From the Archives: The Santa Delusion: Why “Religion Is Useful” Is a Terrible Argument For Religion

Since I moved to the Freethought Blogs network, I have a bunch of new readers who aren’t familiar with my greatest hits from my old, pre-FTB blog. So I’m linking to some of them, about one a day, to introduce them to the new folks.

Today’s archive treasure: The Santa Delusion: Why “Religion Is Useful” Is a Terrible Argument For Religion. The tl;dr: Many believers — and some atheists — argue that it doesn’t matter whether religion is true, since it makes people happy and better behaved. I point out that this argument from utility is bollocks, and make an analogy with belief in Santa Claus. Belief in Santa Claus makes children happy and better-behaved… but we’re still expected to outgrow it. (Shout-out to Hank Fox at Blue Collar Atheist, whose excellent book I shamelessly stole this analogy from.)

A nifty pull quote:

Would you argue that, because belief in Santa makes children happy and better-behaved, we therefore ought to perpetuate it? Would you argue that, because relinquishing that belief can be upsetting, we ought to go to great lengths to protect children from discovering that Santa isn’t real… not only during their childhood, but throughout their adult lives? Would you attend Churches and Temples of Santa, and leave cookies and cocoa on their red-and-white-plush altars? Would you pity people who don’t believe in Santa as being joyless and imprisoned in rationality… and would you chastise these a-Santa-ists as intolerant, bigoted proselytizers when they tried to persuade others that Santa isn’t real?

Or would you, instead, think that people ought to grow up? Would you think that letting go of the belief in Santa (for those who grew up believing) is an essential part of becoming an adult? Would you think that we need to understand reality, so we know how to behave in it? Would you think that, in order to make good decisions and function effectively in the world, we need to have the most truthful understanding of it that we can muster… and that if the best evidence suggests that Santa isn’t real, we ought to accept that conclusion? Would you look at this idea that it’s okay to decide what’s true about the world based on what we want to be true, and call it preposterous, laughable, appalling, absurd on the face of it?

And if you wouldn’t argue that belief in Santa is valid simply because it’s useful… why would you argue it about God?

Enjoy!

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From the Archives: The Santa Delusion: Why “Religion Is Useful” Is a Terrible Argument For Religion
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10 thoughts on “From the Archives: The Santa Delusion: Why “Religion Is Useful” Is a Terrible Argument For Religion

  1. 1

    Now hold on a sec….I’ve just been converted, and have decided that I want to believe in Santa. I think I look good in red and white. Repent, you blasphemers! Santa is the way forward! Donate your cookies now, and store up your chocolate chips in the North Pole.

    Religion does seem a *tad* ridiculous when you compare it to Baby Santa (“Well, in space terms, it’s about half a million miles.”). I did have that initial gut reaction of, “But Santa’s just a story whereas….oh wait….”. Brain washing is hard is to break….

  2. 2

    Greta , I’m unconvinced. The argument from utility still doesn’t sound terrible to me (which is not to say that it’s correct – an argument may be wrong, but not terrible).

    I think the argument from utility is absurd on the face of it. I think the entire idea of deciding what we think is true based on what we want to be true is laughable.

    But the argument from utility, as you yourself formulated it, is not an argument for the truth of religious beliefs. The conclusion of the argument – in your own words –is that we should “be perpetuating it anyway — or at least leaving it alone”. In short: as an argument for truth, it would be terrible indeed. But you say yourself that it’s not an argument for truth. So … I’m puzzled.

    The whole argument from a Santa Delusion is not very convincing either. One could counter along the following lines: we don’t perpetuate the Santa Delusion, because at a certain point it is useless: the kids become too smart for that. Or at least: we wouldn’t be able to perpetuate it without substantial changes. What with all those kids who discover at night that the parents are preparing Christmas gifts for them? What with the kids who discover various sorts of regularities in their parents behavior and connect them to what happens at Christmas? Examples of this sort are easy to give. Oh, well, but maybe it would be possible to build various defense mechanisms into our conception of Santa Claus? Certainly. But the defense mechanisms would have to become more and more complex in order to cheat smarter and smarter kids (and later adults). In effect our conception of Santa Claus would become more and more sophisticated, being eventually not a very different one from the conception of a more typical saint. And it makes no sense to develop it in this way for a very simple reason: we already have a useful conception of this sort suitable for adults. It is called “religion”.
    (I hope you get it: the whole idea of this reply is that Santa Claus in its present version becomes useless at a certain point. And we already have more sophisticated substitutes for adults, so there is no need to bother.)

    But if that’s what you think, then why are you bothering to argue with atheists? If you really just believe things because you want them to be true, why do you care what anyone else thinks about it?
    I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here. I’m going to assume that you’re debating atheists because you want to test your beliefs against the people who will question them the hardest. I’m going to assume that you do, in fact, care whether the things you believe are true.

    I think the believer might have a very simple reason for using the utility argument against the atheist. Once again: look at the conclusion of the argument! The conclusion is “leave religion alone”. And that’s exactly what the believer wants from the atheist in such a discussion. It’s as simple as that.

  3. 3

    ‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…” Well except for little Timmy, because you see little Timmy’s Uncle had not an hour earlier told Timmy about a magical being named Santa Clause. Who brought presents to all the little boys and girls all over the world! And all they had to do was wish for their favorite things! But there was a hitch, wasn’t there always with grown-ups, only the good little boys and girls got presents. Now the more little Timmy thought on this last part the more worried he became. Because he had done a few things that might put him on the bad boy list and that would mean he wouldn’t get any presents! So he divined a plan, he would meet Santa on the roof and explain to him that the reason he had hidden Sister Margret’s eyeglasses wasn’t to be evil but just for fun to get a laugh out of the class. Surely Santa would understand.

    So there he lay awake in his bed waiting to hear the first signs of a Sleigh on his roof when suddenly it came. A slight banging from above, the unmistakable sound of Reindeer hoofs!
    This was it! He had to get up there now before Santa consulted his list and left! Little Timmy scrambled to the window full of wonder and apprehension and climbed carefully out the window and up to see Santa, well as carefully as anyone can in such a state. Halfway there he lost his footing and fell. Little Timmy did not see Santa that night but he did see the paramedics that carried him away on a stretcher and the terrified face of his mother who was told her son would never walk again.

    A Cautionary Tale by Darin Clarke

  4. 4

    I do not believe the Santa thing rings as true as it did in the past. I think it is more about presents, and the Santa thing has become less relevant because most parents do not have the follow-through to totally screw their kids out of presents, especially in our “keeping up with the Jones,” consumerist society.

    Also, the concept of Santa Claus is bastardized here in the United States. I have never heard of a child receiving coal in his or her stocking. It’s a broken, mute point as society further removes tradition in favor of greed and convenience.

  5. 5

    There’s delusion and there’s deception. I don’t think children who believe in Santa are ‘deluded’, as such. They trust the evidence – the authority of their parents, the fact they were good and got presents, the fact the mince pies vanished, they’ve seen him in malls. It’s more ‘proof’ than any theist has ever had to work with.

  6. wat
    7

    I don’t think there is any reason to believe that belief in Santa has any positive effect on children. Yep, I’m one of those.

  7. 8

    I guess a broader point with deception v delusion is how it applies to religion. Mormonism was founded by a convicted conman who plagiarized a number of other books to create a clearly fake ‘holy book’ full of obvious nonsense, then used that to extract money from the credulous. No one worth talking to would even argue any of that.

    Are the *current* leaders of the Mormons cackling in their sleeves as they count up the cash? Some of them, probably, just as some Catholic priests must, and who knows, there could well be people who’ve sold a few articles about how they’re a New Atheist, but they’re secretly praying at night. There are ‘converts from atheism’ who I deeply suspect were never atheists but have realized they can coin it if they say they were.

    I suspect most modern Mormons, and their leadership are sincere. They have approached it critically, adopted it as faith, and truly believe.

    This makes them, of course, far more stupid and dangerous than someone who has been hustled by a skilled manipulator. If Ashton Kutchner’s Punk’d production team spent tens of thousands of dollars getting people, including your friends, to lead you down a carefully planned scenario which ended with you punk’d into thinking you’d, say, witnessed a miracle, that would be one thing. To just go straight to ‘I believe in miracles’ is quite another.

    ‘The Santa Delusion’ is parents punking their children. Who is punking who in, say, Catholicism? Yes, you have an elite who sit in palaces surrounded by great art, formally above such petty concerns as ‘international law’ and ‘paying taxes’. But I suspect virtually all of them believe virtually all of what they peddle.

    There are exceptions. The evangelical movement in the US has consistently been played by the neo-cons, who tell them there’s no need to do any of that book learnin’, then write books about how keeping the population fearful of made up stuff will keep them in line.

    There are valuable things that The Santa Delusion exposes at the philosophical level, too. Prove *Santa* doesn’t exist using a method you can’t then use against God. And it’s useful anyway – the point where a child realizes they can’t trust everything an adult tells them is a vital part of growing up. And I’m pretty sure that a lot of atheism, in part, grows from the simple, early seed of ‘if what they’ve told me about Santa is a lie, then could what they told me about Jesus … ?’

  8. 9

    To compare, I think it was Sam Harris who came up with the analogy of the family that believes there’s a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried in their back yard, and every Wednesday night and Sunday morning, the entire family goes out and spends a few hours digging. They think it gives their lives meaning, the collective activity bonds them together as a family, they derive joy from it; and the fact that they’ve turned their backyard into a strip mine fruitlessly looking for an item that–as far as we know–cannot exist at all, let alone in that specific place, well, why would we think them non compos mentis?

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