Why Don't Grownups Believe in Santa Claus?

[Purple Knight]

Question for Debate: Why don't grownups believe in Santa Claus?

Is it because of evidence, or would they just reach a certain point and stop believing anyway, even without evidence?

If they would reach that point without direct evidence, that actually does not bode well for the traditional atheist analogy that belief in religion should be discarded in the same way, because people aren't reaching this point where they no longer believe in Santa Claus based on evidence - they're reaching it simply because they grow up. That does not make the child wrong and the adult, right; it just makes the adult better at surviving.

I've noticed that most people in the modern world are walking around so incredulous that if they were poofed away to Narnia, they would find ways to explain it so that they were still in the real world, animals didn't talk, magic wasn't real, and everything made that sort of dull, drudgery-ridden grownup sense that they're accustomed to being fed, like gruel you've eaten for so long that like a cat, you turn your nose up at anything else. The cat does that so it doesn't get poisoned. It's been alive until now, so the best bet is to keep eating what it's been eating, not trying anything new. And the grownup does that so it doesn't get scammed or duped. It's necessary - a defence mechanism. It helps the organism not die. But that doesn't mean it's evidence-based or logic-wrought.

As the modern world becomes more and more scammy, as capitalists find more and more ways to invent loopholes, manipulate agreements, and legally deceive so they can take without giving and pretend their victim agreed to it, and as the law continues to support them doing that, perhaps people's natural incredulity is simply getting ramped-up because it really is a defence mechanism. That could be the reason there are more atheists. And it works. The churches don't get their money and even if you believe God is real, we all know that many of those churches are simply money mills.

This is backwards to the way religion is thought of by atheists as being for survival and probably not true, while atheism doesn't exactly help anybody, but is more likely to be actually true. But as the world turns upside-down, perhaps we all naturally fall off the ceiling and onto the floor.

[Tcg]

And I agree about the gift of life. But it's purer if there's no gift-giver. Instead of being about not offending somebody who took a lot of trouble to knit you that hideous sweater, it's about you being happy, because it's your life, yours alone, and if you can be happy, you should.

Talking this over with my wife, she reminded me that as far as human life goes anyway, we do have a gift-giver. Well, two to be precise. They reside one step up in our family tree. So, if one insists on finding the culprits, there they are.

It's also valuable to point out that if one wants to know what one means be their use of a phrase, it's best to ask them. As many others I'm sure, I still use the phrase "god bless you" when someone sneezes. Does that turn me into a theist? Of course not. I don't believe in any gods so certainly don't think any blessings are coming from them. It's just a phrase used as a social nicety. A custom. A routine. Nothing more.


Tcg

[Purple Knight]

As to why adults don't believe in Santa, it's because Santa doesn't have the magic adults crave. If Santa offered some way to deny the finality of death, adults would line up for miles to sit in his lap. They'd figure out ways to resolve the whole rotund man fitting down the chimney issue. Chimney would no longer mean a chimney but rather some opening to a dwelling that'd work.

Because what a child wants is a toy, and what an adult wants is to live forever?

Think of Hindus. For them, the goal is almost the reverse. Nirvana is about being so purified that you no longer exist, and that's a good thing.

I think my explanation makes a lot of sense: That we simply age out of Fantasy, and here Fantasy just means anything that we haven't seen or been told about by a trusted source. To a child who hasn't seen very much, anything might exist because he is discovering new things each day, and nothing is fantastical. But as he grows older, and gains experience, he starts to think that since he has been alive for a long time, whatever he hasn't seen must not be real. This is a good evolutionary strategy because he stops looking for pixies after having looked for a long time and not finding any pixies. It's about making sure we don't waste our effort chasing rainbows, and making us give up before we expend our resources, not about making sure we're likely to find the truth after maximal effort.

It's also valuable to point out that if one wants to know what one means be their use of a phrase, it's best to ask them. As many others I'm sure, I still use the phrase "god bless you" when someone sneezes. Does that turn me into a theist? Of course not. I don't believe in any gods so certainly don't think any blessings are coming from them. It's just a phrase used as a social nicety. A custom. A routine. Nothing more.

We have a lot of these. Goodbye is one of them. It's a contraction of "god be with ye."

Certainly not everyone who has ever said goodbye is a theist. This is just language. We have words. They do stuff. Sometimes they do other stuff, because you don't start with a fully-formed Phillip's head screwdriver and it might be better to stick what you do have in there than start from scratch. Do Vulcans still say "live long and prosper" when they greet someone they know is incredibly sick and dying, and does he get offended? Or do they just not say anything and then the person gets offended? I wouldn't if it were me who was dying. Language is just bound to have these artefacts.

[Tcg]

As to why adults don't believe in Santa, it's because Santa doesn't have the magic adults crave. If Santa offered some way to deny the finality of death, adults would line up for miles to sit in his lap. They'd figure out ways to resolve the whole rotund man fitting down the chimney issue. Chimney would no longer mean a chimney but rather some opening to a dwelling that'd work.

Because what a child wants is a toy, and what an adult wants is to live forever?

Think of Hindus. For them, the goal is almost the reverse. Nirvana is about being so purified that you no longer exist, and that's a good thing.

I think my explanation makes a lot of sense: That we simply age out of Fantasy, and here Fantasy just means anything that we haven't seen or been told about by a trusted source. To a child who hasn't seen very much, anything might exist because he is discovering new things each day, and nothing is fantastical. But as he grows older, and gains experience, he starts to think that since he has been alive for a long time, whatever he hasn't seen must not be real. This is a good evolutionary strategy because he stops looking for pixies after having looked for a long time and not finding any pixies. It's about making sure we don't waste our effort chasing rainbows, and making us give up before we expend our resources, not about making sure we're likely to find the truth after maximal effort.

It's also valuable to point out that if one wants to know what one means be their use of a phrase, it's best to ask them. As many others I'm sure, I still use the phrase "god bless you" when someone sneezes. Does that turn me into a theist? Of course not. I don't believe in any gods so certainly don't think any blessings are coming from them. It's just a phrase used as a social nicety. A custom. A routine. Nothing more.

We have a lot of these. Goodbye is one of them. It's a contraction of "god be with ye."

Certainly not everyone who has ever said goodbye is a theist. This is just language. We have words. They do stuff. Sometimes they do other stuff, because you don't start with a fully-formed Phillip's head screwdriver and it might be better to stick what you do have in there than start from scratch. Do Vulcans still say "live long and prosper" when they greet someone they know is incredibly sick and dying, and does he get offended? Or do they just not say anything and then the person gets offended? I wouldn't if it were me who was dying. Language is just bound to have these artefacts.

Admittedly, I don't know a great deal about the Hindu approach to life and death. However, it sounds like they may take a different approach to death denial. They may not deny that it happens but have devised an approach to deny its sting.

As far as aging out of fantasy, perhaps. But what do we make of adults believing that the Great Flood was a literal global flood. Is this not fantasy or at very best, fantasy adjacent? There is certainly more at stake here, but I still suggest that death denial is strong enough a motivation for adults to accept fantasy.


Tcg