the probability of a deity existing to be negligible in the absence of evidence, and would require quite strong evidence in order to seriously consider the proposition. My take on the evidence is of course the same as Franks.



Well, to be fair I can only see your side from way over on my side, and from here it looks quite absurd.

You wrote, emphasis mine...

This is a strawman because you are misrepresenting evolution, and then attacking your misrepresentation. This bolded statement does not represent anything forwarded by evolutionary theorem. Evolution says nothing about matter 'just being there' nor does it say anything about the planet 'evolving' (on the contrary, biological organisms evolve to fit their environment, not vice versa) Nor does the earth 'face destruction 2 or 3 times a week' according to any scientist I've ever heard of.

Re: Why is God the fairy tale?


Just here for the sake of being a pill.....

#1 Atheists don't ALWAYS compare beieving in God to believeing in Santa Clause. Let's not engage in hyperbole.

In my opinion, unless you have done even the most rudimentary study of cosmology, you shouldn't be trying to make statements about matter, the formation of the universe, balance, etc. It's a little more sophisticated than that my friend. If you had any inkling, you wouldn't be using words like luck.

seeker, we get hit by meteors all the time. It is extremely rare that one large enough to destroy us comes into our vicinity. Again with the exaggeration.

Personally, I never believed in Santa Clause, but I do believe in God, or in my mind, a Creator.

BTW DocS (AKA "butt" sorry I just thought that was funny on that other thread, "butt") - was reading something the other day about Santa. Seems that there's a chance someone in America made up the tale of a historical figure as part of essentially a marketing plan for some Christmas stuff they were trying to sell, or get donations for something or another.

MA - that is the first time I have ever heard you say anything about being open to the possibility of evolution. Interesting.

Really Chai Tea? I thought had mentioned it before somewhere. I have no clue as to how God did what He did. I just believe (don't hit me!) that He did.

Santa clause, as we know him today...red suite, jolly, hohoho, flying sleigh...is an invention of the coca-cola corperation.
that they both share the red and white is no co-incedance.
Check out this
http://www2.coca-cola.com/heritage/cokelore_santa.html

no, no, this goes back further than that.

St. Nicholas, the real person, was born in what is now Turkey in the 3rd century. Came from a wealthy family and used it to help the poor and all that good stuff.

Here is what I gleaned......



How did the kindly Christian saint, good Bishop Nicholas, become a roly-poly red-suited American symbol for merry holiday festivity and commercial activity?

The first Europeans to arrive in the New World brought St. Nicholas. Vikings dedicated their cathedral to him in Greenland. On his first voyage, Columbus named a Haitian port for St. Nicholas on December 6, 1492. In Florida, Spaniards named an early settlement St. Nicholas Ferry, now known as Jacksonville. However, St. Nicholas had a difficult time during the 16th century Protestant Reformation which took a dim view of saints. Even though both reformers and counter-reformers tried to stamp out St. Nicholas-related customs, they had very little long-term success; only in England were the religious folk traditions of Christmas permanently altered. (It is ironic that fervent Puritan Christians began what turned into a trend to a more secular Christmas observance.) Because the common people so loved St. Nicholas, he survived on the European continent as people continued to place nuts, apples, and sweets in shoes left beside beds, on windowsills, or before the hearth.


"New Year's Hymn to St. Nicholas," colonial Dutch life, Albany, NY. Harper's New Monthly Magazine, March 1881
St. Nicholas Center Collection
Colonists came to America after the Reformation in the 1500s. They were primarily Puritans and other Protestant reformers who did not bring Nicholas traditions to the New World. What about the Dutch? Although it is nearly universally reported that the Dutch did bring St. Nicholas to New Amsterdam, scholars find limited evidence of such traditions in Dutch New Netherland. Colonial Germans in Pennsylvania held the feast of St. Nicholas, and several accounts do have St. Nicholas visiting New York Dutch on New Years' Eve. Patriots formed the Sons of St. Nicholas in 1773, not to honor Bishop Nicholas, but rather as a non-British symbol to counter the English St. George societies. This St. Nicholas society was similar to the Sons of St. Tammany in Philadelphia. Not exactly St. Nicholas, the children's gift-giver.


Detail from First Celebration of the Festival of St. Nicholas by The New-York Historical Society, Broadside by Alexander Anderson, December 6, 1810, commissioned by John Pintard, SY 1864-21, negative number 28883 Used by permission
After the American Revolution, New Yorkers remembered with pride the colony's nearly-forgotten Dutch roots. John Pintard, influential patriot and antiquarian, who founded the New York Historical Society in 1804, promoted St. Nicholas as patron saint of both society and city. In January 1809, Washington Irving joined the society and on St. Nicholas Day that year he published the satirical fiction, Knickerbocker's History of New York, which made numerous references to a jolly St. Nicholas character. This was not a saintly bishop, rather an elfin Dutch burgher with a clay pipe. These delightful flights of imagination are the origin of the New Amsterdam St. Nicholas legends: that the first Dutch emigrant ship had a figurehead of St. Nicholas; that St. Nicholas Day was observed in the colony; that the first church was dedicated to him: and that St. Nicholas comes down chimneys to bring gifts. Irving's work was regarded as the "first notable work of imagination in the New World."

The New York Historical Society held its first St. Nicholas anniversary dinner on December 6, 1810. John Pintard commissioned artist Alexander Anderson to create the first American image of Nicholas for the occasion. Nicholas was shown in a gift-giving role with children's treats in stockings hanging at a fireplace. The accompanying poem ends, "Saint Nicholas, my dear good friend! To serve you ever was my end, If you will, now, me something give, I'll serve you ever while I live."

The jolly elf image received a big boost in 1823, from a poem destined to become immensely popular, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," now better known as "The Night Before Christmas."


His looks are changing, but it is still Saint Nicholas
Period Postcard

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes?-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf. . . .



Saint Nicholas 1849 engraving by Boyd St Nicholas Center Collection
Washington Irving's St. Nicholas strongly influenced the poem's portrayal of a round, pipe-smoking, elf-like St. Nicholas. The poem generally has been attributed to Clement Clark Moore, a professor of biblical languages at New York's Episcopal General Theological Seminary. However, a case has been made by Don Foster in Author Unknown, that Henry Livingston actually penned it in 1807 or 1808. Livingston was a farmer/patriot who wrote humorous verse for children. In any case, "A Visit from St. Nicholas" became a defining American holiday classic. No matter who was the author, it has had an enormous influence on the American transformation of St. Nicholas.


"Merry Old Santa Claus," by Thomas Nast, Harper's Weekly, January 1, 1881
Other artists and writers continued the change to an elf-like St. Nicholas, "Sancte Claus," or "Santa Claus," unlike the stately European bishop. In 1863, political cartoonist Thomas Nast began a series of annual drawings in Harper's Weekly which were based on the descriptions found in the poem and Washington Irving's work. These drawings established a rotund Santa with flowing beard, fur garments, and an omnipresent clay pipe. As Nast drew Santas until 1886, his work had considerable influence in forming the American Santa Claus. Along with changes in appearance, the saint's name changed to Santa Claus as a natural phonetic alteration from the German Sankt Niklaus and Dutch Sinterklaas.


Coca-Cola Santa by Haddon Sundblom Permission courtesy of the Coca-Cola Company
Dozens of artists portrayed Santa in a wide range of styles, sizes, and colors, including Norman Rockwell on Saturday Evening Post covers. But it was in the 1930s that the now-familiar American Santa image solidified. Haddon Sundblom began thirty-five years of Coca-Cola Santa advertisements which finally established Santa as an icon of contemporary commercial culture. This Santa was life-sized, jolly, and wearing the now familiar red suit. He appeared in magazines, on billboards, and shop counters encouraging Americans to see Coke as the solution to "a thirst for all seasons." By the 1950s Santa was turning up everywhere as a benign source of beneficence. This commercial success has led to the North American Santa Claus being exported around the world where he threatens to overcome the European St. Nicholas, who has retained his identity as a Christian bishop and saint.


Nast Santa, Bishop Nicholas, Coke Santa, illustration by Renee Graef, A Special Place for Santa Roman, Inc., 1991. Permission pending.

It's been a long journey from the Fourth Century Bishop of Myra, St. Nicholas, who showed his devotion to God in extraordinary kindness and generosity, to America's jolly Santa Claus. However, if you peel back the accretions he is still Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, whose caring surprises continue to model true giving and faithfulness. In the United States there is growing interest in the original saint to help recover the spiritual dimension of this festive time. For indeed, St. Nicholas, lover of the poor and patron saint of children, is a model of how Christians are meant to live. A priest, a bishop, Nicholas put Jesus Christ at the center of his life, his ministry, his entire existence. Families, churches, and schools are embracing true St Nicholas traditions as one way to claim the true center of Christmas?-the birth of Jesus. Such a focus helps restore balance to increasingly materialistic and stress-filled Advent and Christmas seasons.

Yes, the legend has a long and illustrious history.
I was just pointing out the modern caricature, the fat man in red and white suite, didn't exist before artists penned him for coca-colas christmas advertising campaign

Imagine a world where all children believe in Santa Claus. Not only that, but they continue as grown-ups to firmly believe in that jolly man who comes down the chimney on a certain day.
That is exactly what happens with religion. We believed as trusting little children what our parents taught us.
As we grew older we should have questioned these strange stories. Surprise, most people never ask a single question. They find it easier to believe blindly in something based on a book, written by many men a long time ago.

I stopped believing in Santa Claus a long time ago. :wink:

What?! A photograph.....you are gonna be dissapointed....

I use to pretent to believe in santa awhile longer just to get more toys.

I can't believe there are actualy grown-ups that believe in santa still.

My parents never told me about Jesus.