Can Atheists Participate in the Office Secret Santa?

Do they let Jews participate? If so, there is no reason why the atheist can’t. And if they don’t — it has no place at work.

agreed. that is so petty if they don’t let him participate. you’re right Hemant, what does Santa have to do with Jesus???

I don’t know how much of Santa came from Christianity (Saint Nicholas of Myra), how much from pagans and european folklore, and of course modern representations being influenced by modern things. Christianity has claimed him, but they can’t claim sole ownership in terms of origins, and he certainly doesn’t have much to do with Jesus in his current form.

Hemant,

I do have a slight problem with him saying that he “knows” there is no God. But I get his point.

I have a big problem with it, concerning the logic behind it. On the other hand it’s not going to harm anyone, and at least he isn’t making shit up. Atheists that claim to know are on the same level as Deists, we have an epistemological disagreement, a fairly big one, but they’re not going to be burning witches any time soon.

… What do you mean? There’s no Santa Claus?! OMG! My life is ruined!
😉

Wait, you mean Santa isn’t real?

It just occurred to me that if atheists should avoid saying that they know there is no God then shouldn’t we avoid saying that we know there is no Santa?

Ignoring that “Santa Claus” is the result of protestants not understanding and distorting Catholic-Orthodox Christianity, by way of pop and commercial culture, Santa Claus isn’t defined as being supernatural, invisible, unknowable, incomprehensible, omnipotent and omniscient. Though apparently he has a very good memory, good record keeping and amazing stamina. And that’s not mentioning the reindeer. S. C. isn’t defined as supernatural but physical and so would be susceptible to some level of observation. “Knowing” would be possible if seen, if not seen, and he seems to be very good at avoiding detection, you might suspect he’s been there but you wouldn’t actually know anymore than you know that someone in a sweatshop in China made the poisonous toys you see in the stores.

The difference between being in the physical universe and being supernatural makes all the difference. At least to people who like to think these things through.

I love Christmas. Who cares if Santa and Jesus are not real?

I hope in real life he’s reporting them for shunning him due to their religion, not just blogging about it like a big ol’ geek.

I have never had to do an office santa gift exchange, though I assume the entire thing is pretty lame unless its a smaller office and everyone is actually friends. But presents in general? Bring them on. I like Christmas, which is so divorced from the concept of Jesus in most people’s minds that it is a secular holiday to most, including me. Maybe this year we atheists should hand out atheist books for Christmas and really blow everyone’s minds.

If I were the person unable to participate in the gift exchange with the people who apparently believe in Santa, I would call up my HR representative and point out the discrimination, not so much because I HAVE to exchange gifts, but because I want to see the HR person come yell at people and explain that people who don’t believe in Santa deserve gifts too.

I love Christmas. I thoroughly enjoy giving and receiving gifts, even if I end up spending more than other people. Getting a present is fun.

EDIT: to come back to the whole ‘you shouldn’t say you know there’s no god’ hoo ha, fie on that. I know there are no gods just as surely as I know that an asteroid isn’t going to fall to earth and hit me on the head in the next 24 hours. Possible? I guess. Highly unlikely and vastly improbable? Absolutely. Should the remote possibility of these things affect how I live my life? No way.

Yeah,yeah, but enquiring minds want to know!
BTW the Anti-Claus of germany is pretty interesting http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp12052004.shtml

MR. olvlzl, no ism, no ist,

No need to be so formal, Linda. I don’t even like the capital letter people will use, though I’m too polite to object to such a small slight.

You don’t understand that there is a difference between something asserted to have an existence in the physical universe and something that is asserted to NOT have a physical existence?

You don’t understand that science and logic require something to have a physical existence in order to be known? That both science and logic are derived from human experience of the physical universe? If not, you’re not alone in that. It seems to be the most basic misunderstanding about science and math shared by most people including some senior, respected scientists and especially those unfortunately regarded as such.

As to my being a Christian, you are assuming something that I’ve not claimed and have denied. I do not believe in vicarious atonement, which would exclude me from being a Christian. I don’t believe in the virgin birth, the divinity of the person, Jesus. Your assuming that you can tell what my religious orientation is from my pointing out the logical fallacies of scientism and materialism is, again, shared by most people who read these blogs.

My comment could be summed up in four sentences. Santa Clause, unlike God is defined as having a physical existence that could possibly be detected by obervation, measurement, analysis and also confirmed by those who might want to check it out for themselves. God is defined as being supernatural, invisible, unknowable, infinite, etc. and so undetectable in the ways considered to produce knowledge. As defined you can determine if there is any physical evidence that Santa exists due to his physical existence, you could not necessarily detect if there is physical evidence that a God exists. The two “things” do not have similar properties, they are not comparable.

Again, I ask, why can’t acts of charity and giving be from the heart- even if an adult is pretending to be Santa. “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists in the hearts of people.” IF we redefine Santa as charitable acts and giving, then metaphorically he does exist in the heart. I have always explained to my sons that Santa is a metaphor for “giving from the heart” around the holidays and not a real person. In otherwords, I told them at an early age Santa is not real, but giving from the heart IS real. So, “playing Santa” is translated into “giving from the heart”. It’s not the gift that counts, but rather the meaning from the heart that matters.

My sons sometimes made me gifts when they were little, like all kids do, and they still do sometimes. While their talents were not yet well honed, it didn’t matter to me, because I knew they made it and gave it to me to express their love for me to me. It’s the love that is trying to be expressed behind the gift and/or charity that really matters IMO- even if it is just an act of love for humanity.

Most people’s definitions of God do not include unknowable and incomprehensbile, either.

I don’t know about “most people”. It is among the most often asserted descriptions of God or deities in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions. If has its counterparts in Hindu traditions and in Buddhism Nibbana is very similarly described. I think that covers most peoples’ traditions, anyway. I think that it is only reasonable to assume that the one who created, regulates and maintains the universe would be mighty hard to understand by we, very limted, human beings.

You can’t define “supernatural” which is part of the reason that science can’t deal with it. It is also the reason that the assertion that God’s interactions with the physical world would be incomprehensible, as being of the supernatural. What we know of electrons comes from their being a part of the physical universe, matter-energy. It is only as matter and energy that we can detect them. God is asserted to be non-physical, the nature that an interaction of some possible non-physical entity with the physical universe is not something that can be defined or tested for, it might be there or it might not be. You can believe in it or not, but it is definitively beyond the reach of science.

Actually, I think they have you on this one, olvlzl. All religions I know of postulate that God does something to the physical universe, whether answering prayers or making you do well on that bio test or turning people into pillars of salt. Those effects would be testable and even if the god in question was itself unobservable, it could be defined by its effects. What you postulate is essentially the “apathetic god” that sits on his interdimensional throne never affecting events in the universe (except perhaps to create it in the first place, and that truly is, at the moment, untestable). Admittedly, that god can not be touched by the scientific method. Then again, if physics can provide a complete picture of the birth and formation of the universe with no gaps, then there is no reason to postulate said being’s existence in the first place.

Also, I’ve noticed you mentioning that science and logic are derived from human experience. This is completely true in the case of science, and empiricism in general, but logic is bound to no such strictures. I cannot observe infinity with any of my senses, but the logic of mathematics allows me to work with it. Similarly with infinitesimals, which are the foundation of calculus. In pure logic, an observation might be the spur, but the actual consummation is purely self-contained. The fact that the physical universe parallels the dictates of that self-contained system with such perfection is a source of constant awe to scientists.

Mriana,

That is the best definition of Santa I’ve ever heard. Thank you! I will use that from now on.

olvlzl can you answer my question?

We’re sorry, that option is not available at this time. If you would like further assistance, please call our Olvlzl Products Service Center between the hours of 08:15 AM and 8:21 AM Greenwich Mean Time. Your concerns are important to us.

grazatt said, Santa Claus” is the result of protestants not understanding and distorting Catholic-Orthodox Christianity Interesting, please elaborate?

“Santa Claus” is a corruption of Saint Nicholas, a real Bishop who ransomed girls out of a life of prostitution, brought back to life boys who had been murdered by an evil butcher, pickled in salt and sold for meat and a number of other stories. The fat god of the Christmas cargo cult is what happens when protestants get hold of a Saint just as Clarence the angel is what happens when Hollywood gets hold of angels. Unfortunately Catholics and, I’d imagine, Orthodox Americans have had the much more interesting figure of St. Nicholas morphed into the capitalist Comus of credit card bought consumption.

Linda said,

November 8, 2007 at 2:32 pm

Mriana,

That is the best definition of Santa I’ve ever heard. Thank you! I will use that from now on.

You’re welcome, Linda. 🙂 Consider that my holiday gift to you and everyone else who appreciates it.

“Santa Claus” is a corruption of Saint Nicholas, a real Bishop who ransomed girls out of a life of prostitution, brought back to life boys who had been murdered by an evil butcher, pickled in salt and sold for meat and a number of other stories. The fat god of the Christmas cargo cult is what happens when protestants get hold of a Saint just as Clarence the angel is what happens when Hollywood gets hold of angels. Unfortunately Catholics and, I’d imagine, Orthodox Americans have had the much more interesting figure of St. Nicholas morphed into the capitalist Comus of credit card bought consumption. COOL , and where does that Anti_Claus Krampus fellow come from? I think I like him better! I like the idea of an Office Cranky Krampus!

By the way, just a quick addition to my previous comment…

Anything is possible. However, invalid concepts are not possible, because they are not things. Anything is still possible, it’s just that proposals that are inherently contradictory can’t happen by default because “they” are not “things”. There is no thing that is both square and a circle. It’s self-contradictory. It’s not a real proposal for possibility.

Do you all get my meaning?

Ben, about the Harris poll, I’ve got next to no faith in polling and that kind of opinion polling, done with what are known to be shoddy practices like telephone polling are unreliable on even simple matters. Look at the methodology of the poll you link to, it’s worthless. I suspect that the choices allowed wouldn’t really pick up peoples’ real beliefs, they seem weighted towards declarations of certainty instead of acknowledgment of less than certainty.

There is a great difference between believing that you know that there is a God and believing that you comprehend what that God is. While a lot of people probably haven’t thought it out, I’d imagine that most, if questioned would soon say that they couldn’t begin to comprehend a being that was infinte, omnipotent, omniscient, etc. It’s possible to believe naively, I think most of the proponents of scientism are remarkably naive about their faith in the omnipotence of science. But anyone who believes in just the basic definitions of what a God is would have to accept that their finite minds couldn’t comprehend what God is. And you seem to assume that the existence of God is dependent on what people think.

Have you ever tried to convince someone of the theory of evolution or .999….=1 ? It is NOT easy to transfer such beliefs / knowledge.

I’ve tried to convince people that evolution was the best current knowledge and think it would generally be a lot easier of they hadn’t had it repeated that it “proved” there was no God. By the proponents of evolution. I wouldn’t ever try to convince someone that the version of evolution we have today is the final word, because it is turning out to just be the first chapter of a much longer book.

You can convince someone of what is known even against their own preferences by presenting the evidence and reasoning, you can’t do the same with belief. Whether or not you succeed might depend on emotional state or the quality of the presentation but it is a test of what is known that it can be transfered by simply presenting the evidence. You can’t do the same with what is believed.

John Pritzlaff, that’s all fine and dandy for what you know of the physical universe but there isn’t any way to know if it is applicable outside of that. It might not be entirely true within the physical universe, which is largely unknown to our experience.

Back when I was reading St. Carl Sagan’s books and reading his “exobiology” stuff, it was always a disappointment that he didn’t seem to think it was possible that beings with another chemistry and, or evolution could have developed different means to come to terms with the physical universe. It always seemed so anthropomorphic to assume that our experience was universal. What I took away from it were that 1. Carl Sagan could be very silly, 2. that logic, math and science were invented by humans out of their own experience. I don’t think there is any way for anyone to deny the second one, though the first one depends on my opinion of the sage of TV science.

Olvlzl,

Your comments always seem to strike me as glorified solipsism. Which is fine I suppose, but a bit silly.

All right, just so that we all understand each other, and don’t end up talking past one another, I thought I’d clarify my position in the hopes that you all would respond with similar clarifications. First off, olvlzl, in my previous post I should have been more clear. I was not positing that the nature of an existent god could be entirely (or even partially) described via an empirical system (of which the scientific method is an extremely powerful example). I was attempting to argue that if the god that most religions seem to posit, that is, an interactive god who measurably affects the Universe, exists, then that god’s existence (or nonexistance) could be determined via the scientific method. If we are dealing with the apathetic god, then all bets are off, although that doesn’t help anyone but deists.

With regards to logic, I was not attempting to argue that it does or doesn’t exist without the presence of a sentient being (your description of it makes you sound like you think it to be uniquely human, though I don’t think that is what you meant; aliens will add 2 and 2 to give 4 just as we do). In fact, since logic is intended as a cleaned up version of how humans think, that would be a somewhat silly assertion in the first place. Logic, however, is not affected by subjective states. That is, given a set of assertions, a logical statement can be shown to be sound regardless of the nature of the observer or external universe, since it references nothing but the axioms at hand. I think what you were approaching was a version of Descartes’ “demon,” the thought experiment in which he asks how we know that there isn’t an omnipotent being who simply makes it seem that our conclusions are valid given a set of premises, when in the real objective reality (which we are denied by the demon’s illusion of reality) they are really not (e.g. it is obvious to the demon that 2+2 =7395.2338). To the best of my knowledge, that is still a problem in epistemology (although I’d be curious to know of possible solutions anyone might know about). Descartes attempted a solution in his famous work “Meditations,” but much to his dismay he failed due to some circular reasoning he let slip in.

About Carl Sagan, I don’t know where you got the impression that he believed all life in the universe would be anthropomorphic or even necessarily based on the same principles as our biology, but I seem to remember him talking at some length about exotic possibilities for the basis and form of life. Perhaps you misread something where he stated that he thought our form of life would be the most common in the universe, which is hardly “very silly,” though certainly not necessarily true at the moment.

Also, you keep talking about “scientism” (a phrase which I had honestly never heard before now). Were you referring to logical positivism, perhaps? Regardless, I (and, I think, most thoughtful people would) agree with you that science is limited to matters about which there can be empirical claims. It seems rather obvious on the face of it, considering that science is a tool for sifting empirical data, and I don’t think any of us were claiming otherwise. That said, philosphy (which doesn’t necessarily deal with empirical subjects) has a rather wider reach, as it can extend into the realm of the subjective as well (which science cannot, to the continuing chagrin of neuroscientists and philosophers of mind). I can’t ever remember anyone claiming that science was “omnipotent” or capable of delivering all answers. About the closest they come is stating that the scientific method is a better guide than unsupported belief or supersition, which I would agree with. The beginning of wisdom is the ability to say “I don’t know,” not “my system gives me all the answers better than yours does.” I suppose then that sticking to what is observable and testable with either the methods of science or logic is about as close to this “scientism” as I come. It is not so much that I blithely claim that anything else is untrue as I question the certainty with which many claim that their unsupported beliefs are the absolute truth.

All that said, I like these arguments, please do keep posting 😀

Turning one of olvlzl’s comments around a bit finds a fit with my own recent thoughts:

first and most important, logic God is not known to exist outside of human thought. There is no reason to believe that it is not the creation of our experience of the physical universe, as far as can be told it depends entirely on human thinking to exist.