I used to think Santa was a myth

'Tis the season for anecdotes...

I didn't ever take Santa very seriously when I was younger.  Or at least, not as far as I can recall.  And I thought that no one else took Santa seriously either.

I mean, kids believing in Santa, that's just something that happens in the movies, right?  There are countless movies depicting little kids who believe in Santa Claus.  They'll write letters to Santa.  They'll wait excitedly at the stairs for Santa to come, deliver presents, and eat the cookies and milk.  Kids believe in all these elaborate legends and rituals, sometimes even in the face of disbelief from their parents or older kids.

Of course, in these movies, Santa also happens to be real.  But Santa isn't real.  So why should belief in Santa be real?  For me, belief in Santa was all part of the mythos, along with the elves, reindeer, and red suit.

But some time ago, my dad told me that he and my mother made a conscious decision not to emphasize Santa Claus.  (They also made a decision not to emphasize heaven and hell, but that's another story.)  The reason?  Apparently, one of my uncles had a very negative experience with Santa.  One year, he found out Santa wasn't real, and he broke down crying.  He had a huge tantrum, and IIRC, also questioned the existence of God.

And then the next year, he forgot that Santa wasn't real.  And then he found out again and had another tantrum.

So it turns out that my childhood experience was not identical to other people's childhood experiences.  And plenty of kids really do believe in Santa, as well as the Tooth Fairy.  In a study I found, about 70% of 3-year-olds believe in Santa, as opposed to 78% who believe in the garbage man.  83% of 5-year-olds believe in Santa, and a third of 9-year-olds believe in Santa.

This just boggles my mind.  Next you'll tell me that kids actually write letters to Santa (what does the post office even do with them?), actually leave out cookies and milk on Christmas Eve (don't they go bad?), and parents actually dress up as Santa to fool their children.  This entails a much greater societal investment into the legend than I previously thought.

And what a bizarre legend it is.  Often, it's about the conflict between the believing children and disbelieving adults.  And as the narrative goes, it's the children who are in the right for believing.  Why??  Why is belief for its own sake a value?  It's one thing to claim that it has some value for child psychological development, but I hardly think that the legend has caught the public imagination because of psychological research.

I used to believe we lived in a world where children only believed in Santa in the stories.  That world made much more sense, but now I know that is not the world we live in.  I guess I learned a valuable lesson in critical thinking.

Interlude: God is infinite

This is a continuation of "A few things wrong about the cosmological argument," an ongoing series. This will be a lighter post.

In William Lane Craig's formulation of the Kalam Cosmological argument, he argues that infinities cannot exist, therefore the universe began, therefore God exists.

But... surely God is infinite?  You know... actually infinite.

This seems like such a jarring inconsistency in the argument.  I give William Lane Craig more credit than that, and I'm sure he has a functional response somewhere.  Let's just pretend that I've put in the effort to find his response, and that I've been suitably convinced that of all the problems with the cosmological argument, this is not one of them.  *wink*

As many of you know I went to a Catholic high school.  It wasn't so bad.  Actually a really good high school, run by Jesuits.  But yes, it was a religious education.  Morning prayers.  Religiously infused mission statement.  Monthly services.  Retreats.  A few teachers who were Jesuits.  I was Catholic at the time, so I didn't mind. Except for the monthly services.  Mass is boring!

I also took some religious classes, learning about the Bible, social justice, and apologetics.  They didn't call it apologetics, but that's what it was.  The teacher for that class was pretty good.  He had a flair for the dramatic and comedic.  He used lots of creative teaching techniques, and frequently showed videos.  From a high schooler's perspective, showing videos in class was like the best thing ever.

I think he was a fan of William Lane Craig.  When I later encountered Lane Craig's arguments, they seemed utterly familiar to me.  I consider them to be classic apologetic arguments, though this is perhaps only my perception.  "Classic" is just whatever I learned about in high school.

Along the same lines, I also believe that one of the "classic" understandings of God is The Infinite.  God isn't merely infinite, God is The Infinite.  You can't possibly comprehend God with your finite mind!  That would be like trying to comprehend the integers, or quantum field theory!  (Silly physicists...)

I took all this stuff with just a grain of salt, but he said one thing that really bothered me.  Paraphrased from memory fragments:

God is defined as The Infinite.  Suppose there were two gods.  Then there would be two infinites.  But there can only be one infinity, because all infinities are overlapping and identical.  Therefore, there can only be one God.

Arrrgh!  I mean, I don't mind arguing for a single God.  Whatever.  But man, that is some bad math!  The set of even numbers and the set of odd numbers are both infinite but they don't overlap!  Also, neither odd nor even numbers are identical to God.  This got me to thinking along other lines, like what is God's cardinality?  Does God's power set have greater cardinality than God?

This series on the cosmological argument is in about the same spirit.  I don't particularly care if people argue for the existence of God.  I definitely don't care if people argue about whether God is single or multiple.  At least, I don't care in the abstract.  But sometimes I see these arguments, and wow!  Bad math, bad physics, bad argumental form.  If someone argues that we're justified in believing an invisible conscious being that can only touch us in our "hearts", that's okay on some level.  (Well, no, it's ridiculous.)  But when you start talking bad math?  Blasphemy!

A few people have accused me of hiding behind lots of complicated logic, math, and physics.  It's all an attempt to dazzle people in to agreeing with me.  But that's not the point.  The point is to trick you all into reading about logic, math, and physics, when you just wanted a refutation of the cosmological argument.  Ha!  Ha ha ha!

...
Tune in next time for more of...

"A few things wrong about the cosmological argument"
1. Actual and potential infinities
2. Actual infinities in physics
3. What is real?
4. The "absurdity" of Hilbert's Hotel
5. Interlude: God is infinite
6. Forming Infinity, one by one 
7. Uncertain beginnings
8. Entropy: The unsolved problem
9. Kalam as an inductive argument
10. Getting from First Cause to God