As the "silly season" is fast looming, I thought I would pop this question up for opinion.
Do any of the Christians on this site believe in Santa Claus.
If no, why not and if so, why YES?
Question for Christians
Moderator: Moderators
Post #11
Skyler,
First of all apologies for not having replied sooner. In all honesty I actually thought I had.
SKYLER WROTE:
There is no difference as far as I can see. There has to be "belief" in either FIRST before the reward or consequence comes into play and as such, as you dont' believe in santa claus, you got NADA when gift receiving (from santa) time came around.
SKYLER WROTE:
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First of all apologies for not having replied sooner. In all honesty I actually thought I had.
SKYLER WROTE:
I don't see we agreed in that at all. I am just pointing out that ungenerated/generated is to christianity what naughty/nice is to santa belief.I thought we had agreed that regenerated/unregenerated was the criterion, not belief in Santa?
There is no difference as far as I can see. There has to be "belief" in either FIRST before the reward or consequence comes into play and as such, as you dont' believe in santa claus, you got NADA when gift receiving (from santa) time came around.
SKYLER WROTE:
Hmm.. perhaps you could hook me up with a link for me to peruse? I would like to know though, are the passages you interpret figuratively, the ones you personally take literally?There actually is one "out there." I've explained that I interpret passages as figurative in such a way as to construct a logically consistent worldview.
SKYLER WROTE:
Well no. YOU do as part of your belief system. I am not part of your collective "WE" here, nor it seems is the majority of the world population. Those of us outside the "box" can see full well the inanity of the gospels and can see quite clearly the problems with these purported "inerrant" and "divinely inspired" MAN MADE works.Correct. For that we have to go back to the Gospels.
OK well I will go further with you and will compare santa & jesus this time to horus, mithra...or any of the PRE jesus, "jesus's"...(and there are MANY MORE) the generated/ungenerated -to- nice/naughty thing still applies...so it seems that to these other "blokes" mentioned, getting me as close as possible to exact origin, it appears that jesus is just as convoluted a notion as santa is.Me too. It's probably because you used a lossy simplification algorithm rather than a lossless one.
SKLYER WROTE:
No. It explains it to you, given you believe in god and as such you merely put it down to that. To those NOT believing in god, in this day and age, other explanations are possible, whereby removing the "miracle " label. If you can give me examples of such "miracles" you speak of, allegedly absent of any naturalistic explanation, I would be more than happy to give them a whirl.They explain it quite well given the existence of a God who is capable of performing such miracles, and in absence of any naturalistic explanation.
Perhaps you are unaware but you are actually negating your own belief system here too. jesus is not KNOWN to have existed in reality either. Admittedly though, santa's place of (alleged) residence, the north pole only came to be "the north pole" circa 1909CE, where as Nazareth only came to be in the late 4th century CE. (yes.. CURRENT ERA...hundreds of years AFTER jesus's purported "life").Without knowing about the possible explanation of "Dad did it", the "Santa did it" may be the best explanation. However, if the possible explanation "Dad did it" is known, then the "Santa did it" explanation is clearly inferior because it requires positing additional entities to those already known to exist to explain a cause which could be as easily explained by an entity which is already known to exist.
SKYLER WROTE:
But here is the irony. Religion IS political. I am truly sorry though that your friend was not happy with the outcome.My family wasn't really following the election. A friend of mine was, and I heard he got hit pretty hard. He's kind of fanatical about politics.
SKYLER WROTE:
Until your comment, I had no knowledge as to Kagin or his unicorns. (I am an atheist by assumed label only) . I think though that my wilderbeast is different, because hey...at least wilderbeast EXIST as a proven "entity". I reckon if anything, your jesus fellow and the invisible unicorn are "related" and your jesus has been relegated as their feeder and trough cleaner.I wonder, that wilderbeast wouldn't be related to Edwin Kagin's invisible unicorns, would it?