Videos: "You can't compare God to the tooth fairy!"

"You can't compare God to the tooth fairy!"

17 September 2009

ZJ: There's a fairly well-known argument against religious belief which points out that people don't believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and other mythological creatures, and asks why, in light of this, would people believe in God? And those who do believe in God don't always respond well to this argument. They sometimes see it as a trite and facile comparison, and insist that God is completely unlike these other mythical beings. And while I understand that this comparison might be startling to someone who honestly believes in God and considers him an important part of their life, I think they're missing the point here.

The purpose of this argument is to illustrate that separate and inconsistent standards are being applied to belief in God. Typically, we believe in things when we have a reason to believe, and we don't believe in things when we don't have a reason to believe. It's pretty straightforward, and it's quite obvious why we don't believe in the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny. We have no reason to, and so we don't.

But when it comes to God, this standard is often abandoned entirely, and people consider it completely acceptable to believe in God when there is no reason to, just as there's no reason to believe in unicorns or gnomes. The evidence for God and the evidence for leprechauns are exactly the same: there is none.

And yet if you were to openly state that pixies don't exist, goblins don't exist, and God doesn't exist, you can be absolutely sure that someone will take issue with the claim that there is no God, and only that claim. They don't challenge the assertion that these other beings don't exist, because there's clearly no reason to believe they do. But when God is the subject, this principle evaporates. Suddenly, it's unacceptable for us to say there is no God, even though we have no reason to believe that there is.

But if God is exempt from any need for proof, then why don't they believe in the Tooth Fairy, too? It's because, once again, there is no reason to. This argument aims to activate the skepticism that people already practice. Just as you wouldn't believe I can shoot lightning from my hands without proof, you should be equally unwilling to believe in God without proof.

Of course, it should also be noted that many people who believe in God have what they consider to be very good reasons for believing, reasons such as a strong feeling of God's presence, a belief that their religious texts were written by God, the occurrence of certain events that they believe can only be explained by God, and the fact that millions of people share this belief, some of them so strongly that they died for their religious convictions.

But none of this is unique to their religion. There are plenty of other religions, historical and contemporary, with lots of different gods, and many people believed in them and continue to believe in them for the very same reasons. Muslims and Hindus believe in their gods just as strongly as those who believe in the Christian god, and for what they see as well-founded reasons. And yet, Christians have no problem dismissing the gods of Islam and Hinduism as nonexistent, because there's no compelling reason to believe they do exist. Likewise, Muslims don't believe in the gods of Hinduism, Hindus don't believe in the god of Islam, and neither believe in the god of Christians and Jews, because they have no reason to.

It seems that believers from all religions are quite capable of recognizing the lack of evidence for so many gods, with the exception of their own. And those of us who don't believe in any gods are simply pointing out that there is no need to make this exception.

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