Believing in Santa once again.

[KWED]

I don't say "I have the power to prevent"

Once again, it isn't what you said, but what you implied by what you said.

You specifically said you used the expression to mean "I do not prevent anyone from believing as they wish"

If you say you are not preventing someone from doing something, it implies that you are able to prevent them if you so wished. Otherwise it is meaningless to say it. Like saying "I do not prevent the sun rising in the morning" .

Again, winkeyface not appropriate here because I am giving a serious response to your serious attempt to explain your position.
I understand that you probably do not believe you have the power to prevent me from believing as I wish, but technically you have implied that you do.

 

[JustGeorge]

I understood perfectly well what they meant, so didn't require clarification. However, I also noticed the implication of the words used and thought it would be funny to point it out, especially in the context of the subject matter.
I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition!
(Note: the reference to the Spanish Inquisition was not because I actually think I was being questioned by members of said inquisitorial organisation. It was a humorous reference to the Monty Python "Trouble at t'mill" sketch - which ironically was based on the explanation of unclear terms. The expression is sometimes used jokingly when faced with unexpected interrogation of meaning, in a social context.)

I feel I have missed out on a lot of jokes by being fairly unfamiliar with Monty Python.

 

[Clara Tea]

Did you believe in Santa Claus as a kid? My dad and the step mothers I had were all for lying to me and telling me some magical jolly fat man gives me presents once a year. It seems to be tradition amongst many, telling kids to believe in Santa Claus.
Wasn’t it nice? Ignorance is bliss. But, eventually, you grew out of the Santa Claus belief.
Imagine now that you were to try to believe in Santa Claus once again. You miss the gifts. You also miss the idea of an omniscient being judging your morality and rewarding it.
How would you go about believing in Santa Claus once again? You can’t! There is no way, once the truth has been realized.
So why does one ask an atheist to believe in God? Is it not the same as asking an adult to believe in Santa?
Discuss?
I know I’m comparing a belief in God to a belief in Santa, but I don’t intend to belittle belief in God. Nor do I necessarily believe that atheists have a monopoly on truth.

We can believe in anything, but it doesn't make it true. I could believe that I fly around all day on a unicorn (watch for falling debris--not all is wonderful in magicland).

Most people set boundaries of what they will believe and what they will not. We also set boundaries of what we will tolerate or not (the point at which we fight back).

 

[Clara Tea]

@RayofLight , I just want to offer another perspective.

My parents did the 'Santa Lie' with me. Honestly, I enjoyed it. And when Mom finally uncovered the truth, she cautioned me not to ruin it for all the little kids, so they could have fun, too(which I honored). I could see it was a cultural thing, not a personal thing, so I didn't take it personally. I didn't see it so much as a lie, but a make believe game.

Some kids are devastated by the Santa Lie, others are glad to have participated. I'm genuinely sorry you found the experience upsetting. We did the Santa thing with the oldest for a short while; when we told him it wasn't true, he told us we were lying, and that Santa was indeed real! So what if Santa didn't bring him presents; he must exist, or have existed somewhere else... He wasn't bothered, either.

Now, when I was in elementary school, and I started noticing home buyer's brochures and strange people visiting the house, and asked my mom if they were trying to sell the house, and she lied to me... well, that pissed me off. I suspected she was lying, so I asked Dad, who uncovered the truth. Mom said she didn't want to upset me, but I felt I had a right to know if my entire world was about to change.

Luckily, no one bought the house. Its my sister's now.

Sometimes, it is right to lie.

Example:

Stroke victim with bad memory kept asking where her "late" husband was. She thought that he was still alive. The psychologist said that she had to be grounded in reality. That meant that every five minutes, when she asked where her husband was, she was told that he was dead. So, every five minutes she burst into tears. I think that it would have been more compassionate to tell her a lie (husband went to 711 for a slushy, and will be back in 15 minutes). Why make her relive tragedy over and over again?

Many use religion as a crutch because they can't cope with life (like my aunt having two stillborn kids). They need some kind of fantasy to keep them from getting utterly depressed. They have to believe that their babies are alive and having fun in heaven. Many people use God as a crutch. My aunt writhed on the ground with her congregation, and they all babbled (presumably in God's language, while talking in tongues). I think that most psychologists would think that she (and her congregation) were nuts.

If I believed that I could fly around on my unicorn all day, what harm would it cause?

But, what if the unicorn pilots all got together by the millions and voted for the idiot son of a politician (W. Bush), the defied God's laws (thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not kill, etc). Surely the nation should have been appauled. The nation would have been justly shocked if the Communists got together in a group to change our government. Why not be shocked about the group of people who see invisible Gods?

 

[stvdv]

Once again, it isn't what you said, but what you implied by what you said.

You specifically said you used the expression to mean "I do not prevent anyone from believing as they wish"

You quote 1 line of my explanation, better quote it all

I don't say "I have the power to prevent"

I say "I don't even want to try to prevent"
as in
"I don't even debate to try to prevent"

The Beatles were singing
"Let it Be"

I let everone Be... whatever they believe

 

[stvdv]

Once again, it isn't what you said, but what you implied by what you said.

You specifically said you used the expression to mean "I do not prevent anyone from believing as they wish"

It seems to me you try to find fault, this has nothing to do with debate

Or do you want to say, that you had no clue what I meant?

Seems my feeling was spot on from the start

So, bye bye

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I see you are an atheist. Can you show to me in a sentence that theism is wrong?

It's not upto me to show that your claim is wrong.
It's upto you to show that your claim is right.

Burden of proof and all that.
I'm an atheist for the simple reason that theism is unable to meet its burden of proof.

When something can't be sufficiently demonstrated to justify belief, then I don't believe it.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Ok. Prove it in a sentence.

Again, shifting the burden of proof.
You are not assumed correct until demonstrated otherwise.

In fact, we usually do it the other way round with positive claims...
We consider them wrong until sufficiently shown to be correct...

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Faith requires no belief. Faith is based on hope, not on belief.

It's how one justifies the belief.
Faith, hope... whatever you wish to call it.

These word games are not going to cut it.

Religious faith is a faith-based belief as opposed to an evidence-based belief.
Call it "hope" if you want (I'll actually agree here). Doesn't change what I said.

Belief is just the presumption that what we hope to be so, is so. It's irrational. (And to my mind, dishonest). Whereas faith requires no such pretense. Faith can be fully aware that what we hope to be so may not be. But that it also may be. And if it is, it's worth hoping in. So we do.

"so we do". Which would be: presuming that what we hope to be so, is so. Which, as you say, is irrational.

If acting on this hope proves valid, and we get the results we'd hoped for, then we will continue to choose to act on our hopes, again.

The problem with that is that you don't put these results to proper testing. You have no methodology whatsoever to filter out bias, wishful thinking, confirmation bias etc etc etc etc.

Because when we do, it fails. Every time.

If not, then we will probably change what we are hoping for, or how we are acting on our hopes, or maybe stop hoping all together.

All the evidence shows that that isn't so.

Again, neither belief nor evidence is required for us to choose to act on hope. Which is what faith, is.

You are making a semantic argument and thereby totally ignoring the implications.

 

[Messianic Israelite]

Did you believe in Santa Claus as a kid? My dad and the step mothers I had were all for lying to me and telling me some magical jolly fat man gives me presents once a year. It seems to be tradition amongst many, telling kids to believe in Santa Claus.
Wasn’t it nice? Ignorance is bliss. But, eventually, you grew out of the Santa Claus belief.
Imagine now that you were to try to believe in Santa Claus once again. You miss the gifts. You also miss the idea of an omniscient being judging your morality and rewarding it.
How would you go about believing in Santa Claus once again? You can’t! There is no way, once the truth has been realized.
So why does one ask an atheist to believe in God? Is it not the same as asking an adult to believe in Santa?
Discuss?
I know I’m comparing a belief in God to a belief in Santa, but I don’t intend to belittle belief in God. Nor do I necessarily believe that atheists have a monopoly on truth.

Hi Xavier Graham. Good afternoon. Have you ever read Romans 1:

"19 because that which is known of Yahweh is manifest in them; for Yahweh manifested it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse: 21 because that, knowing Yahweh, they glorified him not as Elohim, neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened."

Yahweh's power is seen through the things He has made. Through the many beautiful things we see in nature. To the many lifeforms He created. One must truly be blind to see all these things around them and claim that it is not part of Intelligent Design. Santa Claus is a myth. A myth that is easily refuted. But an Almighty Being creating the things around us is not only logical, it's the only sensible conclusion one can draw from the evidence. Further, the Santa Claus myth doesn't involve a sacred text which reveals the history of the Jewish people, our Messiah and Savior and sin-bearer, the things we need to do to enter the Kingdom of Yahweh and to live a spiritually fulfilling life. Do you really think that a big bang, 13.8 billion years ago, brought the universe into existence and initially produced hydrogen, the simplest chemical element; hydrogen then evolved into other chemical elements—and eventually people. It's laughable. It is to me anyway.

Further, you are missing three key points:
1. Macroevolution cannot occur.

“The basic flaw of all evolutionary views is the origin of the information in living beings. It has never been shown that a coding system and semantic information could originate by itself in a material medium, and the information theorems predict that this will never be possible. A purely material origin of life is thus precluded.” Gitt, p. 124.

2. Outside intelligence was involved in the creation of the universe and all forms of life.

Information theory tells us that the only known way to decrease the entropy of an isolated system is by having intelligence in that system. [See, for example, Charles H. Bennett, “Demons, Engines and the Second Law,” Scientific American, Vol. 257, November 1987, pp. 108–116.] Because the universe is far from its maximum entropy level, a vast intelligence is the only known means by which the universe could have been brought into being. [See also “Second Law of Thermodynamics” on page 35.]

3. Life could not result from a “big bang.”

If the “big bang” occurred, all the matter in the universe was once a hot gas. A gas is one of the most random systems known to science. Random, chaotic movements of gas molecules contain no useful information. Because an isolated system, such as the universe, cannot generate non-trivial information, the “big bang” could not produce the complex, living universe we have today, which contains astronomical amounts of useful information.

In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood - 15. Codes, Programs, and Information (creationscience.com)