Santa, do Christians believe in him? If not, why not.

[dangerdan]

Ok, you're probably wondering what Santa has to do with Christianity? bear with me here....

The topic of Santa was brought up in the thread "Everyone should be agnostic?, and with it brought some interesting topics to do with belief systems, well worthy of a new thread.

Now why is this in a Christianity forum? I think it has some rich insights into Christian epistemology - why they believe in some things and not others. I was pondering putting this in the philosophy sub-forum, but I feel it’s more relating to pure Christian thought (though if moderators feel otherwise then that's ok).

So, let the debate begin! I do not intend the question to be demeaning or disrespectful, but merely a candid enquiry. So with no further ado - Do Christians believe in Santa? If not, why not.

[ENIGMA]

Enigma wrote:

Yes, Santa would probably come to your house again if you made a good faith effor to seek him out.

Please refer to the Santa thread and read the posts countering this argument to understand how incredibly invalid it is.

This IS the Santa thread, and I ain't seeing it. Feel free to enlighten me.

Except the color blue isn't an entity, it is a property that entities have. There is no etherial plane of existance where "blue" exists. The objects which are blue are blue is a value of a property (namely color) of that particular object.

God is, by all accounts I have heard up to date, not a property, but an entity. As in the example of a blue item, it can be painted red, and thus cease to be blue.

Regardless, the concept of the argument still is applicable. Let's take a specific cheetah, for example. You can't say "What is an indicator that this specific cheetah will stop being a cheetah?" There is no indicator. That specific cheetah will always be that cheetah regardless of what it does. It cannot do anything that will disqualify it from being what it is by definition. That was the point.

Oh really? Give me a cheetah, a rocket launcher, and all the required authorization and permits, and I can quite quickly demonstrate the falsehood of that statement.

If you had the power, would you snap your fingers and remove from existance the 100 worst criminals alive, undoing all of the damage that they have done? Or would you have them die an unnecessarily slow and painful death?

To answer the latter is understandable, but to claim the moral high ground in doing so is not.

Are those my only two choices? How does that follow?

Assuming that they are beyond reform, as your God apparently assumed with the Amelkites, any corrective action is some permutation of the two above choices.

You are, of course, always free to suggest another course of action.

And of course you can't claim the "moral high ground" for doing the latter; because you used the word unnecessarily.

If you can choose another option, then by definition a given course of action is unnecessary.

This scenario is a trap due to the way you worded it and it is void of a point in this discussion. God's judgement is necessary in order for Him to be perfectly Just.

Yet his judgement has this odd quality of being able to be suspended indefinitely should the right rituals be done. Also, one would think an omniscient being could come up with a better system of morality than having the innocent suffer to pay for the crimes of the guilty*.

The foreknowledge part, which seems to drag many people down, is actually the key to rationalizing these things. Did YOU know the Jews? Any of them? Did you know those people that were worked, gassed, and incenerated to death in the concentration camps? Did you know their thoughts and their actions... or the number of every strand of hair on their heads?

Instead of saying "God shouldn't have ordered Hitler to kill the Jews. Those actions are questionable" the correct attitude is "God ordered the killing of the Jews, and I should be dead too, just as they are dead. But I'm not because He is patient with me." These questions are asked under the precurser that we are not evil sinners. The foundational motives for these questions should be examined more to find out why they are being asked, and the sin in them will be clearly seen.

WWII happened after Christ came, died, and rose again. God did not order Hitler to kill the Jews. Which "Christians" have you been talking to?

Hitler said that God ordered him (that he was "doing God's will") in Mein Kampf. Seems to me that he would be a better position than you to determine whether that was the case. Your God leaving you out of the loop on a few things, perhaps?

Only the OT is applicable here, because in the OT, God used the Jews as an instrument for His righteous Judgement.

[mirror]
In Mein Kampf, God is commanding Hitler to use the Nazis as an instrument for His righteous Judgement.
[/mirror]

You know, It could just be that Hitler tried to justify his actions by claiming divine sanction. I mean, he wrote Mein Kampf, and it's not like the Jews wrote the Old Testa.... uh... nevermind.

If Hitler knew God... he would not have been the man that he was. You can't possibly be saying that Hitler was a Christian.

[mirror]
If God knew God... he would not have committed the atrocities that he did. You can't possibly be saying that God was a Christian.
[/mirror]

Yes I am, and as to the whole "They weren't a true Christian":

I do know that those Jews were sinners like myself. If I ever ended up being gassed in a chamber or tortured... I'm sure I would scream and cry with pain... but I would never curse or reject God. I would gladly die for His name's sake.

How little value you give to life. Fascinating.




* Any response to the effect of "That isn't True!", will result in my pointing to the Bible and a request that you RTFM.

[chrispalasz]

Please tone down your rhetoric. Typing posts in a confusing and unnatural way does not make your argument better. Thanks

This IS the Santa thread, and I ain't seeing it. Feel free to enlighten me.

So it is. My mistake. Feel free to click through the previous posts real quick without my help. If it will be helpful, you only need to read some of my previous posts, although there are many others besides my own that should have ended discussion on this thread long ago.

Oh really? Give me a cheetah, a rocket launcher, and all the required authorization and permits, and I can quite quickly demonstrate the falsehood of that statement.

You must have missed the concept. It doesn't matter how many examples we run through, the concept of the argument still stands.

Also, God defines what a mistake is. If He made am "mistake"... it would be on purpose. And in that case it wouldn't be a "mistake".

If you had the power, would you snap your fingers and remove from existance the 100 worst criminals alive, undoing all of the damage that they have done? Or would you have them die an unnecessarily slow and painful death?

To answer the latter is understandable, but to claim the moral high ground in doing so is not.

Fine. Then my answer is: This scenario is ridiculous. I do not have the power. If I did, I would not use it at all, I would leave things to God. In the case that God wanted me to use such a power... I would pray to the point that I was certain, beyond a doubt, that He wanted me to use it. Then I would use it and do whatever God wanted me to.

Assuming that they are beyond reform, as your God apparently assumed with the Amelkites,

How can we discuss God? It seems the concept of Him can't even be grasped. God doesn't assume. Why would God, with infinite knowledge, ever need to assume anything?

any corrective action is some permutation of the two above choices.

If by "permutation" you mean: "something so incredibly different that you can't even reconcile the two" then I totally agree.

If you can choose another option, then by definition a given course of action is unnecessary.

Please explain where this reasoning comes from with greater clarity.

Certain actions are necessary in order for other actions to be truly Just. So what exactly are you saying? It doesn't make sense. Snapping my fingers is not unnecessary, but anything else is?

Yet his judgement has this odd quality of being able to be suspended indefinitely should the right rituals be done.

The right rituals? What are you talking about? Please explain this.

Also, one would think an omniscient being could come up with a better system of morality than having the innocent suffer to pay for the crimes of the guilty*.

Your knowledge is infinitely less than God's, and on top of that He created you. I think that disqualifies any validity from the above statement and any reasoning that you thought you were justified in for making it.

Hitler said that God ordered him (that he was "doing God's will") in Mein Kampf. Seems to me that he would be a better position than you to determine whether that was the case. Your God leaving you out of the loop on a few things, perhaps?

So what? What does the claim of Hitler have to do with anything? Are you saying He was a Christian? Many people claim to speak to their gods. But God has made it clear who His children are... and needless to say, Hitler's works do not fit the description.

What is Mein Kampf?

[mirror]
In Mein Kampf, God is commanding Hitler to use the Nazis as an instrument for His righteous Judgement.
[/mirror]

You know, It could just be that Hitler tried to justify his actions by claiming divine sanction. I mean, he wrote Mein Kampf, and it's not like the Jews wrote the Old Testa.... uh... nevermind.

Okay, so you can copy what I say, delete some words, and manipulate it to say something else. But how does this serve your point at all? Please explain.

[mirror]
If God knew God... he would not have committed the atrocities that he did. You can't possibly be saying that God was a Christian.
[/mirror]

There you go again. What are you trying to say by doing this, other than you can copy my text and replace some words?

Yes I am, and as to the whole "They weren't a true Christian":

Oh. Okay. Well in that case, let me refer you to the Bible. There, you can read what Jesus Christ says a Christian is. I think His definition is far more important and valid than your own.

If Hitler was a Christian, then so are you, but I'm not. That's about as far as your definition will get you.

How little value you give to life. Fascinating.

I'm a pacifist. I value life greatly.

* Any response to the effect of "That isn't True!", will result in my pointing to the Bible and a request that you RTFM.

What does this mean?

Please tone down your rhetoric. I can scarcely say I understood a single one of the points you were trying to make. Typing posts in a confusing and unnatural way does not make your argument better. I would appreciate more clarity, Thanks.

[Corvus]

I think we are beginning to stray from the original topic, but it is a silly thing.

Hitler said that God ordered him (that he was "doing God's will") in Mein Kampf. Seems to me that he would be a better position than you to determine whether that was the case. Your God leaving you out of the loop on a few things, perhaps?

So what? What does the claim of Hitler have to do with anything? Are you saying He was a Christian? Many people claim to speak to their gods. But God has made it clear who His children are... and needless to say, Hitler's works do not fit the description.

If God could use Israel as his means of carrying out justice against the Amelkites, why is it implausible that he did the same with Hitler, who could have been a very godly man? I don't think for a moment this is true, but it is, at the very least, possible.

What is Mein Kampf?

"My Struggle", the book Hitler wrote that explained his agenda, his ideas and his hatred.

[mrmufin]

Some of us might have just a wee bit of a problem regarding these acts as benevolent.

That's because, while I do admire the willingness of many to discuss God, the "some of us" you speak of simply have not bothered to truly seek Him or know Him.

What makes you certain of that?

Just outta curiousity, how would we know if God made a mistake? I'm really curious as to what type of events --if any-- would be indicative of a mistake on God's part.

This is a nonsense statement.

No more of a nonsense statement than what it was in response to.

There is no indicator. God, cannot make mistakes, so of course there is no indicator! If God did make a mistake, he wouldn't be God, which would disqualify him from this observation.

I can't make any mistakes at being mrmufin, either. In fact, nobody does mrmufin better than me. No matter what I do, I'll always be mrmufin, so there's no possible way that I can ever make a mistake being mrmufin. Right?

Are humans to be skeptical of God's character with respect to his alleged orders to slay the Amalekites --all of 'em; the old, the feeble, the children, their livestock-- in 1 Samuel 15?

Nobody that knows God is to be skeptical of His character. So the answer is no. I say "apart from sin" meaning that the only reason anyone is skeptical is because of their own sinful nature.

But I thought we all had a sinful nature? If the only reason that anyone could be skeptical is due to their sinful nature, and we're all sinners (aren't we?), then we're back to me having a problem with an allegedly all-powerful deity who says "Don't kill" (or "Don't murder," whatever it is in this thread) and then proceeds to order the destruction of an entire village of people. Yeah, when someone (or something, whatever the concept is in this thread) orders the destruction of a village of people, I become skeptical of that entity's character.

Just curious because... well, because ordering something like that (and presumably with the foreknowledge of it actually occuring) just seems kinda, well, cruel. But then again, I might just be getting all soft and sympathetic with age.

I take special notice whenever a statement or line of reasoning from a non-Christian falls down to the word "cruel".

Why? Would Christians prefer to have a monopoly on cruelty?

Please explain to me exactly why this is "cruel". What, specifically, makes it cruel?

Are you serious? Ordering the destruction of an entire of village of people: men, women, children, the old, the feeble, their crops and livestock. Why would anyone consider that cruel? How'd you like it if that was your village? That'd kinda suck, huh? Why is it cruel? Hmmm, could it be the apparent lack of justice? What civilized societies sentence children to death? Might it be the apparent lack of compassion?

The foreknowledge part, which seems to drag many people down, is actually the key to rationalizing these things. Did YOU know the Amalekites? Any of them? Did you know those people that drowned in the flood? Did you know their thoughts and their actions... or the number of every strand of hair on their heads?

No. Did you? I didn't know the victims at Auschwitz or Rwanda or JFK either. That doesn't stop me from having a sense of compassion for fellow humans.

Instead of saying "God shouldn't have killed the Amalekites. Those actions are questionable" the correct attitude is "God killed the Amalekites, and I should be dead too, just as they are dead.

You go first.

But I'm not because He is patient with me."

Why wasn't he patient with the Amalekites, too? Or humanity during the (alleged) flood?

God has the necessary means to sentence the death penalty to anyone, and truthfully, all humans deserve the fate of the Amalekites

I just love it when you ooze with warmth and compassion, GreenLight311. Show me that love, brother. Tell me how I really truly deserve to die. Yeah, what a terrific message: guilt and fear. Heck, my neighbor has the means to sentence me to death with his 7mm mag. Should I praise him because he doesn't kill me?

Regards,
mrmufin

[dangerdan]

God has the necessary means to sentence the death penalty to anyone, and truthfully, all humans deserve the fate of the Amalekites

....Greenlight, you don't really beleive this do you?

[chrispalasz]

That's because, while I do admire the willingness of many to discuss God, the "some of us" you speak of simply have not bothered to truly seek Him or know Him.

What makes you certain of that?

Because if they had, they would be as I am today: A Christian.

I can't make any mistakes at being mrmufin, either. In fact, nobody does mrmufin better than me. No matter what I do, I'll always be mrmufin, so there's no possible way that I can ever make a mistake being mrmufin. Right?

Exactly! Thank you! You have cleared my frustration. That's my point.

But I thought we all had a sinful nature? If the only reason that anyone could be skeptical is due to their sinful nature, and we're all sinners (aren't we?), then we're back to me having a problem with an allegedly all-powerful deity who says "Don't kill" (or "Don't murder," whatever it is in this thread) and then proceeds to order the destruction of an entire village of people. Yeah, when someone (or something, whatever the concept is in this thread) orders the destruction of a village of people, I become skeptical of that entity's character.

Right, but Christians have been redeemed. Having Faith in God, we are no longer skeptical (unless we are sinning). If there is something else you meant to point out, I didn't catch it, sorry.

Please explain to me exactly why this is "cruel". What, specifically, makes it cruel?

Are you serious? Ordering the destruction of an entire of village of people: men, women, children, the old, the feeble, their crops and livestock. Why would anyone consider that cruel? How'd you like it if that was your village? That'd kinda suck, huh? Why is it cruel? Hmmm, could it be the apparent lack of justice? What civilized societies sentence children to death? Might it be the apparent lack of compassion?

The point I had in mind when asking that question was that my definition of cruelty is based upon God's definition. If something is not sinful, it isn't cruel, therefore I don't see an act by God as being cruel. I was wondering by what criteria you define cruel. For example: If an entire village of Amalekites (men, women, and children) consented to, collaberated, marched out and slaughtered a peaceful neighboring village of theirs for no reason what-so-ever, would it then be cruel for the Israelites to go and kill them all, in this hypothetical situation?

No. Did you? I didn't know the victims at Auschwitz or Rwanda or JFK either. That doesn't stop me from having a sense of compassion for fellow humans.

No. And I do have compassion for non-believers, even ones that go to Hell, but I believe that compassion stems from a lack of understanding. If I knew everything God knows... I really have no idea if I would be so compassionate. That's all I'm saying.

Instead of saying "God shouldn't have killed the Amalekites. Those actions are questionable" the correct attitude is "God killed the Amalekites, and I should be dead too, just as they are dead.

You go first.

I already went. But then, Jesus stepped in front of me and they took Him instead, tortured Him and crucified Him. He took my punishment and died on my behalf. Your turn?

GreenLight311 wrote: But I'm not because He is patient with me."

Why wasn't he patient with the Amalekites, too? Or humanity during the (alleged) flood?

I am not positive what God's reasoning for doing everything is. But can I say that because God ordered the death of Amalekites, they went to Hell without a message of salvation? No. When Jesus died, He spent 3 days preaching to the spirits, that those who would believe might be saved.

GreenLight311 wrote: God has the necessary means to sentence the death penalty to anyone, and truthfully, all humans deserve the fate of the Amalekites

I just love it when you ooze with warmth and compassion, GreenLight311. Show me that love, brother. Tell me how I really truly deserve to die. Yeah, what a terrific message: guilt and fear. Heck, my neighbor has the means to sentence me to death with his 7mm mag. Should I praise him because he doesn't kill me?

Sorry. I understand, but you and others ask for justification to events that require such an answer. If we changed subjects to something more pleasant, I'm sure you will find warmth and compassion and love in my character.

God has the necessary means to sentence the death penalty to anyone, and truthfully, all humans deserve the fate of the Amalekites

dangerdan wrote:
....Greenlight, you don't really beleive this do you?

Yes, I really do. Let's assume God exists and is perfect, always good, and righteous. With that as a given, what is wrong with my belief? This is the perspective that I hold.

[tcay584]

This is foolishness! You guys are very well read, and very well educated. Don't tell me that y'all don't get that Santa Claus -aka: "Saint Nicklaus"- is simply a means to get children to understand the virtues of being good. This whole question is insulting. Saint Nicklaus may, or may not, have been real, but you are missing the point! I treasure my memories of Santa Claus! Even when I was old enough to think "Hey! Wait a minute!", the idea was still beautiful. No, I don't think some guy works at the North Pole and employs elves to make toys for all the good boys and girls.....but it is a lovely thought. Even when I came to realize that "Santa" was Mom and Dad....it was still soooo nice to think that some grown up (other than Mom and Dad) cared enough to try and bring me my heart's desire on Christmas. As I've grown older, I've come to love Santa even more. I love the light in a child's eyes when he writes out his christmas wish list. Come on...let them be kids!!!! Give them some magic...they'll grow up soon enough. Then they'll be on this board...wondering if Santa exists....

[Corvus]

This is foolishness! You guys are very well read, and very well educated. Don't tell me that y'all don't get that Santa Claus -aka: "Saint Nicklaus"- is simply a means to get children to understand the virtues of being good.

I think that is quite apparent. However, the purpose of the topic was, as I see it, to equate a belief in Santa Claus with a belief in God and Christ. Read your message back and insert "Christ" whenever Santa Claus is mentioned, and exchange "children" for "adults" and you will get some indication of the perspective of some atheists and agnostics. Cute, huh? How this topic went on so long is very curious.

[tcay584]

Yeah Corvus...I got that.
Was the purpose of this post to encourage a genuine discussion of Christianity, or simply to rudely belittle us Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, Jesus Christ believing people?

[Corvus]

You would have to ask the topic-starter that one.