In this video, I survey five rhetorical categories of comparison that village atheists/new atheists make with belief in God. And I explain why each one of them is little more than an ignorant attempt to poison the well.
Santa Claus
Is belief in God like belief in Santa Claus?
In this 2014 podcast, now adapted into a new video, I provide the answer, and all in under a minute!
Is it wrong to tell your children about Santa Claus?
The other day I visited the “World of Coca Cola” museum in Atlanta, GA which (as you can probably guess!) is devoted to the perennially popular beverage and its incalculable impact on popular culture. The museum includes a gallery featuring the iconic paintings of Haddon Sundblom. Beginning in the 1930s, Sundblom created a series of Christmas images […]
5. The 59-Second Apologist: God, Santa Claus and Absurdity
These days it is increasingly common to find belief in God being compared to any manner of fanciful entities from flying spaghetti monsters and invisible pink unicorns to such familiar denizens of the holiday season as the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. But is there any legitimacy to the comparison? For further discussion see my article […]
How not to do apologetics: Lessons from Francis Church and Virginia (Part 1)
If you had a big question in the late nineteenth century, and you lived in the vicinity of New York, it made sense to send your question to The New York Sun newspaper. After all, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” As a result, when Virginia O’Hanlon began having big questions about […]
How to confound Christians with bad arguments: #1 Compare Santa to Jesus
Today I am launching a new series called “How to confound Christians with bad arguments.” Our first argument to kick off the series will be a perennial favorite of mine: “Compare Santa Claus to Jesus.” This is rhetorically effective (heck, its a home run, nay a grand slam) because, well we all know that belief in […]