Monthly Archives: December 2008

God vs Santa Claus

So, a few times I’ve been asked why arguing against the existence of God is so important to me as an atheist. Most recently, my sister Grace (who, by the way, is awesome, and is one of the very few to respond to my apostasy with genuine questions, rather than blind assertions), asked:

if God is just a magic man and/or type of Santa Claus… why all the fuss in arguing His non-existence? If He truly does not exist why are people so passionate about denying Him? What is the point on your end? people don’t write about denying Santa Claus, because they don’t believe he is real but even if some people do believe in Santa no one spend their time trying to convince them.

The response I gave, that I’m actually not passionate about denying God, and that the concept of God doesn’t bother me, is true, but also potentially misleading and may have been missing the point. As I also said in the response, there are things I’m passionate in arguing against, and while I may feel indifferent about the actual existence or non-existence of God, I feel very strongly about particular conceptions of God, or certain arguments that are built on the premise of His existence, and I think I can state my position a little more clearly as follows:

  • If you’re naughty, Santa Claus gives you coal in your stocking; he doesn’t torture and maim you for all eternity because you didn’t accept his only begotten elf as your personal savior (and after having created you in such a way that you would be “naughty”).
  • Santa Claus never told women that they must be submissive to and obey their husbands, respecting their authority.
  • Nobody uses Santa Claus as a pretext to determine who is allowed to fall in love, marry, and have a family, and who is not allowed.
  • Santa Claus doesn’t make anyone feel torrents of guilt just because they notice that a member of the opposite (or, same) sex is very, very attractive.
  • Santa Claus is used to manipulate you into buying things; God is used to manipulate you into supporting evil wars and evil leaders.
  • Belief in Santa Claus means you might remain ignorant about where your presents really come from; some beliefs about God mean that you remain vastly ignorant and deceived about where we come from… and where we are going—and are compelled to strive to keep everyone else just as ignorant.

    • There are a number of people for whom God does not fit any of the above at all. I have no quarrel with them. Some atheists claim that “liberal” religion is bad because it provides a sort of safe haven for fundamentalism, but I have yet to see a strong case for this. If all your God does is provide you with hope, and a motivation to do what is right as determined by your own conscience, and to love your fellow human, then good on ya. I could care less about convincing you He or She isn’t real. It’s when belief in God begins to convince you that what is evil is really good, or that some factually-supported knowledge must be untrue just because it contradicts what your God said that I become indignant. And yes, that’s the sort of God-belief I will be somewhat passionate about: because, unlike Santa Claus, it has a very real and direct impact on the world in which I live.

    A Whole ’Nother Logic?

    If man bases ideas on his logic, than all he says will be all there is. Mans Logic is Man’s, where as Gods Logic, though given to some men, is Gods. So, either choose logic given by man, or logic given by God.

    Found in the “Favorite Quotes” section of my brother Joseph Cowan’s Facebook profile. I suspect it’s of his own authorship.

    I was going to comment further on it here, but thought better of it after realizing it’s a waste of breath. But really, if you can’t instantly find several glaring things wrong with this *cough* logic, then you are already beyond hope. You are a slave to your emotions, and have no ability, or even the desire, to use the mind “God gave you”.

    All that logic is is a definition of the words “true” and “false”: those words have no meaning outside of “man’s logic”. You can say that the existence of God is “true”, or that God exists outside/defies logic¹, but to attempt to claim both simultaneously is to not even know what the word “true” means. What can I do at that point? It’s exactly like trying to convince someone that 1 + 2 isn’t 6¾: if they won’t accept your definitions of 1, 2, and +, there’s nothing further to say.

    ¹ Although, the latter amounts to meaninglessness, while the former is actually provably incorrect for any meaningful definition of God.

    These sorts of quotes always get my goat, because one of the few things in this world that can consistently and reliably piss me off is irresponsible ignorance, especially willful ignorance. Quotes like this are like saying, “I’m fine with my ignorance, I have no interest in thinking about anything. I’ll believe whatever I want to, whether it adds up or not, simply because it’s what I want to believe in.”

    What God Doesn’t Explain

    Following is an excerpt from my response to this comment from smeagain, which I’ve made into a short blog post as it pretty much summarizes why I’m an atheist (as opposed to some other variety of ex-Fundamentalist-Christian). It doesn’t really say anything I haven’t said before, but it makes a pretty decent summary.

    I have come to many of the same conclusions as Micah, though I don’t call myself an atheist, I can no longer call myself a Christian.  It still feels weird saying it.

    All of this aside, I can’t find a way to explain away God.  Sure maybe life on earth evolved independently, difficult to accept but easier than zapped into being by the creator.  The whole universe exploding into existence from “the big bang”.  but where did all that energy come from.

    To me the more science discovers, the more we see the nature of
    God.

    To me, the more science discovers, the less is explained by the existence of God.

    As you say, “where did all that energy come from”—the big bang can’t have been the very start, and I don’t know anyone who thinks it was. It’s simply “as far back as we can trace”. Something must have been before it. Something must have had no beginning. To minds that have developed in a universe where all things have both beginnings and ends, it’s boggling. And yet, to say that God is that “something” explains nothing. Why isn’t God subject to the same “beginning” that everything else must be subject to? It’s certain that there is something eternal, but answering “where did the universe find its beginning?” with “God” doesn’t actually answer anything; it simply shifts it to “where did God find Its beginning?”. You can assert that “God had no beginning”, but you can just as easily assert that “the universe had no beginning”, or the “underlying fabric of matter-spawning quanta”, or whatever. To the question, “where does all this come from?”, the answer “a Magic Man did it” is not an answer. It’s simply another question in disguise.

    That’s why I’m an atheist: there are no remaining questions for me to which God is any kind of reasonable answer. It’s true, this leaves a number of questions to which I now have no answers of any sort; I just think that admitting that the answers haven’t been found is more intellectually honest than substituting made-up ones.

    That said, I don’t have anything against belief in a God, as a concept in itself: I don’t even think it’s a “superstition” so much as a sometimes-convenient, if illusory, abstraction. It’s when folks take this God for whom no evidence exists, and add detailed knowledge about His character and what He wants us to do and not to do, for which no credible source exists—that’s when I start to become concerned.