Saying Islam has nothing to do with the Paris attacks...

[whatthehey]

49. Are believers in Santa ineligible?

Please explain the important differences in the evidence for and rationality of the beliefs in Santa and the Bible God as he is accepted by the majority of mainstream believers.

It's easy to hide behind ineffability when challenged. In fact it's the norm. But that's not a majoritarian belief. The majority of US Christians believe in Young Earth Creationism (46% of the US - mathematically impossible to not be majority of Xians), in Angels (70% +) a literal Devil (60% +) and Adam and Eve as real people (56%).

You can say "well that's just the masses - educated folks likely to be POTUS candidates have more sophisticated theology TM" but then you must face problem 2. If we cannot define positive verifiable attributes of God - if he is as you suggest some ineffable divine love force (how do you know that by the way?) then he loses all immanence and all relevance to human interaction.

Properly examined and shorn of all the safeguards of religious privilege, beliefs in Gods become one of two things. Concrete and yet absurd to the point of yes laughability (like Santa, and I'd still like you to provide a contrast in the basis for belief in him vs God) or vague and irrelevant. You are left with the only sane theistic option being belief in an unverifiable, epistemologically meaningless transcendent being that can have no interaction with human existence; your divine love force.

You cannot rationally have it both ways. If God can interact with and affect humanity in tangible self-directed ways, then it's a childish idea akin to Santa since there is zero evidence that this has happened. If God can be rationally believed to exist, then he either cannot or does not choose to interact with humanity and so should be utterly irrelevant to our existence, since we can know absolutely nothing about what he is like or what he wants from us.


Santa or irrelevant. There is no other option. If you want to believe in that undefined ineffable love force, go right ahead. The minute though you start thinking it's talking to you, or wants you to do anything, even anything benign, or that it has any immanent effect at all, then it's bye-bye sanity and hello risibility. But that's not how our candidates speak. How would a divine love force "bless America", uttered in nigh every political speech? Are we uniquely or predominately loving or lovable? If we were to become so would it not simply be human emotions given a quasi-anthropomorphized personal image? You know damn well that in public at least our candidates must profess belief not in an impersonal force but in a silly SuperSanta who, despite all evidence to the contrary, takes a special interest between the imaginary lines between Canada and Mexico. Yes they absolutely should be laughed off the stage for that belief, but religious privilege reigns supreme in the US.