Only if he’s just here to yank our chains, and I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
The intent is not really to ridicule, though, but to highlight the extraordinary nature of the God hypothesis. There are an infinite number of hypothetical entities that one could imagine and assert to exist. It is not unfair to ask why God deserves any more special consideration, or seriousness of contemplation or presumption of existence than any other magical entity.
No doubt, there are magical hypotheticals which theists would consider to be ridiculous on their face. The analogies are only a way to ask the theists why they don’t consider a creator God to be just as ridiculous, given the fact that the evidence is exactly the same.
To Jesticulator, I think your demands for the skeptic to somehow prove that the beliefs in Santa and God are the same is probably best answered by saying that the intent is really to say that the evidence is the same and to inquire of the theist why one should be granted any more default plausibility than the other. It might sound like mockery but at its core it’s a fair and honest question. It might take some sting out to use an analogy which is not quite so silly (like using Greek or Hindu deities, for instance), but there is still a legitimate question contained even within the more whimsical analogies.
Also to Jesticulator, I apologize foar being condescending and for presuming you were some kind of fundy.
You better… or your GOD WILL PUNISH YOU!
(incidentally, my intent is often to ridicule)
But only the ridiculous, right?
Well, I think I’ve been warned a couple of times over the years for ridiculing people the mods didn’t think were ridiculous, but for the most part I think I’m both harmless and accurate.
DtC, you have done all the heavy lifting for me. Thanks.
Speaking for my own Santa post, at least, there is absolutely no intent to ridicule, or even diminish faith. I am not sure that a world of faithless individuals is even better than a world of skeptics. The question at hand is what the most convincing arguments are for atheism, and the choice of arguments will be most powerful when the argument is tailored to the believer’s own constructs…
In addressing those who do believe, my experience has been that they believe in their God, but not other people’s gods, and not Santa. They must have some approach for this construct of theirs. My comment about Santa was (as DtC has pointed out earlier) simply to find arguments convincing to, and specific to, the individual with whom you are debating the issue. The way to find which arguments will be convincing for any given individual is to find a mythical being in whom they do NOT believe, and then try to find out why those same arguments would not apply to the belief in their God.
And to address Jesticulator’s earlier comments:
*By extending the analogy, he is saying:
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That god is a human invention.
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That no magic [by God] has ever actually been shown to occur.
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That there are dozens of obviously invented traditions around god.*
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Correct.
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Correct.
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Correct.
Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
I believe this is where someone says, “Do you have any evidence that there isn’t any evidence?”
Then the penguin on the telly explodes.
Well, I’m glad that this thread has taken on a more amicable tone. Saves me the time of composing a scintillatingly scathing post in the BBQ Pit. 
Okay, uh, what did you think I meant when I said:
This is how **Malthus ** started the post that I quoted:
Seriously, am I missing something here?
In post #147, I said:
Perhaps I should have asked: Do I have to state my position in every post:
Post #91 (with added emphasis):
And, in the same post:
Also, you’ll notice that I never capitalize “god”, except when I’m expressing a theist’s viewpoint. For example, post #123:
Too subtle? Perhaps.
And, I do capitalize it if it’s at the beginning of a sentence, or if I forget …
Furthermore, in post #155, **Diogenes ** says:
In any case, it seems to me that very few atheists in this thread explicitly stated their position. Of course, I realize that most have of them have been around for a long and their position is widely known. But, it seems that I was immediately labelled as a theist because I questioned an atheist’s argument.
Oh well. I’ll know next time.
As I’m sure you realize by now, I am not going to argue in favor of theism. Most of my comments in this thread were related to your post.
For example, there was this exchange in post #97:
Given your three “Corrects” above, perhaps you can imagine my exasperation.
Thank you. 
Malthus, to avoid the issue of purported mockery of childish beliefs, can you provide any examples of imaginary entities, preferrably who are said to possess some kind of power, that are not associated with childish beliefs?
For example, an alternative to the FSM, for the hypersensitive, is the teacup in space, but it doesn’t work well as an analogy until one starts to suggest that the teacup can act in some fashion to affect humanity or human behavior.
I think that the problem is not in terms of the selection of figures associated with childish beliefs, but rather that once there are commonly rejected supernatural figures, belief in them automatically takes on something like apparent naivete, childishness or silliness. Belief in Thor and belief in Santa Claus, in my opinion, are not equally childish, but are both potentially seen as mock-worthy, because they are not commonly held beliefs among adults.
My point is that the analogy is no less valid, nor is it necessarily constructed to mock. It’s just nearly impossible to make the valid point underlying the comparison without potentially risking hurt feelings. The legitimate question is “Why do we commonly reject certain supernatural figures and not others? Is there some empirical rationale for doing so? If not, how do we then justify a continuing belief in the preferred figure over the non-preferred figure?”
I thus reject the assertion that the question is based in a desire to mock. I’m sure that this has all been said better by Bryan Ekers and begbert2, so I apologize for offering a “me too” post.
Well, the question is just a question, i.e. a question about Santa Claus or Thor, Zeus, IPU, FSM, or a teacup . The underlying *desire * depends on the person asking the question.
I think that *your * questions are great! No insult, and no easy way for the theist to turn them around. At least, none that I can easily think of.
But, I’m not a highly-trained theologist … :eek:
Damn. :smack:
theologian
Wait, maybe I was right the first time …
Well, except of course that you are saying the exact opposite thing from Bryan Ekers, who has expressly stated that his intent in using the exact same analogy is to mock.
Seems an odd sort of “me too” post when you are opposed in this manner. :smack: But I digress.
In any event, why go for the tooth fairy when there is a whole universe of imaginary entities out there belief in which is not childish - namely, everyone elses’ god(s)? “Why Jesus and not Ganesh” is obviously less sneering a question than “why Ganesh and not the tooth fairy”?
The first question seems to me to be far the more thought-provoking; the second, basically a sneer. The “sneer” content of the analogy is pretty obvious if you consider making the argument to someone outside of your own culture.
In any event, a person may be perfectly sincere in their desire to provoke thought and not to cause offence; but I would think an unbiased person would easily understand that comparing someone’s cherisherd beliefs, no matter what they may be, to a childish story is going to cause offense (and as we know, some mean to!). Obviously not as great as, but akin to, Godwinizing an argument over history or society.
Because, obviously, those entities are not commonly rejected. In fact, in my understanding, the typical response to questions about why Jesus and not Ganesh is that they are in fact the same. Figures from other religions are merely the interpretation of god in a different format.
Thus, the analogy is undercut without the opportunity to address the inherent questions as to why some supernatural figures are rejected and others are not.
Angels? Ghosts? Saints? Avatars? Other people’s gods, past and present? All part of the same God?
Someone open-minded enough to believe that all religions and all supernatural beings believed in by others are in essence the same is highly unlikely to be fazed by your Santa Claus analogy. They probably have a somewhat unsimplistic view of the nature of religion and mythology and have, all on their own, already considered such an argument.
But again, this is a digression. The issue I brought up is whether such an argument is effective. In my opinion, it is not, for reasons similar to (but obvioiusly lesser than) the reasons why analogizing to the Nazis doesn’t work well in other contexts, however appropriate the analogy may be, and whatever the motives for making it - it is simply inherently perceived by the target as belittling to compare someone’s cherished beliefs to a childish belief.
Well, but people seem irrationally wedded to their darling “Proof By Santa” argument despite the glaring hole I pointed out earlier. The religious person might say “I admit that belief in God is going to take a certain willingness to tolerate a lack of absolute proof, and you may find the evidence and arguments presented of such a form that you find them unacceptable. However, I’m happy to talk as long as you’re willing to listen. As long as you’re interested in intellectual honesty, though, it may save time for both of us if you choose not to extend belief to entities that are from the get-go understood by both of us not to exist. We already have a thoroughly adequate reason for not believing in them without needing to get into the philosophical difficulty of belief without proof.”
But, you know, as long as people want to carry on yelling “Tooth Fairy! Santa! Invisible Pink Unicorn! Dragon in my garage! Teapot orbiting Saturn!”, I am perfectly content for them to do so. My equanimity is largely undisturbed.
Which shows a lack of understand for the reason the Santa or FSM or IPU arguments are used. No one is saying that the theist should believe in them. The question of the theist is why it is reasonable to believe in God but not them, given similar levels of evidence. It is not an issue of absolute proof either - there is no absolute proof of pretty much anything non-mathematical, but that is no excuse for more or less randomly believing some things and not others.
The reasons for believing in God vs. Santa I’ve seen are:
- Lots and lots of people have believed in God for a very long time. But lots and lots of people have believed in Hindu gods even longer.
- People coming up with the IPU aren’t serious, but founders of Christianity were. Seriousness does not mean truth, we don’t actually know how serious they were, Joseph Smith was serious also.
- My daddy and mommy believe. Most of the people in my town believe, so it must be true. I don’t think I need to get into that one.
- Various cosmological arguments for some god or other. None of these, however, point to the god most people actually believe in, and many actually argue against Western religions, which got the creation story seriously wrong.
- Historical evidence. This used to be good, but as more and more primary sources are uncovered real history, as we can construct it, is looking less and less like that in the early part of the Bible.
So, if you believe by faith why is believing in the IPU by faith wrong? If you believe by evidence, what evidence will convince you otherwise, and let’s see what real evidence there is - evidence that admittedly doesn’t exist for the IPU.
- I use the IPU because I consider the FSM a deity come lately *
What about this instead:
'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.’
To my mind, this is a more convincing argument for athiesm, it doesn’t require ridiculing others or treating them as if they were ignorant, and is I would submit closer to the reality of the matter to boot.
So your solution is to argue that Santa is a myth reflecting love and sharing and god is a myth reflecting nature? That’s all well and good, but irrelevant of the issue of constructing arguments with theists. There’s no “the” in your theism.