Improbability, Or, My First Step Towards Atheism

Can we all agree that there are some theories that are simply not worth considering? I'm not talking (specifically) about theories like evolution or theism. Just, in a general sense, some proposed explanations are, on their face, so ridiculous that they need not merit further intellectual consideration.

Consider the odd phenomenon of how presents find their way under the trees in the homes of American and European children on the morning of December 25 each year. How does this happen?

Parents often propose the "Santa Claus theory" when asked to explain this by the delighted children. This theory posits that an older man and his wife live at the North Pole, wearing red fur clothes with white trim, and surrounded by a horde of well-organized and industrious elves. This man spends most of the year making a list of children who have been naughty or nice. On one night a year, he packs up the products of the elves' labor into a large sack, which he throws over his shoulder, and then rides in a flying sleigh pulled by nine reindeer, the lead animal of which has a shining red nose so bright it can illuminate the sleigh's flightpath through fog and clouds. The sleigh alights on the roof of each house in which there resides a nice (and not naughty) boy or girl, and the man exits the sleigh, travels down the chimney with the bag of toys, deposits them under the tree, then traverses back up the chimney and into the sleigh, and moves on to the next house. If he can do this for an average of 34 microseconds for each of the two to two and a half billion houses (concentrated along a very complex and efficient route with great emphasis on Europe and North America), he could just barely finish his task in the approximately 36 hours available to him (because of time zone changes and the rotation of the earth). He does all of this without any kind of payment or other compensation, aside from the occasional gift of milk and cookies. Sadly, it would seem that in order to do this, he would need to travel along an astonishingly complex and efficient route, at about Mach 5 in between the houses on his route, which would force him and his sleigh to encounter such massive air resistance that, without some kind of heat shield, the whole contraption would burst into flames and be reduced to a fine gaseous vapor, not like a meteorite, after about 4 microseconds of travel. Not to mention that there is no solid land under the North Pole, only surface ice which periodically buckles and uplifts, causing astonishing danger to anyone or anything that might happen to be on top of it.

Or, we could suggest that maybe all of the parents and grandparents of these children put them there and attributed their actions to a mythical figure for their own amusement.

Now, this example tells us two things. First, the "massive conspiracy" argument, while often ridiculous, does occasionally have merit. Is there not a massive conspiracy to tell little kids things that we know aren't true, in order to get them to change their behavior? Here's a fairly typical statement: "You'd better be nice to your mother, little Johnny, or Santa Claus will hear about it and you won't get any presents for Christmas."

(This statement, by the way, meets the legal definition of the tort of fraud. The elements of fraud are:

1. A misrepresentation of fact by the defendant, either by omission or explicit statements.
2. The defendant intends that the plaintiff believe that the statement is true.
3. The defendant intends that the plaintiff rely to his detriment on the truth of that statement.
4. The defendant knows that the statement is untrue at the time it is made.
5. The plaintiff actually does rely upon the representation made to him.
6. A reasonable person, similarly situated to the plaintiff, would also have so relied upon the statement.

Well, a reasonable four-year-old believes what his parents tell him is true, and would forego his pleasurable activity of doing whatever fun thing it was that pissed off his mom, faced with the possibility that continuing would cause Santa Claus to skip their house that year. Certainly, it's the parents' intent that their child change his behavior by making that statement. Bingo, you've got not just a lie but actual fraud. Note that while no one suggests that a parent proposing the "Santa Claus Theory" is doing so maliciously, malice is not an element of the tort. But I digress.)

Second, and more important, the "Santa Claus Theory" demonstrates that sometimes people say things that sound pleasant but which we know right away and perfectly well aren't true and which we would never consider as serious possibilities -- and which are not worthy of even a moment's serious consideration. Rejecting such preposterous theories out of hand, I submit, does not make one "closed-minded" to any meaningful extent.

Figuring this out, as I did at a fairly young age, was probably the first step I took towards becoming an atheist. It was here that I realized that these stories of magical beings who did these amazing things just didn't have anything to do with reality, and it was much, much more likely that my parents were the ones who were doing all this.

It wasn't that big a step to admit to myself that if I didn't believe in that story, there were other stories that also seemed to not merit real consideration. How did all those eggs get hidden throughout the house? How did that money get under my pillow when a tooth fell out? Plausible explanations were simply more satisfying, intellectually, than the ones proffered to me initially. Now, it took me a lot longer to apply that same thought process to the astonishingly improbable stories in the Bible, and even longer than that to overcome the great peer pressure of society as a whole to conform to those beliefs and instead admit to myself what I really thought -- but I did get there. You can, too; you've already taken several steps down that path.

Sure, Santa is a fun story. But I liked Christmas better when I knew that the presents all came from my family and not from some strange Caucasian guy living in the middle of the Arctic Ocean who dressed like a human Coke bottle. Knowing that there were real people who I could touch and hug and reciprocate their love and generosity was immensely more satisfying. Which remains, to this day, my favorite thing about the end-of-year holidays like Christmas. That's the great thing -- rejecting the mythology behind it has enhanced my joy of the season. The holiday season for me has nothing to do with fairy tales and legends; it's now only about celebrating love for friends and family.