{"id":1762,"date":"2010-09-23T08:08:34","date_gmt":"2010-09-23T13:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=1762"},"modified":"2010-09-23T08:08:34","modified_gmt":"2010-09-23T13:08:34","slug":"do-agnostics-still-put-out-cookies-for-santa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=1762","title":{"rendered":"Do Agnostics Still Put Out Cookies For Santa?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Even though the term \u201cagnostic\u201d means without knowledge and pretty much applies to anyone who admits that we can\u2019t know everything, there are some people who insist that agnostic is a category of belief in and of itself. These people insist that atheism is a dogmatic view that someone is 100% certain that there is no god.<\/p>\n<p>These people claim this to be true on the scientific level rather than the general sense. It would be one thing if we could all agree that in a general sense most people are pretty sure that Santa Claus is not real, but can we really say that with 100% certainty on a scientific level? Christians often argue that we would have to know everything and observe that Santa Claus is not part of the set of everything in order to make a 100% certainty claim. This is of course ridiculous.<\/p>\n<p>In the general sense, we can say with reasonable certainty that Santa Claus is not real. No one would or should demand that we must claim to know everything in order to make the claim that Santa Claus is not real. Could you imagine a parent telling their older child that Santa Claus isn\u2019t real and the child then claiming that the parent can\u2019t make such a claim unless they admit to knowing everything?<\/p>\n<p>This has prompted the fictional Atheist Evangelist, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.samsingleton.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sam Singleton<\/a> to ask on his very real Twitter, \u201cDo agnostics still put out cookies for Santa?\u201d If there are really people out there who make the claim that we can\u2019t know with certainty that Santa is fictional, then they ought to still put out cookies for Santa because he might exist and we can\u2019t really know for certain.<\/p>\n<p>In a Christmas version of Pascal\u2019s Wager, we can say that it is better to put the cookies out just in case. Yet no one would take such a position for any imaginary being except for God.<\/p>\n<p>For more on the terms \u201cAtheism\u201d and \u201cAgnosticism\u201d check out my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.examiner.com\/atheism-in-philadelphia\/religion-101-what-is-the-difference-between-atheism-and-agnosticism\" target=\"_blank\">Examiner article on the topic<\/a>.<br \/>\n<!-- AddThis Button BEGIN --><br \/>\n<a onclick=\"return addthis_sendto()\" onmouseover=\"return addthis_open(this, '', '[URL]', '[TITLE]')\" onmouseout=\"addthis_close()\" href=\"http:\/\/www.addthis.com\/bookmark.php?v=250&amp;pub=dangeroustalk\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0;\" src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/static\/btn\/lg-share-en.gif\" alt=\"Bookmark and Share\" width=\"125\" height=\"16\" \/><\/a><script src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/js\/250\/addthis_widget.js?pub=dangeroustalk\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><br \/>\n <!-- AddThis Button END --><\/p>\n<h6 class=\"zemanta-related-title\" style=\"font-size: 1em;\">Related articles by Zemanta<\/h6>\n<ul class=\"zemanta-article-ul\">\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/friendlyatheist.com\/2010\/08\/03\/too-soon-to-learn-about-santa-claus\/\">Too Soon To Learn About Santa Claus?<\/a> (friendlyatheist.com)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: medium none; float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=e7491e6b-952d-4959-8e02-005bce09dbd4\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" \/><\/a><span class=\"zem-script more-related pretty-attribution\"><script src=\"http:\/\/static.zemanta.com\/readside\/loader.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"linkwithin_hook\" id=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=1762\"><\/div><script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even though the term \u201cagnostic\u201d means without knowledge and pretty much applies to anyone who admits that we can\u2019t know everything, there are some people who insist that agnostic is a category of belief in and of itself. These people insist that atheism is a dogmatic view that someone is 100% certain that there is [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n<script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[560,10,44,488],"tags":[1370,2215,2307,1203,1264,1369,2240],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1762"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1763,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1762\/revisions\/1763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}