I think most people, once they hear it, intuitively understand the thought “I stopped believing in God once I asked myself the question ‘if I don’t believe in Thor, why do I believe in the Christian God?’” I also think most people’s reasons for disbelieving in Thor aren’t fundamentally different than their reasons for disbelieving in Santa Claus. So comparing belief in Santa Claus to belief in God really isn’t all that far out there.
But atheists need to be careful here. They should be aware that theologians have developed a response to this that they need to grapple with. Unfortunately, this response is often not explicitly stated explicitly in philosophy of religion textbooks, but it is quite well established, and it goes like this: “of course believing in Thor would be crazy, but it’s OK to believe in God because God is infinity times better than Thor.”
Unfortunately this response is not so compelling once made explicit.
Also, if any adults actually believed in Santa, can anyone doubt that the same people who complain about Dawkins’ ignorance would say that this is just an expression of bigoted ignorance of what Santa Claus believers believe? After all, Santa Claus is not the sort of being who is subject to ordinary laws of physics. Santa Claus is a magical being. The Santa Claus that the argument refutes is a Santa Claus nobody believes in.
I’ve reached a strange place in my thinking about religion. On the one hand, I’ve studied religious apologetics long enough that if I needed to defend belief in God in a debate-team context, I could hold out for a very long time, and handily beat weaker opponents. In other words, I understand how theists are able to go about saying plausible-sounding things in defense of their views. On the other, at the end of the day the arguments against belief in God seem to me so simple and obvious that I no longer understand how, psychologically, thoughtful believers are able to go on believing.
I need to spend more time in face to face conversations with believers, asking them, “what do you really think about these issues? I know the stock responses that get published in respectable venues, but what do you really think?”
So, I’ve got to say Chris, I find this idea a little disturbing for the following anecdotal reason: I saw you write this during a class which was being led by Vittorio Hosle. I’m not trying to bust you out for being on the internet in class, we all do it, but I just find it incredible that the argument that you supply for the theist to explain the difference of belief in God and Santa Claus is that God is “infinity times better than Santa Claus.” Surely having spent time with Dr. Hosle, an undeniably brilliant person and yet devoted theist, you wouldn’t think that this would be the argument that he would provide. I would point to the very elegant moral argument that he provided from Kant’s Critique of Judgment which is at least intriguing and very new. Or you could point to Plantinga’s Modal Ontological Argument which would sidestep your argument (it seems) by simply explaining that the difference between God and Santa Claus must be more than a difference of degree but a difference of kind simply because of the meaning of the terms themselves, i.e. the idea of God entails necessity among its predicates whereas the idea of Santa Claus does not. This would not be because God is a lot “cooler” than Santa Claus, but because God (if God exists) is a different kind of thing than Santa Claus.
I believe there are great reasons to not believe in God (despite the fact that I do), the problem of evil, for instance, I find particularly compelling, but surely writing this while listening to Dr. Hosle the thought had to occur to you that he would in no way find your description of the theist position in any way representative of what is actually being offered from the theistic camp. I would suggest that if you are looking for a Christian to sit down with, Vittorio would be probably the most beneficial person with whom to sit down within 300 miles.
I’m aware of the moral argument, ontological argument, etc. and have written about them elsewhere. But, in addition to those arguments, a lot of theists seem to take for granted that belief in an infinitely great being is prima facie *vastly* more credibly than belief in very very great beings. As an undergrad, I once had a professor announce, without argument, that “some people compare monotheism to polytheism, but the difference between monotheism and polytheism is like the difference between science and magic.” He just thought this was obvious (and, incidentally, he didn’t think that God exists necessarily at least in the sense Plantinga does, so it wasn’t because of that). That’s the sort of thinking I was poking fun at here.
P.S.–Not sure if you’re reading this but if you are, perhaps you could help me with the befuddlement I mention in my original post. For one thing, would you say that the better versions of the major theistic arguments are in fact why you find theism credible? Would you say “oh, before I became aware of them, I didn’t have any reason for thinking Christianity more credible than ancient paganisms, but now that I’m aware of them I feel comfortable being a theist”? I ask this because while the arguments usually recognized as the more sophisticated defenses of theism are certainly fun to talk about, I wonder how much they affect even most of the more intellectually inclined believers. There are some exceptions, people who really do seem to me swayed by those arguments, but I have a hunch they’re the exception.