Me:  Are you trying to look into your Christmas stocking Prodigal?

 

Prodigal:  No I was actually putting something in the Christmas stocking.

 

Me:  Does Santa do that?

 

Prodigal:  No, I don’t believe in Santa.

 

Me:  I was just reading about believe in Santa in the book Beyond Opinion Living The Faith We Defend by Ravi Zacharias

 

Faith is infantile, Dawkins tell us.  It can only survive by being crammed into the minds of impressionable young children.  We’ve grown up now, and we need to move on.  Why should we believe things that can’t be scientifically proved?  Faith in God, Dawkins argues, is just like believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.  When you grow up, you grow out of it.

This is actually a rather childish argument that seems to have found its way into what is meant to be an adult discussion.  It is amateurish and unconvincing.  There is no serious empirical evidence that people regard God, Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy as being the same category.  I stopped believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy when I was about six years old.  After being an atheist for some years, I discovered God when I was eighteen and have never regarded this as some kind of infantile regression.  As I noticed while researching my book The Twilight of Atheism, a large number of people come to believe in God in later life–when they are grown up.  I have yet to meet anyone who came to believe in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy late in life.

 

Proverbs 21:2

Every way of a man is right in his own eyes.

 

Jennifer Van Allen

 

www.faithincounseling.org

www.theprodigalpig.com