On the one hand:
Scott Clark:
At some point we learned that the Santa faith isn’t really a true faith at all. It was a complex hoax, a conspiracy even. Santa can’t live your heart if he doesn’t really live at the North Pole. At that moment, in a small but sometimes painful way, we learn that people lie. The pain of the truth is buffered by presents and Christmas cheer but things are never the same. We become just a little bit cynical, perhaps for the first time.
We decided not to tell our children that there was a Santa because we did not want our children to suspect that we were liars. If we lied to them about Santa, why weren’t we lying about Jesus and the resurrection? Why weren’t we? After all, they had never seen Jesus. They only had a book, a story, and a storyteller. Who can blame them for doubting? If Santa doesn’t really fly through the air then perhaps Jesus didn’t ascend? If Santa didn’t really eat the cookies, then perhaps communion is just a thing we do; it doesn’t really mean anything?
http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2010/12/19/death-of-santa/
On the other hand:
Richard Dawkins:
"I haven't read Harry Potter, I have read Pullman who is the other leading children's author that one might mention and I love his books. I don't know what to think about magic and fairy tales."
Prof Dawkins said he wanted to look at the effects of "bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards".
"I think it is anti-scientific – whether that has a pernicious effect, I don't know," he told More4 News.
"I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's something for research."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3255972/Harry-Potter-fails-to-cast-spell-over-Professor-Richard-Dawkins.html
I look forward to Dawkins' research in kissing frogs.
ReplyDeleteThat Dawkins believes princes eventually came from frogs illustrates nicely the absurdity of evolution :)
ReplyDeleteI think these two examples are great at showing confirmation bias.
ReplyDeleteSteve,
ReplyDeleteCan you elaborate on the point of the comparison (or was it a contrast)?
Scott,
ReplyDeleteYou theorize that the Santa myth predisposes people to become atheists whereas Dawkins theorizes that the Santa myth predisposes people to become theists.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's quite what I said.
What I said is that lying to children in an earnest and repeated way (as distinct from telling stories that exercise the imagination) is bad pedagogy and bad parenting. The doctrine of election doesn't free us from moral responsibility as second causes to tell the truth to our children and to refrain from telling elaborate lies. In the ordinary providence of God it is unhelpful to lie to children, as we do at Christmas.
Might it create a problem? Yes it might. Does it necessarily predispose children against believing the faith? No, not necessarily.
It would have been better to note the contrast. Dawkins fears Christmas because he believes that one myth leads to another or creates unscientific credulity. In contrast, I worry about the effect of intentionally and earnestly lying to children about Santa precisely because I believe there is a difference between truth and lies. The story we tell about Jesus is true. The story people usually tell about Santa is a lie.
The fact that both Dawkins and I agree formally that the Santa myth is harmful is substantially irrelevant.
HEIDELBLOG SAID:
ReplyDelete"The fact that both Dawkins and I agree formally that the Santa myth is harmful is substantially irrelevant."
To the contrary, it's instructive to see two men look at the same data, and draw diametrically opposing conclusions. More than instructive–ironic. Here the militant atheist is afraid that Christmas conditions people to become Christian while the Puritanical Christian is afraid that Christmas conditions people to leave the Christian faith. Yes, you can add further caveats, but the basic structure of the argument remains.
heidelblog said...
ReplyDelete"In contrast, I worry about the effect of intentionally and earnestly lying to children about Santa precisely because I believe there is a difference between truth and lies. The story we tell about Jesus is true. The story people usually tell about Santa is a lie."
I have a take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards the Santa part of the Christmas holidays. That's certainly dispensable.
However, for reasons I've already given, to call it a "lie" is simplistic. If you're going to moralize, then you need to be morally discriminating. Draw rudimentary distinctions.
You might as well say certain pranks and practical jokes are "lies." But that trivializes the ethical connotations of lying.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteTo invoke the situational perspective maybe it's a matter of background. I was just listening to a radio broadcast from Omaha (one of the places where I grew up) from a secular sports-talk station. The conversation turned to a football player playing Santa. The hosts implied that the NFL star wasn't really Santa at all and that there wasn't any such thing. Callers and emailers contacted the show immediately to remonstrate with the hosts and to more or less force them to confess the Santa orthodoxy. It was a forced confession of faith at the point of a metaphorical sword. The inquisitors would have been proud. People of N. European descent take the Santa myth/lie very seriously.
In my original post I did clearly distinguish between myths that are conventional and understood as such by both the teller and the hearer and myths that are enforced culturally and socially and even religiously as a kind of orthodoxy.
Why doesn't that count as discrimination?
I'm a little surprised at your language re moralizing? I thought that theology is application and that moralizing was a good thing? When did moralizing become problematic? How? Why?