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Quote:

Originally posted by Dramnek_Ulk:
You can't prove Santa Claus doesn’t exist.

If you can't, I must logically conclude:

1) You can't prove there's no Santa Claus
2) You can't prove there's no god
3) Therefore, Santa Claus is god

Right, I'm going to try to prove that Santa does not exist and God does:
1) No one has ever seen Santa. Moses and other people in the bible etc. have.
2) Everyone has been told by their parents that Santa isn`t real and that in fact they left the presents there. Then no one believes in Santa. But when an athiest tells you God does not exist you continue to believe in God.
3)

Quote:

ENGINEERS TAKE THE FUN OUT OF XMAS
There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world.
However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each.
Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second.
This is to say that for each eligible household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.
Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks.
This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second--3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousands tons, not counting Santa himself.
On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them---Santa would need 360,000 of them.
This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).
600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.
The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.
Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in 0.001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
Therefore, if Santa ever did exist, he's dead now. Merry Christmas.

Quote:

Originally posted by Leonis:
The thing with people who believe in God though, is that we feel we have personal proof and are passionate in encouraging others to be open and look into our beliefs.

Being that it is based upon personal proof only, If you accept that god exists based purely on personal proof, in concordance with that belief, you must accept that for example aliens exist and that they abduct people, since we have the “personal proof” of the people that have been abducted.
If we apply the “personal proof” to god only however, then the beliefs do not concur and become incoherent.
Or you must say that only your personal proof counts. But of course our own personal experience counts for little, since it is more likely according to Occam’s razor that rather than for example receiving a vision from god, you are in fact under a chemotropic illusion, and that it is not independently verifiable and provable and therefore unscientific.

Quote:

Originally posted by Scholarcs:
font color="snow">Right, I'm going to try to prove that Santa does not exist and God does:
1) No one has ever seen Santa. Moses and other people in the bible etc. have.

Sorry bob, But that doesn’t count. For all we know, the bible could be mostly made up and just claiming to have seen god counts for nothing, I could claim to have seen elvis the other day, but that doesn't make it true.

Quote:

Originally posted by Neb:
Science is based somewhat on belief as well, we have no way of being SURE that things are as our scientific "laws" say that they are, merely that our current laws fit with what has been observed so far. We have faith that our observations are correct and that there are no deviations from our "laws". So in a way it's no more ridiculous to believe in God than it is to believe in any physical law.

Quote:

Originally posted by Dramnek_Ulk:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Neb:
Science is based somewhat on belief as well, we have no way of being SURE that things are as our scientific "laws" say that they are, merely that our current laws fit with what has been observed so far. We have faith that our observations are correct and that there are no deviations from our "laws". So in a way it's no more ridiculous to believe in God than it is to believe in any physical law.

For science is based upon materiel premises,
It is verifiable and provable within the human limits of our experience.
And to say otherwise is to deny our materiel reality and the undeniable evidence with which we have been given, I.e that of our own materiel existence in the first place. “all social life is essentially practical”
However Belief in a god is not, there is not any scientific evidence for it, nor any way of creating or finding out thus,
Therefore belief in a deity is unscientific.[/QUOTE]And what's wrong with denying our material reality? We can't prove that any of it is true, so denying it would be no worse than denying the existence of God! May I also hear what undeniable evidence you are speaking of?

What makes scientific evidence so special? Like the bible and all prophecies it's just something that MIGHT be true. If our senses have not been decieved. We could always come across something that might suddenly force is to rewrite our scientific "laws", so they aren't permanent or special in any way....

Quote:

Originally posted by Aelia Jusa:
I would think the most you could conclude from your premises is that Santa could be God.

QB]

If Santa Claus is/could be God, Then presents should appear in your stocking every Christmas day, but science has shown that in all cases of stockings being filled with presents,
It was really just the parents putting the presents in the stockings themselves.
Therefore, if science has proven that Father Christmas does not exist, then
Science has also thus proven that God does not exist.

Quote:

Originally posted by Dramnek_Ulk:

Science has also thus proven that God does not exist.

Prove it [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Quote:

Originally posted by Neb:
And what's wrong with denying our material reality? We can't prove that any of it is true, so denying it would be no worse than denying the existence of God!

Denying materiel reality is denying ourselves, since it has been proven that our consciousness arises from electrical activity in the brain, when that ceases we die.
Therefore then To argue that we may be an illusion or not exist at all, contradicts the fact that we are aware of thoughts, including the thoughts that we are illusory and non-existent. (i.e. there must be something behind our awareness, otherwise there would be no awareness.) Also, if we do not exist, or are simply illusions, it does not follow how we can know that we do not exist or that we are simply illusions.

Also you are shifting the burden of proof, Materiel reality exists, and the proof is in human materiel existence, as evinced by your own existence.
Therefore the burden of proof is on you to prove that it *does not* exist.

[ 06-16-2002, 08:26 AM: Message edited by: Dramnek_Ulk ]

Quote:

Originally posted by caleb:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Dramnek_Ulk:

Science has also thus proven that God does not exist.

Prove it [img]tongue.gif[/img] [/QUOTE]Note the “Thus”
You are also taking that out of context of it’s original meaning and then Try reading *all* of the post,
If you have trouble with any of the big words just ask.

Dram,as I've said before, just because you don't understand something now, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I doubt that the 'physicians' using leeches in the middle ages knew what a germ or virus was. They talked about evil spirits and 'humors' in the blood. Did that mean there were NO germs and viruses? Of course not! Just that man at that time was incapable of comprehending the notion and hadn't searched enough to discover them. And when we did figure it out, not every nation and peoples did so at the same time.

I am fully aware of God in my life, so whether or not YOU are, doesn't make a difference in my faith. I can only pray that one day you discover what a lot of us already have. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Cloudy

[ 06-16-2002, 08:35 AM: Message edited by: Cloudbringer ]