Calling all Theists: The Argument Challenge

Great Debates
1

I was challenged Czarcasmin this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=9284257#post9284257

The challenge had this context: I said that the argument for athiesm that essentially compared belief in a god to Santa Claus was a bad argument, since whether the intent was ridicule or not, it would objectively be seen as ridicule by those one would argue against; and ridicule is not the best way of initiating a constructive debate.

Czarcasm initially challenged me to come up with an alternative argument that was more effective without being, in my opinion, insulting. I came up with the argument below. Czarcasm then issued a new challenge, to make this argument the OP and see how theists react to it.

Here’s the argument. Theists, your reactions?

'Santa is a figure in a myth about the nature of giving, the so-called ‘spirit of Christmas’. No adult seriously believes in the literal existance of a guy in a red suit who lives at the North Pole, but many believe that gift-giving and the like represents real and wortwhile values. These do not have any “existence” external to those holding the mythology but are, like “love”, nonetheless a reality.

Similarly, it is not necessary to literally believe in the existence of a guy with a white beard who lives in heaven to believe in the sort of truths represented by that mythology - truths concerning the nature of salvation, redemption, and humanity’s place in the cosmos. Religion is among other things a manner of working out the nature of these truths in a manner comprehensible to people. A redeemer who represents perfect love is a way of comprehending the nature of love and foregiveness, often in a way that is quite positive for those who hold to it; a deity of power any mystery such as the OT god is a way of making comprehensible the power and mystery of nature.

In some respects the mythology has outlived its usefulness - we know more than we did about nature and have no need of mythology to explain, for example, the nature of evolution. In other respects it remains useful, in purely human terms.

Those who scoff at the childishness of Santa Claus are missing the point. They do not understand how mythology works. Similarly, theists who literally believe in a deity are making the equal but opposite error, that of taking myth as literal.’

2

Well, you ignored this once, but what the hell, I’ll point it out again. Your argument to a theist proposes that there is no god. Why would any theist buy in to it? Put another way, you challenge the comparison of a foundation for a belief in one supernatural entity as opposed to another by saying, “There are no supernatural entities.” Well, yeah, that’s the desired end point of the comparison, but it doesn’t really make much sense as an exercise in changing the mind of someone who does believe that there is a supernatural entity.

Apart from that, it’s just another wishy washy way of proposing that what some people regard as the mysteries of life and existence is exactly what other people regard as god.

The challenge, if you want to assert that the point is the childishness of Santa, rather than the absence of evidence for Santa, is to find a commonly rejected supernatural figure that is not childish. (I suspect that you will fail, because there is a bit of absurdity to asserting a belief in anything that is commonly rejected, particularly when it involves the bells and whistles of flying reindeer or holding the world up on your back or, well, you get the picture.) Put another way, why is it childish and mocking when it involves Santa but not god?

3

I have never encountered a theist who believes in “the existence of a guy with a white beard who lives in heaven”. Incidentally, an atheist does not necessarily believe there is no supernatural whatsoever. An atheist can believe in ghosts, for example.

4

God? More “comprehensible” than nature? Pfft.

And what in the world does “a guy with a white beard” have to do with God?

5

You guys are going right to the heart of the argument I see. :rolleyes:

For this atheist, the redeemer and forgiveness part might fly. But the man’s place in the universe won’t. The mindset of being satisfied that our existence is more or less an accident is far different from that of the universe being constructed for us, and man’s existence being important in the universe. No degree of anthropomorphic personifications, which is more or less what is being proposed, is going to bridge that gap. It might work for those theists who see god as love or god as spirit or god as the cosmos. I doubt it will for more traditional believers.

6

Well, that’s true. But lots of people really did really believe in various such entities. So the difference between a person who believes in the existance of God, a person who believes in the existance of YHWH, a person who believes in the existance of Zeus, and a person who believes in the existance of Santa Claus is not clear.

It seems to me that Santa and Zeus are similar figures, the main difference is that very few people believe in the literal existance of Santa, while at one time lots of people believed in the literal existance of Zeus. Both were guys with beards who live in inaccessable locations and provide various boons to the deserving and various punishments to the undeserving, and who can be propitiated with the right kind of offering…milk and cookies for Santa, burnt thighbones for Zeus.

Now, the ancient Israelites worshipped YHWH, and the figure of YHWH in the old testament isn’t radically distinct from Zeus. And the non-anthropomorphic God that modern sophisticated theists believe in was derived from that Zeus-like deity of the ancient Israelites, it’s just that over the millennia and especially over the last 500 years the anthropomorphic qualities of God have been increasingly de-emphasized, excepting of course the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus for Christians.

So the sort of folklore that created Santa Claus is also the same sort of folklore that created early religious belief in spirits, monsters, tricksters, river gods, and suchlike. The main difference is that modern adults don’t believe that Santa really exists, even as they teach children that he really exists, while many of the people who invented those spirits and gods and nymphs and monsters really did believe in them. But others clearly didn’t quite believe in literal gods, or even if they believed in the existance of the gods didn’t believe in all the stories about them.

It seems to me that the ancient Israelites took their religion a lot more seriously than the ancient Greeks did. Or maybe that’s just biased, that the people who wrote the books of the Old Testament took their religion very very seriously, but the people around them, not so much. Which explains all the fulminating and grumbling about how the people weren’t worshipping YHWH correctly. So did Homer literally believe in Zeus, Athena, Ares, Apollo, and such, or did he just think they made the story of the Trojan war more interesting? It’s clear that Ovid, for instance, didn’t really believe in the mythology he wrote about, any more than modern comic book writers really believe in Superman, or (again) Santa.

7

Honest question, Voyager. And please believe me. You know that I’ve cited your name many times among the top of the heap of great people on the board. I’m not trying to be a smartass. Not with you. But where do people get this idea of there being traditional believers who see God in the way described? The Love gospel didn’t just fall off the truck yesterday. The OP is talking about Sistine Chapel depictions of God as though people actually envision Him in that way, living in the sky and that by debunking this image a la Yuri Gagarin, they can pull the rug of faith out from under us? I mean seriously, do they not know that “traditional believers” think God is supernatural?

8

Be that as it may, it raises two points: (1) 500 years is long enough to put the past behind us, I would think; and (2) Christians comprise a significant enough portion of theists to merit the acknowledgment that they do not worship the caricature that is portrayed. I guess that’s why all this “sky pixie” and “imaginary friend” business so befuddles me. It’s like people are reading geography books from the 15th century and assuming that some portion of modern people think of the New World as as Terra Incognita.

9

Answer - from looking at the Sistine Chapel ceiling perhaps? I read the “white bearded God” phrase as a somewhat humorous God stereotype, and not as a claim that anyone actually believes in a white bearded god. A prayer I used to recite, from at least hundreds of years ago, said that God has no shape and no form. At least some Christians seem to believe that God has a throne and that Jesus sits on his right, which just shows theological immaturity.
My comment was not to support the notion that posters here believe this, but to wonder why this is the major thing responded to out of an interesting OP. Ironic given that this thread is the child of the thread on defensiveness.

10

The OP’s argument, if I understood it correctly, made a direct analogy between “Santa as a guy in a red suit who lives at the North Pole” and “God as a guy with a white beard who lives in heaven.” I don’t see the analogy as valid or relevant to the God that I believe in.

11

Oh good grief.

I hope Malthus won’t mind if I restate his interesting OP in my own words.

Santa Claus, is represented as a white bearded fat man who lives at the North Pole. No one actually believes he is, but this image is a instantiation of the important concepts of giving and joy and sharing that represent the secular meaning of Christmas. The concept of Santa is important in that it allows us to personalize these concepts, and makes them concrete, and is also a useful training tool for young people who can’t handle the concepts without them being placed in a person.

God is sometimes represented as a white bearded man who lives in heaven. No one actually believes that he is, but he represents our need to be moral, our place in the universe, our spirituality, our need to be good to each other, and a whole bunch of other concepts some of which even atheists accept. This image is important in concretizing god for those who have trouble grasping the actual spiritual component. In the past this God image was used to explain parts of nature not understood, but it retains its power even after we understand how nature works, because it is used to explain morality and the why of things, which science does not cover.

I don’t necessarily agree with this, but it’s a bit more subtle than just equating God with Santa.

12

The analogy in the OP can be made to most formulations of a personal god…

i.e. a being with a personality, including the capacity to reason and feel love, as in the cases of Zeus, Apollo and Athena and other deities common to European Pagan polytheism. In the case of the Christian belief in the Trinity, God is an impersonal ‘ousia’ or substance, manifested in three ‘hypostasis’ or persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These views are intended to challenge the concept of deity which is merely a guiding principle, a blind creative force or a philosophical ideal…without a great deal of mental dexterity. Going to the level of white beards and remote habitations strikes me as intentionally missing the point. The majority of people in this country believe in a personal god.

13

Whoa whoa whoa. That is what Santa is. Santa Claus, as such, does indeed have a beard and a red suit and live at the North Pole. Santa may well be a symbol of, or a personaification of, something more intangible. But when anyone mentions “Santa Claus,” I assume they mean the guy in the red suit, not some intangible quality that he represents.

14

Yup.

Though sadly, judging by the few reactions so far, I appear to be mostly losing the challenge raised by Czarcasm. :frowning:

15

Then you have not understood it correctly, or my powers of description are weak. My intention was exactly to avoid such a simple analogy.

16

When a child mentions Santa, yes. But when you or I talk about Santa we’re really talking about Santa’s image in our culture, which is real, as opposed to the guy in the red suit, who isn’t real.

A kid has a pretty straightforward idea of Santa. We can encompass contradictory images from popular culture, from Rudolph’s owner to the Santa in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Lots of people have similar contradictory views of god, from all loving father to the guy who flooded out the earth. Not everyone of course, but I suspect if you polled the public you’d see this.

The problem I have with the OP is that unlike Santa many in our culture consider God to be real - not man with a beard real, but real as an existent entity. They won’t be satisfied believing in what god stands for without believing in a real god. Also, as I said already, there are many things which god as a metaphor won’t explain well.

17

Except that such was not my intention. Please re-read my OP, considering this.

No doubt there are some believers who think of God as a personified, anthropomorphic deity; just as there are some athiests who believe that all religious belief can be characterized as nothing more that belief in “Santa Claus”. My intention was to say that both positions are mistaken, and are in fact opposite sides of the same coin of mistake.

18

Oh, I agree. My point is that those who do (believe in an external deity that has some sort of real, external existence quite seperate from its believers) are mistaken, but also that those who think that religion is nothing more than Santa Claus writ large are also mistaken - there is more to it.

However, i seem to be mostly failing to even get across that my position isn’t that religion is Santa Claus writ large …

19

Okay, but what exactly are the two sides? I don’t mean to be obtuse, but I mean… are you simply saying that anthropomorphic metaphors are not literal representations of either Santa Claus or God? If so, I think I would agree with that, at least in essence.

20

Malthus, I think I largely agree with your original point as rephrased by Voyager in response to Thudlow.

The problem is, as a self-described agnostic neo-pagan Unitarian Universalist, I’m not sure I’m your target audience.