Santa vs God

[Haggard]

Not sure what kind of debate this could start. I posed an interesting question to a bible scholar I work with. I asked what is the difference between someone believing in God and someone believing in Santa Claus? Their answer was that there is no such thing in Santa but there certainly was a God. Anyone care to discuss?

[sevesd93]

There is a Santa Claus, well used to be anyway.

[Oliver's Army]

Over/under on thread lock?



My vote is this was posted solely to inflame.

zero tolerance.

[sevesd93]

Oh and inflame it will. Wait for it...........................

[Garr]

It does feel like there is a significant potential for some crappy posts here, but if folks stay to the topic, keep their arguments to the straight opinion, and behave, there should be no need to lock it.

[The Hand of Poo]

Of course, if we keep discussing how it could erupt we eliminate the chance of any such thing happening. Plus, the moon is out of phase for FWM flame sessions; Give it another week, something will flare up.

[Garr]

I'm an evidentiary kind of person. I like evidence to help me form an opinion on any idea. I don't think that there is significant compelling evidence to support the existence of either of these mythical figures, but I'd bet there's more corroborative evidence supporting the existence of the real life Santa Claus figure. . .but I don't know.

[WBOB]

On a lighter note!

I believe in both but not in the same way.

Santa is meant to be for fun as in giving young
children endearing fantasy the teaches giving of yourself.

God(as in the birth of Jesus) which is in "The reason for
the season" is meant to give most of the rest of us
peace and renewal in friends and family and also
the giving of yourself for others in celebration.

That wasn't too preachy,.. was it?

[Garr]

"The reason for
the season"

That wasn't too preachy,.. was it?

[Insert History Lesson Here (not my little blurb below)]


From my reading, Yule started as a Pagan observance. Is it any coincidence that Santa just happens to look like "The Green Man" of many Pagan traditions? I may be misstating here, but I think that Pope Greggory the Something used the Pagans to build the churches, and had Pagan symbolism inserted to increase his conversion rates and many holidays in turn coincide with Pagan sabbats like Easter and Yule.

Not preachy at all.

[bassjones]

Of course, if we keep discussing how it could erupt we eliminate the chance of any such thing happening. Plus, the moon is out of phase for FWM flame sessions; Give it another week, one of Jojo's aliases will flare up.

fixed

[Morphine Child]

Much like a child believes in Santa Claus, one must ignore facts to maintain the belief in many of the gods that exist in our culture (the christian/Jewish/Islam Gods for example). Obviously, a fat man in a red suit can't fly around in a sleigh delivering presents to every child in the world over one night. That defeats logic and so we see it as a myth. It's a tradition that we keep alive, yet we label it, and believe it to be a myth. It's just as obvious to me that we humans did not come from two humans living in a garden that had children who had wives that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. All the while being chased around by a talking snake. That defeats logic and so we should see it as a myth. Again, this story is tradition, but many label it as fact. hmm...

And much like a child believes in Santa Claus, many adults remain naive to the information that is available, or do not pursue the information that is made available which visibly contradicts everything they were raised to believe by the same people that told them there was a Santa Claus. Your parents wouldn't lie to you? But they did tell you there was a Santa, and an Easter Bunny which you no longer believe as an adult.

Both traditions are kept alive because they make people happy. So is that a bad thing? Well, I see christmas as being harmless, but I don't see the other one as being harmless when so many people die, or are willing to die in the name of a myth.

And as far as Jesus being "the reason for the season", December 25 was originally the date of a pagan feast in pre-Christian Europe. Yet another tradition kept alive by the christians but transformed into an entirely different concept. And that, is a fact.

[Morphine Child]

Of course, if we keep discussing how it could erupt we eliminate the chance of any such thing happening. Plus, the moon is out of phase for FWM flame sessions; Give it another week, one of Jojo's aliases will flare up.

fixed

I'm no JoJo, but I'll speak on behalf of him in a kinder manner.

[bassjones]

"The reason for
the season"

That wasn't too preachy,.. was it?

[Insert History Lesson Here (not my little blurb below)]


From my reading, Yule started as a Pagan observance. Is it any coincidence that Santa just happens to look like "The Green Man" of many Pagan traditions? I may be misstating here, but I think that Pope Greggory the Something used the Pagans to build the churches, and had Pagan symbolism inserted to increase his conversion rates and many holidays in turn coincide with Pagan sabbats like Easter and Yule.

Not preachy at all.

That's about right. Christmas is probably a good 3-4 months off from what most Biblical scholars believe would have been Christ's actual birth.

The death/burial/resurrection of Christ should be celebrated around the time of Jewish Passover to be historically accurate.

[Garr]

The Physics of Santa

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set(2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.

[Oliver's Army]

Discounting the *true* history of either.

In todays world, does it even really matter?

My holiday is the way I want it to be. Be it Christian or Pagen...or a mix of both.

Your way is your way.