My Objections to the Santa Principle

On Matt McCormick’s blog "Atheism: Proving the Negative" he discusses the Santa principle which is an attempt to disprove the existence of God in addition to Santa and the Tooth Fairy. He writes:

The Stalemate

It is an incontrovertible fact that it is impossible to conclusively prove or disprove the existence of God. This means that New Atheists are just as dogmatic, illogical and faithful as the average church deacon. Should we all throw our hands up and become agnostics? I argue that the best thing to do is make the leap of faith given the plausibility of the Christian faith and the potential gains of making the leap.

Of Bedbugs and Theodicy

In Susan Jacoby’s column “Bedbugs and the theodicy problem” she asserts that the existence of bed bugs challenges the idea that a benevolent God exists. This is a variation on the problem of evil in that it asks why a loving God would create insects whose sole purpose seems to be making the lives of His created beings miserable. I have four objections to this argument:

Two Views of Reality

Pablo Picasso. Portrait of Dora Maar. Oil on Canvas. 1937

Attending the excellent Picasso exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum got me thinking about seeing multiple sides of things simultaneously. In several of Picasso’s paintings like “Portrait of Dora Maar” the viewer can simultaneously see the front and side of the subject. I feel the same way when it comes to interpreting events. The left over skeptical side of me says that agents act of their own accord and that natural events occur because they are impelled by Newtonian physics (or perhaps Quantum Mechanics). The newer Christian side of me says that sometimes God may intervene in the universe.

The Disenchantment of the Postmodern World

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

A series of posts from the 13.7 blog got me thinking about the state of our postmodern world. Our whole perspective changed during the Industrial Revolution. Humanity went from struggling to provide enough food to survive to having an abundance of it. We no longer (for the most part) needed to obsess about survival. Leisure was born giving society at large more time to think and aspire to greater things.

Part IV: Who would die for a fraud?

In part III I talked about becoming an Agnostic and in part IV I’ll write about the main idea that convinced me to consider Christianity. This idea surrounds Jesus’ claims about himself and the reaction of the people who followed him.

Part III: Origins of the universe

I left part I stuck in the despair of Atheism, but I began to encounter scientific ideas that would make me question my beliefs. These ideas had to do with the origins of the universe. First of all, there is the question of how the universe went from nothing to a place filled with stars, planets and, in at least one small part of the universe life. Science shows that the universe began with a great expansion called the Big Bang, but what sparked this expansion is still a mystery. You could argue that it was God who set everything in motion, but I don’t want to talk about that argument; I want to talk about the constants that helped form the universe.