Is Santa Clause a god for kids?

Remember Santa Clause? When my parents told me he wasn't real, this was no surprise to me. I suppose I was even a skeptic back then. Looking back, there are similarities between the Christian religion and the Santa Clause story.

Big Brother

Even though I had my doubts about whether Santa was real, I would still go along with it. I was told that he had telepathy, so I made sure to tell myself that he was real just in case it turned out to be true (I bet many Christians are this way regarding their belief in God). But not only did Santa have the ability to read minds, but the ability to see what people are doing at all times. Both God and Santa monitor everything a person does and thinks.

Coal and Hell.

The similarities between receiving eternal damnation in Hell and getting coal instead of presents is obvious. If you are bad, you get coal/go to hell. Both fairy tales push this concept. They both cause believers to behave well due to the fear of being punished.

Wish-list and praying.

Both the wish-list and praying are similar in concept. A believer asks Santa/God for something they want; they may, or may not get it, all depending on whether Santa/God feels they deserve it. This is redundant of course, considering they both can read minds (they would already know what is wanted).

Believe or else!

Both Santa and God punish people for not believing they are real (coal and Hell). Older kids would tell the younger kids that Santa wasn't real. The younger kids tell the older kids that not believing in Santa results in getting no presents and coal. Believers in God tell nonbelievers that they will be sent Hell. There are similarities between "younger kids" and "believers", as well as the "older kids" and "nonbelievers"; the "older kids" tended to have their position because they were better informed, same goes for "nonbelievers". The younger kids had the position they did because they trusted their parents and were afraid of getting coal. And obviously the "believers" are afraid of Hell, and trusted their parents and church etc.

Warping of truth.

St. Nick was a real person. The basic story is about a guy that was born around 300 AD, in the area of what is now Turkey. He was born into a large amount of wealth. He loved children and he ended up giving much of his wealth away to the less fortunate people in the area. Much of what he did was for religious reasons. This story has nothing magical about it, just a guy doing charity work. The real story was warped into an elaborate fable about him living in the North Pole, coming around once a year to give kids presents. Nearly the entire story that children learn about the guy is fabricated and filled with "magic". Like in the Bible, a lot of the places it refers to are real cities and towns. But the stories got warped so much, most of it is historically inaccurate. Some people will never let truth get in the way of a good story. The fairytale that sprout up surrounding St. Nick puts Christianity (or all religion for that matter) into perspective; both take real facts and warp them to the point of having very little truth left behind. And the motivations by the people that created them both were probably similar as well.

"All-powerful, All-knowing, All-loving"

Jews, Christians, and Muslims, among many things have one major thing in common. They describe their god as being all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. All three of these claims that they make can be shot down with logic.


All-Powerful

The claim of a god being all-powerful is logically impossible. Everything has it's limits and here is how logic debunks it. All you need to do when a religious person says "God/Allah is all powerful" is ask questions like: "can God/Allah make a chicken wing so hot that even he can't eat it?" Either answer would show that this god has limits in power and is not all-powerful after all, because being all-powerful is impossible, logically.

All-Knowing

This claim can be killed right at the source. When a religious person says his god is all-knowing, ask him two questions: "Do you have telepathy?" and "Are you all-knowing?". Both of these questions would have to be "yes" for anyone to say they know a god is all-knowing. If they pull the "it's in the Bible/Quran" crap, then ask them if the people that wrote the book possessed the same two qualities of infinite knowledge and telepathy. You can't know something is all knowing unless you know everything as well and are able to read the mind of the thing you are claiming is all-knowing. Pretty simple.

All-Loving

If a god was all-loving he would have an equal love for all people, plus the fact that it is claimed to be infinite; he would not show special treatment towards one person over another. For Judaism, all you need to do is go through the Old Testament, look at all the genocide, rape, and baby killing. That is more then enough evidence to show that this guy is not all-loving. For Christianity and Islam it can be shown that not only is this god not all-loving, but also has infinite hate towards certain people. The idea of Hell is the one of the most hateful ideas created by man. The idea is that a god sends certain people to burn and suffer with infinite pain for an infinite amount of time. Not only are none of these religions gods all-loving, they all are full of hate and both the Muslim and Christian god have infinite-hate towards the people they don't like.

Why faith is not good.

The word "faith" is very popular for the defenders of religion. When the religious are unable to defend their views against incoming criticism that is normally the route they take. They will say things like "it's just my faith", "it is a faith thing", "I'm taking a leap of faith", and so on. The definition of the word is: "Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence". Some dictionary's define it as a belief in a god, or having trust in other people. However the definition I am using is the best suited one for describing what religious people mean when they use the word.

Let me put it this way, which of these two people would be more likely to have unquestionable faith for religious ideas?

A)a guy that is very gullible
B)a guy that is very skeptical

The correct answer is "A", obviously. The point I am trying to make is gullibility is a positive attribute when it comes to having religious faith, the more gullible, the more easily a person will believe an idea is true without questioning it. So that would mean there is a positive correlation between being faithful and being gullible. I don't want to beat a dead horse here. But if faith and gullibility were people they would be best friends, they go together so well. What I don't understand is why faith is so widely viewed as being a good thing in America. Faith and gullibility should be universally viewed as going hand and hand and being negative. Saying you believe something is true because of faith is not a defense but an insult to yourself. You are either skeptical or gullible.

Evil of the Bible.

The claim of morality being a result of the Bible comes up often. I imagine (or hope) Christians are ignorant to what is actually written in the book, the Bible condones very immoral actions. Here is a quote that shows what I mean..

 When thou drawest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that are found therein shall become tributary unto thee, and shall serve thee. And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: and when Jehovah thy God delivereth it into thy hand, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: but the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take for a prey unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which Jehovah thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. But of the cities of these peoples, that Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth; but thou shalt utterly destroy them: the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; as Jehovah thy God hath commanded thee; - Deuteronomy 20:10-17

Tell a Christian this story, but change the setting, make it seem like it has nothing at all to do with their religion; they will agree that the people committing the act are doing something immoral. Then tell them the truth about the origin of the story. Watch them scramble to downplay it and perhaps even try to justify genocide, and slavery.

This is another reason why I think religion is evil. It makes believers think bad people are good, because God happens to be on their side. The Bible can turn evil actions into divine ones.

Sunday School Bigotry.

Back when I was a youngster I used to attend Sunday school. I remember this one day the discussion was on how important people are. The teacher had this poster; it had "God" at the top, "Man" below "God", then below "Man" there was "Women", followed by "animals". Keep in mind the majority of the class was female. He was saying things like "In gods eye man is more important then women, women are to obey man and god, and man is to obey god", or "God still loves women, but not as much as he loves man". What a nasty message. The indoctrination of children allows them to teach bigotry at an early age.

Religion: the greatest evil.

Religion is greatest source of hate, death, violence, and destruction that has ever shown itself on mankind. Almost all wars throughout the history of our species have ties to a particular religion or religions. While it is obvious that the worlds religions are nothing more then old myths, and silly superstitious tradition. Its negativity is much greater then just providing ignorance to reality, it is a way to justify horrible actions. There have been so many horrible actions in our history that have been caused by religion (I'm sure no one has a problem thinking of some).

Violence from religion is an obvious trend, a trend that continues to this day, and will continue into the future. The only difference is now the fanatics are in a position of obtaining nuclear weapons. There has been a lot of discussion about this, and it is a very serious issue. Believing you have the creator of the universe on your side gives you a lot of confidence in thinking you are right. If enough nukes get launched, it could "launch" this planet into a nuclear winter. Regardless of what a person believes, all people need to realize that violence is never a solution, it only perpetuates more violence and self-destruction.

Cannibalistic fantasy

When I got that call from the Mormon telemarketer, I recalling him saying one of the differences between Christianity and Mormonism; That difference was using water instead of wine to represent the blood of Jesus. These people actually pretend that they are drinking blood. Not only this, but they use bread and pretend it is flesh.

This is another reason why I think Christians are weird. Any group of people that gather once a week and fantasize about drinking blood and eating human flesh are creepy. Imagine the thought process that went behind starting that tradition. They were probably like "I love Jesus so much, I wish I could drink his blood, maybe nibble on his flesh". I believe Jeffrey Dahmer had a similar thought process. Dahmer did cannibalism on his victims, he figured if he ate them, they would become part of him. This is pretty much the same mindset; this is what made him infamous, the reason Christians are not infamous for this is beyond me.

If Jesus (the human) was a real guy, I feel kind of bad for him. There are many cults around the world that worship an image of him being tortured on two pieces of wood, all bloody. Plus they fantasize about cannibalizing him. Imagine if that happened to you.

Why God isn't "real".

I find it funny when religious people say "you can't say you know 100% that god isn't real". The fact of the matter is, I can. The definition of "real" according to the American Heritage® Dictionary is..

Real: Being or occurring in fact or actuality; having verifiable existence.

For something to be "real", its existence would need to be verifiable. People that claim god is real are basically claiming something equal to me saying "pink unicorns are real because I believe in them". Sorry but that is misusing the English language, nothing is real unless it's existence can be verified. That is different then saying I can 100% know something does not exist. You can't know anything 100%, but you can know what qualifies for being real and no god currently qualifies.

You can think something may exist, but to say "I think god is real" is kind of like a person saying "I think chocolate comes from pork" (makes no sense).

"In God We Trust"

The words "In God We Trust" are found on all of the U.S currency. The idea of having other peoples imaginary friends on our money may sound like a good idea to some. But what about the people that don't believe in it? It seems to me that people that don't "trust" in "God" are not relevant in this country.

When the topic of removing the slogan comes up, the opposition almost always says things like "why do you have to impose your atheist beliefs on us?" or something like that. What if instead of "God" it said "In Allah We Trust"? Imagine how much anger that would stir up. Or better yet imagine if it said "In Darwin We Trust"? There is really no difference between any of these slogans, all of them are offensive to the people that don't agree with them. It seems to me that Christians in this country tend to be self centered, especially when it comes to this issue or ones like it. They are unable to empathize with other people.

I am optimistic about it being taken off eventually. I feel it is only a matter of time. But I think when the time comes we will get to see just how childish the religious right is in this country.

Mormon Telemarketer.

Today was interesting. I received a phone call from a Mormon missionary. Apparently they have made the leap from door to door sales into telemarketing. When the conversation started out he basically said "I'm from the Mormon church, please join my cult" Or that was the message I got from him. I had nothing better to do, so I played along to see how long I could keep him on the phone. I lasted around 30 minutes. An atheist pretending to be a Christian that is thinking about becoming a Mormon is priceless. The best part was when he said "if you pray hard enough you will believe, it is just a faith thing". Basically if you tell yourself something enough, you will believe it, some people call it praying, others call it brainwashing.