Those always reliable kill-joys, the psychologists, were at the height of the Freudian anti-Santa Claus campaign when I was a kid. It was supposed to be psychologically damaging to children when they, inevitably, found out that their parents had been lying about there being a Santa Claus. I'm sure they worked some theme of adult sexual dysfunction or "hysteria" into it, though I was about eight and couldn't be bothered to notice.
I remember being kind of astounded that any kid could really believe in the stupid "Santa Claus" North Pole, elves and down the chimney story, it being physically improbable in the extreme. Or maybe it was that I had five older siblings who were only too eager to tell us younger ones that it was a hoax.
I doubt any child was ever damaged by finding out that the old folks were pulling their leg. If anything, the point would be that seeing through it meant they'd reached a milestone in that most desired of all children's aspirations, growing up. Odd how that has been replaced by the desire to be perpetually a child, given the benefits of all that psychologizing in society. There were any number of better reasons to be disappointed in what we were told was true turned out not to be, Like that psychology was anything like a science.
Just to say, considering how much their university educations fixated the Freudians on The Phallus*, it wasn't too much of a shock to finally learn what a bunch of dicks they were when I read them in high school and college. It's as if they went out of their way to get attention by say telling parents that they were to blame for everything, even around something when they weren't taking credit for giving the kids things. Now I just think they were telling their wealthier clients what they wanted to hear, to keep them coming back at three figures an hour.
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And speaking of dicks. One of the stupidest arguments I've gotten involved in online surrounded the reality of Santa Claus. It started the usual way, by an atheist making the comparison between God and Santa Claus. Which I'll only go into again if I happen to read it in my rambles today. The stupidest part of the brawl was what came after I pointed out that Santa Claus is a popular interpretation of the real, historical figure, Nicholas the bishop of Myra, on the Southern coast of present day Turkey.
Well, those evidence based atheists just wouldn't have that complicating one of their most simple-minded routines, one of the blocks of conventional assertion that substitute for thought in a rather stunning percentage of what comes out of their mouths and keyboards.
One, an especially successfully propagandized and dishonest Brit-atheist insisted that Santa Claus was derived from the dutch Sinterklaas, which, apparently, the typically history and etymology challenged atheists believe is some kind of folk or pagan figure with no connection to Christianity. You know the kind of "skepticism" I mean, where condescending attitude is supposed to successfully fill in for knowing what they're talking about. Considering that even at a glance the name is certainly derived from "Saint Nicholas", it's in the running as one of the stupidest atheist myths of the type that the Brits have specialized in and which are firmly embedded into the common received culture of a particular kind of would be rationalist in the English speaking peoples. And, from what I've seen, it's spread on a number of neo-athe websites.
Apparently, from what I've seen in a short and informal review of that kind, it's very important to post-literate atheists that Santa Claus have nothing to do with a Christian Bishop, popular in his day and throughout history due to his charity - he was a late 3rd, early 4th century trustifarian who spent his life giving it all away - his other works of charity and the wonders and miracles attributed to him, during his life and when he left this life behind.
In the United States and in places under the its cultural hegemony, the corruption of Saint Nicholas has reached its modern form through the verse of the slave holding, upper class twit, Clement Clarke Moore. It's not something to marvel at how a figure who was beloved for his giving to the poor and destitute was corrupted by a slave holding real estate baron into a figure who was all about the affluent receiving and, even more so, selling stuff. That he, an especially stuffy, self-righteous pharisee began the effort to turn St. Nicholas of Myra into the symbol of American neo-Mammonism should have been expected. That is a figure who begs to be disbelieved in because he is a fraud and an impostor. The real St. Nicholas isn't worth just acknowledging but emulating.
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I was looking for a suitable representation of St. Nicholas to put with this but couldn't find any I could believe in. They were all either too sad or too forbidding or too solemn. They just don't match how any of those really generous people I've known look. They tend to be rather cheerful people, the kind of people you like to be around, not grumpy and forbidding and a real drag. The kind of people cynics can't stand because they're good without being showy about it. Iconographers should make some smiling Saint Nicholas images. Not to mention the other saints. It's bad advertising to show those who have achieved eternal happiness looking like they've got an abscessed tooth.
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And, speaking of dicks. I've had some criticism of my use of different type in my posts. One commentator at Salon slammed me for using all caps and bold because it would risk hurting the feelings of college students who didn't like what I said about how stupid they were to reject the fact that getting drunk makes you more vulnerable to being victimized. Imagine that, their little feelings would get hurt by that assault of the upper caps. No doubt some study could be made of the relationship between being exposed to 24 point font while young and erectile dysfunction.
On another blog it was asserted that my use of different weights and sizes of type was a symptom of mental instability. Considering the gravitar and pseudonym that guy chose for himself and the company he keeps, all I can say is that's rich coming from him.
The reason I use different type size is because it's been a real revelation to me how skimming has taken the place of reading and how even journalists don't bother to understand what they claim to reference. Reading comprehension turns out to be a radical act, along with having a memory. Putting important point in large type is a desperate attempt to get them to notice main points in the discussion. Something which I won't apologize for even with the assertion that it might make little Dick and Jane feel a little sad because they want to act like they're 12 instead of like the adults they like to assert they are.
* There's a post to be written about the cult of the phallus among 20th century Freudian atheists and that of the pagan Romans and Greeks. But I'm Irish and I'd die of blushing if I tired to write it.
That God is a "being" a la Zeus or Apollo is NOT one of the tenets of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, is of course the empty hole in the donut of the criticism of God that "Santa doesn't exist, either!"
ReplyDeleteThe central concept there is the concept of existence, but wrapped around that is the concept of God, and around that the concept of Being (or "being" if we don't want to invoke Heidegger's ghost). Bertrand Russell was supposed to be cute and smart when the spoke of the tea tray floating in orbit, but the ignorant who think they are so educated don't realize their concept of God has already put them into the realm of theology (any discussion of the nature of God, even God's non-nature, is a theological one), and then they want to declare a "King's X!" and get out of the jail they've put themselves in for free by declaring it's all made up anyway!
You really can't have it both ways. Ignore God and all concepts of religion and may you be happy. But if you can't ignore them, then seek to understand them. Understanding is really quite different from acceptance.
I really think most atheists so desperate to reject any understanding of Xian theology are afraid they'd end up accepting it, if they didn't keep propping up straw men and setting them on fire.
I don't remember which philosopher I read saying it but he pointed out Russell's interplanetary teapot was a ridiculous argument because it purposely ignores everything we know about teapots, that people make them and that they come from no other entity than human manufacture, and what we know about space programs at the time he made his statements, for a start that it would have been impossible for the only beings who could have put it there to get it there, that even when they could have it would have been massively expensive and, most importantly, that there would have been no rational human reason for them to have wanted to put it there. All of which is evidence against its existence, all of which are reasons to reject it as an argument for atheism as the teapot would be nothing like God.
DeleteAs I've mentioned, Russell is the intellectual who, in my experience, falls farthest when you either read more of his writing than was collected and republished for popular consumption or you really think hard about what he said.
BTW, interesting column at Salon, excerpt from a book about philosophy, with a nicely presented analysis of the usual arguments for and against the existence of God.
ReplyDeleteI'm staying out of the comments there; too many people who think like Dawkins and imagine "logic" is something used by Vulcans.
Here's the link: http://www.salon.com/2015/11/29/can_we_prove_that_god_exists_richard_dawkins_and_the_limits_of_faith_and_atheism/