(March 7, 2015 at 9:45 pm)Drew_2013 Wrote: 2. Drop linking belief in Santa to belief in God argument.Isn't it obvious? The difference is that children are disabused of the notion that Santa exists by the same people who put that belief in their heads to begin with. Now, imagine if they'd done the same with god?
It’s a silly argument on the face of it. If belief in God were akin to belief in Santa Claus (or fairies, invisible pink elephants and so on) then why doesn’t 80% of the population believe in Santa Claus?
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould