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"Isn't It Silly to Compare God to Santa Claus?"
I've found, somewhat to my mystification, that some people won't even think about any comparisons between belief in
God and belief in Santa Claus--or belief in an imperceptible leprechaun named "Percival," or belief in the Flying Spaghetti
Monster, or belief in the Invisible Pink Unicorn (both the FSM and the IPU are widespread nontheist symbols)--because
they find the comparison silly; yet the point of an analogy between Santa Claus and God is precisely that although a
non-self-contradictory story can be told about either one, neither should be believed in simply because
such a story can be told and either should be believed in only on the basis of good reason.
One could claim that Santa Claus lived at the North Pole, behind an invisibility shield, so that we couldn't see him; and
that his sleigh and his reindeer had antigravity devices attached to them, so that they could fly; and that his bag reached
into a fourth spatial dimension, so that all of the toys of all of the children in all of the world could easily fit into it; and that
he used a time dilation device, so that he could get to all of the childrens' houses in one night; and that he used a matter
transporter like that of Star Trek in order to get into and out of all of their houses; and that he used a
memory-altering device to make parents think that they had bought their children the toys that showed up under their
trees on Christmas morning; and so on. I think the teller of such a story would be making logically self-consistent claims.
(If not, I have no doubt that a better story could be told that was logically self-consistent.) But despite its logical
self-consistency, it shouldn't be believed. It is prima facie absurd, and it has no good evidence in support of
it, despite all of the Christmas stories we've all heard, and it shouldn't be believed.
One should hold stories of God to a similar standard. First, they should be logically self-consistent; I'm not sure that all
of them are. Second, they should have good evidence supporting them before they should be believed. One should
have good reason for belief.
And that's all the comparison between belief in God and belief in Santa Claus is intended to point out. You wouldn't
believe in Santa Claus without good reason. Why would you believe in God without good reason? To do so would
be to make an epistemic mistake--just like the one a believer in Santa Claus would be making. We all understand
that conceivability is not good reason for belief.
You might think you do have good reason. Well, I doubt that you actually do; I'll be devoting various portions
of this Web site to demonstrations that purported reasons for belief really aren't good reasons at all. But if you do think
you have good justification for your belief in God, then whether or not to believe becomes a question of evaluation of
reasons--evaluation of evidence and evaluation of argumentation--rather than one of epistemic procedure. If, after
reading through my responses to various purported reasons for belief, you still think you have good reason, I'd like to
hear from you. Maybe you have a reason that I, too, will think is a good one. (Having looked at quite a few
purportedly "good" reasons for belief in God and having found them all wanting, I'm inclined to doubt that you will be
able to cite a reason that I'll find good, too; but I certainly wouldn't want to rule out the possibility.)
Anyway, the point of the comparison between belief in God and belief in Santa Claus is exactly the point I want to
make. We all agree that we shouldn't believe in Santa Claus, precisely because there isn't good reason to think
that Santa Claus actually exists. That we also should not believe in God without good reason--that we should not
believe in God unless we have good reason to think that God actually exists--is the point of the analogy. So, no, I don't
think it's a silly comparison.
(© 2007 by Keith Brian Johnson)
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