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As a note on Santa Claus being something different than we think: "Is Santa Claus a god?" (http://nautil.us/blog/is-santa-claus-a-god http://nautil.us/blog/is-s

by stared 9y ago

As a note on Santa Claus being something different than we think: "Is Santa Claus a god?" (http://nautil.us/blog/is-santa-claus-a-god http://nautil.us/blog/is-santa-claus-a-god). tl;dr: Omniscience (of child's deeds), rewarding the good (with gifts) and punishing the bad (with coal).

tootie 9y ago
I always wondered how Christians were able to square the existence of Santa with the 2nd commandment. Then again, how they can reconcile Jesus with the 2nd commandment is bit dodgy to me too so what do I know.
- williamdclt 9y ago
  I don't think any adult Christian thinks that Santa is actually real, so there's nothing to reconciliate
  - tootie 9y ago
    Sure, but they're teaching sacrilege to their kids.
    - krapp 9y ago
      Of course, but sacrilege is in the eye of the beholder. It used to be sacrilege to own a Bible not written in Latin and for a layperson to read it directly, now many Christians consider any Bible other than the King James version to be sacrilegious. There's no objectivity or rational thought at work, it's essentially cultural norms and politics. Many Conservative Christians do believe Santa Claus is an attempt by the "atheist establishment" to remove the Christian identity from the holiday, but that's due to a modern interpretation of Santa Claus as a capitalist icon, and the defensive nature of Christian conservatism. No Christian would likely have questioned the "Christianness" of Santa Claus a century ago, when the status of religion in Western society was unquestioned.
    - baddox 9y ago
      Are there any statistics on what portion of parents actually tell their children that Santa is real? I was raised in the Midwest US in the 90s, in a conservative Christian family, and as far as I can remember I never thought Santa was real. My parents confirm that they talked about Santa and wrote “from Santa” on some Christmas gifts, but they never intended us to believe Santa was real. I also don’t remember belief in Santa to be common among my friends. I remember one friend who expressed belief in Santa as a supernatural being, and everyone poked fun at him for it.
    - Veelox 9y ago
      And that's why I will never tell my kids he is real.
  - User23 9y ago
    Saint Nicholas was very real however, and had a mean right hook for heretics.
    - yters 9y ago
      Didn't he drop bags of money down the chimneys of poor people? According to Catholic theology, Saint Nicholas as a saint can also bestow gifts via prayer, i.e. "prayers of a righteous man availeth much." So one could argue the essentials of Santa Claus are true in Saint Nicholas, and parents are not lying when they tell their kid that Santa Claus exists.
    - teilo 9y ago
      Of course, that's disputed. I tend to believe it, however, because the sources which relate the story also add the Nicolas was put in jail for it until he apologized for letting his zeal overcome him. It's not the sort of detail that fabricated accounts would be likely to include, but it's certainly what would have happened had Nicolas gotten a little slappy with Arius.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  First, by making the guy a saint. Second, by making him an aspect of god...
- nolliebs180 9y ago
  Trinity is how they reconcile Jesus with the 2nd commandment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity Basically put God == Jesus
  - mcguire 9y ago
    But not God === Jesus. :-)
    - bovermyer 9y ago
      So then there's a concept of "godiness" to match "truthiness." Is there a man page for this stuff?
      - krapp 9y ago
        No. But there are multiple competing, contradictory and vague interpretations of multiple translations and iterations of a "manpage", with centuries of cruft attached. The Trinity as a concept is basically just annotated with "you are not expected to understand this," possibly because it attempts to describe a state of divine being which is beyond human comprehension, but more likely because it's actually nonsense.
      - justhelpingout 9y ago
        http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ and http://www.newadvent.org/summa/index.html http://www.newadvent.org/summa/index.html but the former is more like INFO while the latter is more like `man builtins` (that is, it assumes you already know a lot about the system)
      - koenigdavidmj 9y ago
        You're looking for the ecumenical creeds, the first list on this page: http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html The Athanasian Creed and the Definition of Chalcedon are probably the most relevant, as they deal specifically with Christological questions. The Apostles' and Nicene are valuable, but are too early to have the specifics nailed down just yet. (In historical terms, an Arian or Sabellian would be able to agree with their content without too much equivocation or mental reservation.)
- 1123581321 9y ago
  In Christianity, Jesus is God. There is a concept called Trinity which you can read about. Some Christians won’t make images of Jesus and some will. Santa Claus is a folk tale version of a Christian who lived about 1500 years ago. I suppose you could argue that letting children “believe in Santa Claus” violates the first commandment. Not sure about the second.
  - conception 9y ago
    While this is true, it's a point of view taken up well after Christianity was established as a way to get around the various conflicts on who Jesus was and how the three different "beings" in the Bible interrelate. Even one of the first teachers of the "They are just all the same thing." was excommunicated by the Church. It took a few hundred years for things to settle into what we have today - which I feel like should cast some doubt for believers on what was actually being taught in the Bible.
    - 1123581321 9y ago
      Yes, it’s interesting reading, but it is unlikely that the GP is a devoted Arian.
    - valesco 9y ago
      To the contrary, this view was held by the first apostles, who condemned this heresy as soon as in the first century.
- gumby 9y ago
  > I always wondered how Christians were able to square the existence of Santa with the 2nd commandment. More concerning is their failure to square the existence of Santa with the 2nd amendment.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    Santa has damage reduction 25/+5 chaotic. He's been shot plenty of times by startled homeowners, but none of them have ever previously taken the steps of coalescing solid bullets from Limbo protoplasm and enchanting them to +5.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  I never wondered this, because religions accumulate all kinds of internal inconsistencies as they age, and many of them weren't even all that consistent to begin with. Humans are perfectly capable of holding two mutually incompatible ideas in our heads at the same time. That's how we would determine the winner of a contest between Batman and Ozymandias, or between Godzilla and Voltron, or between James Bond and Jack Ryan, or between Hit Girl and Nikita. The most psychically significant incarnation of Santa is from the Childlike Wonder Mythosphere, and Jesus is from the Abrahamic Monotheist's Age of Legends. In order for them to even meet, they would have to pierce the boundary between worlds, and perhaps exist together in some mutually neutral dimension. But when they cross over, they have to adopt forms and behaviors compatible with that dimension, which is why they look like paper cutouts in South Park and have no bendable knees in LEGO Universe.

by stared 9y ago

tootie 9y ago

I always wondered how Christians were able to square the existence of Santa with the 2nd commandment. Then again, how they can reconcile Jesus with the 2nd commandment is bit dodgy to me too so what do I know.

williamdclt 9y ago
I don't think any adult Christian thinks that Santa is actually real, so there's nothing to reconciliate
- tootie 9y ago
  Sure, but they're teaching sacrilege to their kids.
  - krapp 9y ago
    Of course, but sacrilege is in the eye of the beholder. It used to be sacrilege to own a Bible not written in Latin and for a layperson to read it directly, now many Christians consider any Bible other than the King James version to be sacrilegious. There's no objectivity or rational thought at work, it's essentially cultural norms and politics. Many Conservative Christians do believe Santa Claus is an attempt by the "atheist establishment" to remove the Christian identity from the holiday, but that's due to a modern interpretation of Santa Claus as a capitalist icon, and the defensive nature of Christian conservatism. No Christian would likely have questioned the "Christianness" of Santa Claus a century ago, when the status of religion in Western society was unquestioned.
  - baddox 9y ago
    Are there any statistics on what portion of parents actually tell their children that Santa is real? I was raised in the Midwest US in the 90s, in a conservative Christian family, and as far as I can remember I never thought Santa was real. My parents confirm that they talked about Santa and wrote “from Santa” on some Christmas gifts, but they never intended us to believe Santa was real. I also don’t remember belief in Santa to be common among my friends. I remember one friend who expressed belief in Santa as a supernatural being, and everyone poked fun at him for it.
  - Veelox 9y ago
    And that's why I will never tell my kids he is real.
- User23 9y ago
  Saint Nicholas was very real however, and had a mean right hook for heretics.
  - yters 9y ago
    Didn't he drop bags of money down the chimneys of poor people? According to Catholic theology, Saint Nicholas as a saint can also bestow gifts via prayer, i.e. "prayers of a righteous man availeth much." So one could argue the essentials of Santa Claus are true in Saint Nicholas, and parents are not lying when they tell their kid that Santa Claus exists.
  - teilo 9y ago
    Of course, that's disputed. I tend to believe it, however, because the sources which relate the story also add the Nicolas was put in jail for it until he apologized for letting his zeal overcome him. It's not the sort of detail that fabricated accounts would be likely to include, but it's certainly what would have happened had Nicolas gotten a little slappy with Arius.
digi_owl 9y ago
First, by making the guy a saint. Second, by making him an aspect of god...
nolliebs180 9y ago
Trinity is how they reconcile Jesus with the 2nd commandment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity Basically put God == Jesus
- mcguire 9y ago
  But not God === Jesus. :-)
  - bovermyer 9y ago
    So then there's a concept of "godiness" to match "truthiness." Is there a man page for this stuff?
    - krapp 9y ago
      No. But there are multiple competing, contradictory and vague interpretations of multiple translations and iterations of a "manpage", with centuries of cruft attached. The Trinity as a concept is basically just annotated with "you are not expected to understand this," possibly because it attempts to describe a state of divine being which is beyond human comprehension, but more likely because it's actually nonsense.
    - justhelpingout 9y ago
      http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ and http://www.newadvent.org/summa/index.html http://www.newadvent.org/summa/index.html but the former is more like INFO while the latter is more like `man builtins` (that is, it assumes you already know a lot about the system)
    - koenigdavidmj 9y ago
      You're looking for the ecumenical creeds, the first list on this page: http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html The Athanasian Creed and the Definition of Chalcedon are probably the most relevant, as they deal specifically with Christological questions. The Apostles' and Nicene are valuable, but are too early to have the specifics nailed down just yet. (In historical terms, an Arian or Sabellian would be able to agree with their content without too much equivocation or mental reservation.)
1123581321 9y ago
In Christianity, Jesus is God. There is a concept called Trinity which you can read about. Some Christians won’t make images of Jesus and some will. Santa Claus is a folk tale version of a Christian who lived about 1500 years ago. I suppose you could argue that letting children “believe in Santa Claus” violates the first commandment. Not sure about the second.
- conception 9y ago
  While this is true, it's a point of view taken up well after Christianity was established as a way to get around the various conflicts on who Jesus was and how the three different "beings" in the Bible interrelate. Even one of the first teachers of the "They are just all the same thing." was excommunicated by the Church. It took a few hundred years for things to settle into what we have today - which I feel like should cast some doubt for believers on what was actually being taught in the Bible.
  - 1123581321 9y ago
    Yes, it’s interesting reading, but it is unlikely that the GP is a devoted Arian.
  - valesco 9y ago
    To the contrary, this view was held by the first apostles, who condemned this heresy as soon as in the first century.
gumby 9y ago
> I always wondered how Christians were able to square the existence of Santa with the 2nd commandment. More concerning is their failure to square the existence of Santa with the 2nd amendment.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Santa has damage reduction 25/+5 chaotic. He's been shot plenty of times by startled homeowners, but none of them have ever previously taken the steps of coalescing solid bullets from Limbo protoplasm and enchanting them to +5.
logfromblammo 9y ago
I never wondered this, because religions accumulate all kinds of internal inconsistencies as they age, and many of them weren't even all that consistent to begin with. Humans are perfectly capable of holding two mutually incompatible ideas in our heads at the same time. That's how we would determine the winner of a contest between Batman and Ozymandias, or between Godzilla and Voltron, or between James Bond and Jack Ryan, or between Hit Girl and Nikita. The most psychically significant incarnation of Santa is from the Childlike Wonder Mythosphere, and Jesus is from the Abrahamic Monotheist's Age of Legends. In order for them to even meet, they would have to pierce the boundary between worlds, and perhaps exist together in some mutually neutral dimension. But when they cross over, they have to adopt forms and behaviors compatible with that dimension, which is why they look like paper cutouts in South Park and have no bendable knees in LEGO Universe.