The thrust of Steven Cahn’s notable essay in the April 1969 American Philosophical Quarterly can be grasped well enough from its title: “The Irrelevance to Religion of Philosophic Proofs for the Existence of God.” Abstract formulations about a divine being, he suggests, really have nothing to do with the things that matter about religious belief: what goodies await us, what’s naughty or nice, and when, so to speak, He is coming to town.
One should therefore come with moderated expectations to something like Jamie Hook’s mid-December lecture, “Beyond Belief: A Philosophical Proof of Santa Claus.” Like the rest of his Open City Dialogue series, it took place at Pete’s Candy Store, a deceptively-named bar nestled between the brand-new high-rise condos over McCarren Park and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
Joining me in the cramped back-room theater of Pete’s (about the dimensions of an old-world railway car with a vaudeville stage at the far end) there happened to be two reporters from National Public Radio and the Associated Press, respectively. I happen to go to a lot of philosophical lectures about the existence of God and can attest that they do not typically attract reporters—but a proof for Santa was hard to resist. “It makes a good holiday story,” the woman from AP confided to me, sensibly enough.
I confess it was only then that I realized why, aside from the off-chance of catching some dazzling theoretical insight, my editor imagined it worth sending me to write a whole article about this swiftly-passing hour in a neighborhood bar. But there it is: anything to get us into the holiday spirit.
Soon it became evident that none of the other young Brooklynites around me (who were, informal polling later on revealed, entirely childless and, it was safe for the lecturer to assume, mostly godless as well) came for hard-hitting proof. When the promised proof never actually appeared, the crowd, as Cahn might have predicted, didn’t seem to mind.
Baby Jesus’ Materialist Sidekick
Mr. Hook, who describes himself as a “socially omnivorous urban dandy,” began this “passion play for the non-believer” with a story of loss of faith: the memory of telling a seven-year-old boy that Santa Claus doesn’t exist and subsequently watching him fall into a two-week depression. “We had made his world smaller,” Hook remembers. He devised this lecture, following the suggestion of Rainer Maria Rilke, to “restore enchantment to the world.”
Hook promptly proceeded to a Wikipedia-style historical sketch of the origin of the idea of Santa Claus, followed by a 12-minute original anthropological video of actual, believing children articulating the substance of their Christmastime convictions. These two accounts were utterly at odds. The children didn’t hesitate to delve into amazing speculations about how Santa may have once been an ordinary man, or preceded the evolution of the human race, or came from a supernova-ed star long ago. None of them, significantly, were willing to either question their belief in Santa or to prove it—aside from the testimony of having seen him at school or the remains of his nocturnal deliveries at home. As Hook pressed them from behind the camera to explain, the children only became firmer in their self-assurance.
Set against the general run of their ruminations, Hook’s history can only described as revisionist. Reminiscent of the internet cult-phenomenon Zeitgeist’s treatment of Jesus, it featured the standard ingredients of a turn-your-world-upside-down debunking. Before Santa Claus became Baby Jesus’ materialistic sidekick, we learned, he passed through a sequence of incarnations and permutations that go back to ancient paganism. There is not simply a single Santa, therefore, which we might chose to believe in or not believe in; cultures all over the Christian world have their own respective versions. Even if you do believe in a Santa, how can you be sure that your Santa is the right one? Unfortunately, this only helps the cause of the Pagan Throwback Santa that a liberal-minded person might like the idea of but would hardly take the time out of a busy day to appropriately placate.
Things certainly don’t look good for the Santa familiar to most of us, the jolly old chap who dresses like Pope Benedict the XVI. Much of what we know about him was assembled from scattered mythology in “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” the divinity school professor Clement Clarke Moore’s famous poem, which appeared alongside Thomas Nast’s illustrations year after year in 19th-century editions of Harper’s. For the rest of it, we have to thank none other than the Coca-Cola company, which paid to print pictures of Santa in color so long as the colors were ones that would look good with a can of their product.
Hook reveled in unmasking “this huge, shamanic, psuedo-shamanic totem” that managed to insert itself into the high holiday of American Christendom. On the one hand, we find in this figure a latent rebellion gone unrepressed by millennia of orthodox “religious miscreants”; on the other, it is yet another half-quaint, half-Orwellian intrusion on the imagination of children by corporate ad men.
Hook reflected on the role of this figure in the American coming-of-age story and asked the audience to share their stories of belief and disenchantment. “Santa is one of the few things that we actively lie about to our children,” he said. When the time of his refutation finally comes, “Santa is frequently the first domino” in a process that can continue all the way up to God. The result? “We, here in this room, are in a world that lacks belief profoundly.” He declared himself an atheist, though one not quite able to tell his own children that God doesn’t exist.
Then, in an about-face, after calling Jolly Old St. Nick a lie, Hook announced that the time had finally come for the main event of the evening, the philosophical proof for Santa’s existence.
“This is a question that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about,” he began. And, just to know what he was working with: “How many people here have studied philosophy at all?”
Just as I was about to raise my hand, self-satisfied yet discreet, all the power went out.
From behind us, we heard but didn’t see the ringing of bells and a sonorous voice: “Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!”
Hook was befuddled. “I have this thing, it’s like a proof on paper, but I have to get the lights back on.” He started lighting candles around the room and, when somebody walked in the back door, asked, “Hey, do you know what’s going on with the power?”
“No,” the guy replied. “But I know that Santa left a whole bunch of free beers on the bar!”
The proof I’d come and waited for, needless to say, was immediately forgotten in applause and a rush to the door.
Santa as God-Surrogate
I don’t remember either the moment of my first assent to the existence of Santa Claus or that in which I first found cause to doubt it. What I do recall, though, is an instance of backpedaling. By this time, I had come to discern that the evidence leaned against Santa’s existence. I had even been told the truth of the matter directly, I believe, and was perhaps 75% there.
But, when Christmas morning came, under the tree I found a present in the form of a tent. The tag, in my father’s handwriting, claimed that it came from Santa. There, despite his dwindling plausibility, I could not but feel that Santa himself had delivered it. My family had never been on a camping trip before, and the very idea of finding a tent in the house was so foreign, and truthfully so welcome, that it could only come from a source that was Wholly Other. Irrespective of anything that might be regarded as proof, at least until my father announced plans for an upcoming camping trip, that novelty and unforeseen possibility had no other name for me than Santa.
“Sorry, I didn’t really get to talking about God,” Hook told me when I went up to congratulate him afterward. Actually, during the lecture, he had alluded to the matter well: “Santa Claus is a nice surrogate for dealing with these issues—‘God issues’—in a smaller way.”
Presents, in either case, go further than proof.
Tags: christmas, faith, holiday, pagan, santa claus, shamanic, totem
My daughter looked out the window into the back yard on Easter and caught sight of her mother (me) hiding colored eggs in the shrubbery. She took that as proof that the Easter bunny is a lie. I replied, "Why would I be hiding eggs in the bushes if there were no Easter bunny?" A very sophisticated philosophical argument I truly believe. Though she was at the age of doubt, she was not yet capable of grasping such philosophical finery. So she scorned my reasoning even as she ate the eggs.
But I believe my argument is sound: if we didn't hide eggs on Easter, if we didn't put a tent or a Tonka truck or a stocking filled with candy and an orange under fragrant sparkling trees in our living rooms, if someone didn't put those free beers on the bar, THEN our mythical icons of blessing and joy would no longer exist.
My childlike mind wants to believe what you are saying, but does that mean if people don't go to church on Sunday and eat the communion then God doesn't exist? You might have a big job to keep the philosophical argument going.
Going to church and eating communion are expressions of belief, just as the Tonka truck and the beer are expressions of generosity and love. You can have Santa without Tonka trucks and Easter without chocolate bunnies and God without the rite of communion. But you can't have them without the belief and the spirit. Yes, I do believe that if we didn't believe in God, live and breathe our belief in God, sustained through our belief in holy spirit, THEN God would not exist. Humans invented music, science, poetry, art, sport, medicine and so on, with human desire, need, love and ingenuity working with the natural world inside and beyond us. We surely invented religion. Why not God?
I think Santa is a myth.
This article really hits home as my daughter, who is not yet two, is just beginning to become aware of the idea of Santa. He's ubiquitous at this time of year. And it's all good fun, right? Unfortunately my own childhood memories of Santa have distilled into two rather negative experiences: disappointment in learning that Santa was not real, and something like embarrassment as I had to continue to pretend to believe for the benefit of my father for what seemed like many years. Furthermore Santa proved a perfect precursor for my own crisis of faith years later. I don't want to burden my daughter with unnecessary disillusionment, but at the same time I don't want to rob her of the supposed fun of believing Santa is real. That is fun for kids, right? Because actually I don't remember that part.
It doesn't have to be fun. The toys were for that. It helps children and their families deal with contradiction without totally giving up on the faith, and this is important for the survival of the church which is based on not questioning, or if you do question don't to anything that might harm the faith of the others, who might also be doing nothing to harm your faith, just in case.
How does lying to your children and misleading them in a false faith in some pseudo mythical being which rewards Good over Evil with gifts beneficial to your child's spiritual well being and then claim that it's all in the name of God. Modern Christianity is so full of hypocrisy. Seriously, step back and really think this through. The celebration of Christmas is a man made holiday nowhere endorsed in the Bible (only holidays such as the Passover and the Day of Atonement are sanctioned) and incorporates many pagan elements that were used to to give glory and worship to false gods. God very clearly outlines how He is to be worshiped. The celebration of Christmas breaks many of the Commandments handed down to us through Moses, so how is this celebration of Jesus Christs birth a service to God? There are many documents available online which outline the origins of Christmas tradition and how they were incorporated into the modern Christmas holiday by the Catholic church as a compromise to retain pagan converts and direct their worship towards "God" Many justify this perpetual continuance of false worship by saying it's all for God and for other reasons but does that make it correct in the eye's of God? Jesus Christ states in scripture himself to not give him glory, but to give all glory to his Father.
3 Do not have any other gods before me.
4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
12 Take care not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you are going, or it will become a snare among you.
13 You shall tear down their altars, break their pillars, and cut down their sacred poles
17 You shall not make cast idols.
11 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
12 Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.
22 You shall observe the festival of weeks, the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the festival of ingathering at the turn of the year.
According to Exodus 34-22 Christmas is a false holiday which is against God. The Catholic church knowingly took December 25th (a pagan winter solstice holiday to a female pagan diety) and changed it to the day of Christ's day of birth, which is by historical record inaccurate.
We need to test the spirits. Who did you vote for in the 2008 presidential election?
I don't vote at all.
You sound proud of your noninvolvement.
I am not interested in the "affairs of man". I work and pay my bills and maintain my household, I follow the laws of the land, but as a spiritual person I am more interested in the Kingdom of God and in seeking the Truth. It's a necessity that we must have government to maintain order and to disperse resources necessary for life, however, governments are corrupt as people are worldly and self seeking of personal power, glory, and control becoming as "gods" among the common folk. If everybody truly followed Christian values and morals and dedicated their lives to seeking and serving God, government would not be necessary. If you truly looked into the hearts of politicians, what do you think you would find? Are they truly representing your best interest? Does it really matter who you choose? I see greed. I see hidden agendas and secrets. I see death. Wars waged in the name of God. Where in the 10 Commandments does it state that killing is acceptable by God? Our world is governed by Satan. Our purpose here on Earth is rise up out of sin and become Christ like. Those who are in power on this earth are anything but Christ like.
I can see a good reason for a religion to not vote and not get involved. Evangelical Christianity has shown what disaster it can be when they side with the wrong political party, and sell their soul to the party of the rich, and now they have created a mess that is beyond explanation. You don't fall into that trap, but you might also not be helping the world solve its problems. We need a green economy, we need universal healthcare, we need a way for the global economy to spread the wealth more evenly, and we can work for those things. To a great extent American Christianity fights against what is good because they have a belief that the world must be destroyed, hopefully in our lifetime, and all non-believers must suffer. By being non-involved, you risk falling into the same trap as the evangelicals, preaching for destruction and not working for solutions. Please remember, the affairs of man includes the science that has made the modern world possible, even given you this internet you are writing on.
Are we supposed to help the world solve it's problems? As a Christian, I more concerned with my afterlife and the place I will have in it.
There is a double standard taking place here. God gave Satan the world as his domain to tempt and to deceive those who would seek God out. Scripture tells us that. The longer this world exists as it is only delays the coming of Christ and the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
What of the downfall of King Solomon and King David, how they as powerful rulers fell from the Grace of God and how the Nation of Israel lost their covenant and blessing from God as a result from becoming worldly?
I think those are powerful lessons to learn from.
What is modern science and technology really doing for us? Curing the disease of Age so that we may live forever, becoming immortal? Creating artificial life such as clones playing god? Healing the blind and performing other such miracles just as Christ did? Trying to create artificial intelligence to make self aware machines? Exploring the possibilities of bio technology, the fusion of man and machine, attempting to copy the human brain so that we can further perpetuate our earthly existence? Exploring the possibilities of transforming extraterrestrial planets to create life? All done in the name of Science. In scripture it talks about how the Fallen Angles fell to this world and inter mixed with the people and taught them the secrets of science and industry and technology so that man could rise up and became as gods. The tower of Babylon was built in defiance against God. Sodom and Gomorrah was a capital of worldly pleasure and vice. Our society today is a combination of all of these things. Is this what you want?
There is more to learn from modern science than from the fall of David and Solomon. Science teaches us the universe is 14 billion years old, and earth 4.5 billion. We know the closest ancestor of man, the Neandertals were on the earth for a long time, half a million years, and we just finished eating them to extinction only 25000 years ago. The God of Truth speaks to us through science, if we are willing to listen.
A boring god yours would be.
You should reserve that statement until after you have checked for any promises of life after death, or threats of judgment day.
A boring God? No one said that being a servant (slave) to God was supposed to be fun. The context of your statement is precisely where the world had gone wrong. As created beings with free will, we have really only two choices to make with that free will. God gave us the choice to either serve Him or not. If you don't serve God, then you have made the choice not to partake in His Kingdom. Proof? Faith. The simplest thing in the world to do but the hardest thing to accept. We are the caretakers for our soul. Witchcraft is an unforgivable sin in the bible against God because by practicing witchcraft you are manipulating the world around you to your will instead of allowing Gods will to manipulate you.
The way I look at it is like this. If I am wrong, and there is no god, and no afterlife, and nothing else to look forward to beyond this existence, then oh well, nothing has been lost. But if I am right in my beliefs and in my acceptance and faith in God, then I would rather be counted in the ranks of those who will be accepted into Heaven rather than Hell. No one truly knows until will die. But I would rather error on the side of caution.
So it's a good investment? Really? What kind of faith is that?
Well, idk about you and your life, but I am overall very happy and content and satisfied. By divorcing myself from worldly pursuits, I have found a sense of peace from the competition and economic slavery that others commit themselves in that pursuit of the American version of the dream of happiness. My needs are met. I have friends, family, companionship, fellowship. I strive to live without sin and because of that I do not have the kind of problems that others have in their lives that come as a result from sinning. What is so wrong and so difficult about choosing to subscribe to a set of standards and morals? According to scripture, this world is the domain of the devil. Everything within this world conspires against God to prevent an individual from finding salvation for the eternal soul I have studied comparative religion and sociology for most of my life. Do I agree with the teachings of mainstream religion? No. I believe that religious institutions have fallen from the standards that God has set. It is up to us as individuals to find God and our own salvation because nobody else is going to do it for us. Keeping the commandments and learning from the examples of others through scripture benefits you and everyone else around you. I have the respect of others in my life for my choices and of my life style. That being said, I don't seek to convert non-believers. I believe that those who are ready to accept God and have faith will seek Him out. The only reason I am posting here in this forum at this time is because of the hypocrisy surrounding Christmas. How can a true Christian and supposedly believer in God allow themselves to be caught up in a holidays such as Easter, Halloween, and Christmas when by practicing and perpetuating these false beliefs and traditions that have known pagan origins and then claim is okay with God?
The way I see it is like this. As I stated before, God has set a standard for the believers. He laid down his law. He has outlined how we are to worship Him.
Say I am teacher and I give an assignment to my class. Those who follow the lesson plans and complete the assignment as per the outline given will receive a high passing grade and advance in the class. The students who deviate from that lesson plan and reinterpret and re-invent their own version of my lesson plan are not following what I have laid out for the class to do. What kind of a grade do you think those students are going to get? And how about those who completely ignore the lesson plan all together and just do their own thing?
All religions say that. The evangelical religions all think they are doing it right, and the others are wrong, or pagan.
Students, question your teachers. God doesn't want blind obedience. Ignoring the lesson plan is fine as long as what you do come up with is better.
God does not want blind obedience? Have you read the bible? What then of the examples of God's wrath against those who disobeyed Him? Are you a Christ like individual, a prophet of God filled with the Holy Spirit telling us what God want's of us or are you just another human mind filled with worldly thoughts telling us your version of what you think God wants of us?
If you want to know the mind of God, you must start by being willing to reject what is not true. If you compromise and make peace with contradiction, the error will eventually grow and multiply and your only hope is that eventually your house of cards will be knocked down.
A boring god yours would be.
Exodus 34-22
34:18-27 Once a week they must rest, even in ploughing time, and in harvest. All worldly business must give way to that holy rest; even harvest work will prosper the better, for the religious observance of the sabbath day in harvest time. We must show that we prefer our communion with God, and our duty to him, before the business or the joy of harvest. Thrice a year they must appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel. Canaan was a desirable land, and the neighbouring nations were greedy; yet God says, They shall not desire it. Let us check all sinful desires against God and his glory, in our hearts, and then trust him to check all sinful desires in the hearts of others against us. The way of duty is the way of safety. Those who venture for him never lose by him. Three feasts are here mentioned: 1. The Passover, in remembrance of the deliverance out of Egypt. 2. The feast of weeks, or the feast of Pentecost; added to it is the law of the first-fruits. 3. The feast of in-gathering, or the feast of Tabernacles. Moses is to write these words, that the people might know them better. We can never be enough thankful to God for the written word. God would make a covenant with Israel, in Moses as a mediator. Thus the covenant of grace is made with believers through Christ.
These are the Holidays that are scriptural sanctioned by God.
So should the sabbath day be Saturday, or was that changed to Sunday?
Contrary to what many Christians believe, Sunday was not observed by New Testament Christians as a day of worship. They kept Saturday, the seventh day of the week.
The question of how Sunday, the first day of the week, replaced Saturday, the seventh day of the week, as the main day of Christian worship has received increasing attention in recent years. One widely acclaimed study, for example, suggests that the weekly Christian Sunday arose from Sunday-evening communion services in the immediate postresurrection period, with Sunday itself being a workday until after the time of Constantine the Great in the early fourth century.[1] Eventually, however, Sunday ceased to be a workday and became a Christian Sabbath." Some simpler and more popular views are that either (1) Sunday was substituted immediately after Christ's resurrection for the seventh-day Sabbath, or (2) Sundaykeeping was introduced directly from paganism
ne thing is clear: The weekly Christian Sunday--whenever it did arise--did not at first generally become a substitute for the Bible seventh-day Sabbath, Saturday; for both Saturday and Sunday were widely kept side by side for several centuries in early Christian history. Socrates Scholasticus, a church historian of the fifth century A.D., wrote, "For although almost all churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries [the Lord's Supper] on the sabbath of every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and at Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, have ceased to do this."[2] And Sozomen, a contemporary of Socrates, wrote, "The people of Constantinople, and almost everywhere, assemble together on the Sabbath, as well as on the first day of the week, which custom is never observed at Rome or at Alexandria."[3] Thus, "almost everywhere" throughout Christendom, except in Rome and Alexandria, there were Christian worship services on both Saturday and Sunday as late as the fifth century. A number of other sources from the third to the fifth centuries also depict Christian observance of both Saturday and Sunday. For example, the Apostolic Constitutions, compiled in the fourth century, furnished instruction to "keep the Sabbath [Saturday], and the Lord's day [Sunday] festival; because the former is the memorial of the creation, and the latter of the resurrection." "Let the slaves work five days; but on the Sabbath-day [Saturday] and the Lord's day [Sunday] let them have leisure to go to church for instruction in piety."[4] Gregory of Nyssa in the late fourth century referred to the Sabbath and Sunday as "sisters."[5] And about A.D. 400 Asterius of Amasea declared that it was beautiful for Christians that the "team of these two days comes together"--"the Sabbath and the Lord's day,"[6] which each week gathers together the people with priests as their instructors. And in the fifth century, John Cassian refers to attendance in church on both Saturday and Sunday, stating that he had even seen a certain monk who sometimes fasted five days a week but would go to church on Saturday or on Sunday and bring home guests for a meal on those two days.[7] It is clear that none of these early writers confused Sunday with the Bible Sabbath. Sunday, the first day of the week, always followed the Sabbath, the seventh day. Furthermore, the historical records are clear in showing that the weekly cycle has remained unchanged from Christ's time till now, so that the Saturday and Sunday of those early centuries are still the Saturday and Sunday of today. Later in this article we will return to data from early church history of the second and subsequent centuries to trace the manner in which Sunday eventually eclipsed the Sabbath, but first it is important here to take a look at the New Testament evidence, inasmuch as the New Testament is normative for Christian practice.
The weekly cycle wasn't really established until man established the international date line, and that was picked as the opposite of London.
The earliest evidence of continuous use of a seven-day week appears with the Jews during the Babylonian Captivity in 586 BCE, though this in turn stems from a much earlier social custom, attested from the beginning of Genesis, and made a social institution through the fourth commandment, the commandment to keep Sabbath. The proposed reform, World Calendar, has 52 weeks and one or two extra weekless days each year, which do not count in the weekly cycles.
For early Christians, Sunday, as well as being the first day of the week, was also the spiritual eighth day, as it symbolised the new world created after Christ's resurrection. The concept of the eighth day was symbolic only and had no effect on the use of the seven-day week for calendar purposes. Justin Martyr wrote: "the first day after the Sabbath, remaining the first of all the days, is called, however, the eighth, according to the number of all the days of the cycle, and [yet] remains the first"[5]. This does not set up an 8-day week, since the eighth day, not the following day, is considered to be also the first of a cycle.
A period of eight days, starting and ending on a Sunday or starting on a major feast day and finishing on the same day of the week a (7-day) week later, is called an octave. For centuries these were a major feature of the liturgical calendar, particularly of the Roman Catholic Church, and some are still observed, though the number of such octaves has now been radically reduced. Some modern Church uses also preserve the idea of an eight-day period, starting and finishing on the same day of the week, and retain the name "octave" for them; for example, many churches observe an annual "Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity" on 18-25 January or in the week that begins with Pentecost Sunday.
Origin
The Greeks named the days week after the sun, the moon and the five known planets, which were in turn named after the gods Ares, Hermes, Zeus, Aphrodite, and Cronus. The Greeks called the days of the week the Theon hemerai "days of the Gods".
The Romans substituted their equivalent gods for the Greek gods, Mars, Mercury, Jove (Jupiter), Venus, and Saturn. (The two pantheons are very similar.) In the Germanic languages, these names were translated, all names of planets named after Roman gods received names after Germanic gods. Saturn was not substituted.
Continiuous Cycle
There is no record of the 7-day week cycle ever having been broken. Calendar changes and reform have never interrupted the 7-day cycles. It very likely that the week cycles have run uninterrupted at least since the days of Moses (c. 1400 B.C.E.), possibly even longer.
Some sources claim that the ancient Jews used a calendar in which an extra Sabbath was occasionally introduced. But this is probably not true.
Origin
The Greeks named the days week after the sun, the moon and the five known planets, which were in turn named after the gods Ares, Hermes, Zeus, Aphrodite, and Cronus. The Greeks called the days of the week the Theon hemerai "days of the Gods".
The Romans substituted their equivalent gods for the Greek gods, Mars, Mercury, Jove (Jupiter), Venus, and Saturn. (The two pantheons are very similar.) In the Germanic languages, these names were translated, all names of planets named after Roman gods received names after Germanic gods. Saturn was not substituted.
Continiuous Cycle
There is no record of the 7-day week cycle ever having been broken. Calendar changes and reform have never interrupted the 7-day cycles. It very likely that the week cycles have run uninterrupted at least since the days of Moses (c. 1400 B.C.E.), possibly even longer.
Some sources claim that the ancient Jews used a calendar in which an extra Sabbath was occasionally introduced. But this is probably not true.
Monday - Day of the Moon
Represents the Moon
It is day of moon goddess, Selene, Luna and Mani.
Derived from Lunae Dies, day of the moon, the name reflects the ancient observance of feast days dedicated to moon goddess or planet.
Tuesday - Tiu’s Day
Represents the planet Mars
In the Roman calendar the corresponding day was dies Martis, the day of Mars, associated with Ares. Tiw's day is derived from Tyr or Tir, the god of honorable war.
Wednesday - Woden's day
Represents the planet Mercury
The name derives from the Scandinavian Woden (Odin), chief god of Norse mythology, who was often called the All Father.
Thursday - Thor's day
Represents the planet Jupiter
Named after Thor, the god of strength and thunder, defender and help in war, son of Odin, is the counterpart of Jupiter or Jove. Thor is one of the twelve great gods of northern mythology. He is the only god who cannot cross from earth to heaven upon the rainbow, for he is so heavy and powerful that the gods fear it will break under his weight.
Friday - Freya's day
Represents the plant of love Venus
Derived from the Germanic Frigga the name of the Norse god Odin's wife. Frigga is considered to be the mother of all, and the goddess who presides over marriage. The name means loving or beloved.
Saturday - Saturn's day
Represents the planet Saturn
Corresponding to the Roman Saturni, or day of Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture.
Saturday is also represented by Loki, the Norse god of tricks and chaos.
Sunday – Day of the Sun
Sunday celebrates the sun god, Ra, Helios, Apollo, Ogmios, Mithrias, the sun goddess, Phoebe.
The International Date Line (IDL) is an imaginary line on the surface of the Earth opposite the Prime Meridian where the date changes as one travels east or west across it. Roughly along 180° longitude, with diversions to pass around some territories and island groups, it mostly corresponds to the time zone boundary separating −12 and +12 hours Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) (Greenwich Mean Time – GMT). Crossing the IDL travelling east results in a day or 24 hours being subtracted, and crossing west results in a day being added. The exact number of hours depends on the time zones.
The concept of an international date line is first mentioned in a 12th century Talmudic commentary[2][3] which seems to indicate that the day changes in an area where the time is six hours ahead of Jerusalem (90 degrees east of Jerusalem, a line running through the Philippines). This line which he refers to as the K'tzai Hamizrach (the easternmost line) is used to calculate the day of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. According to some sources it is alluded to in the Talmud (Rosh Hashana and Eruvin) as well as in the Jerusalem Talmud.
The date line poses a problem for religious travelers relative to the day on which to observe the Shabbat and Holidays. The Shabbat is on the seventh day of the week which is constant if you stay on the same side of the date line. The problem occurs when a Jewish traveler crosses the line and for whom it is Friday but for the city the traveler is visiting, it is Saturday. Most authorities[by whom?] hold that the traveler should keep his or her own calendar (so it is still Friday for the traveler) until the traveler meets locals for whom it is Saturday and only then would the traveler use the local calendar.
The nautical date line is a de jure construction determined by international agreement. It is the result of the 1917 Anglo-French Conference on Time-keeping at Sea, which recommended that all ships, both military and civilian, adopt hourly standard time zones on the high seas. The United States, for example, adopted its recommendation for US military and merchant marine ships in 1920. This date line is implied but not explicitly drawn on time zone maps. It follows the 180° meridian except where it is interrupted by territorial waters adjacent to land, forming gaps—it is a pole-to-pole dashed line. Ships must adopt the standard time of a country if they are within its territorial waters, but must revert to international time zones (15° wide pole-to-pole gores) as soon as they leave its territorial waters. In reality they use these time zones only for radio communication etc. Internally in the ship, e.g. for work and meal hours they use a suitable time zone of their own wish. The 15° gore that is offset from UTC by twelve hours is bisected by the nautical date line into two 7.5° gores that differ from UTC by ±12 hours.
It has been carefully thought out, and follows traditions dating back thousands of years, but it is still something of a kludge. It strikes me as somemthing too arbitrary for God to use to establish sets of rules where men would judge sin or righteousness of other men. And if you go north of the Arctic circle, the concept of day of week becomes even more garbled, sometimes impossible to determine, so man has to make even more arbitray decisions to keep his system of a sabbath commandment going.
lol...good point! Well, in Islam, they pray five a day every day, and on Friday they hold a sort of mass. Even Catholics hold a daily mass for worshipers. In today's mainstream industrialized society, where can one find time for prayer? Sundays is supposed to be a day of rest, but the world runs 24-7. It is very difficult to find retail positions or a job in health care and other support industries where having the weekend off is seen more as a luxury than a God given right. Of course, people need to have health care support every day of the week and need their triple espresso shots and fuel to get to their job and then entertainment after wards as a means for stress relief and some new threads and dinner to go before heading back to the daily grind the next day. Who has time for worshiping God?
The question is does God even want this worship? On a global scale, the schedule of the sabbath is ultimately a decision made by men. It is not something God would have commanded. Have a little faith. God wouldn't have commanded a schedule that only worked on a small part of the globe, and then became a set of arbitrary rules administered by man to make it universal. That is the kind of thing man does. God is smarter than that.
Well, I had to do a bit of research here on this and I am going to have to concede that you have a valid point.
"Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. "
"Six days shah thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work..." (Exodus 20:10).
"...thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. "
"For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it" (Exodus 20:11).
"And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day" (Deuteronomy 5:15).
I guess it would depend on your definition of how to keep the sabbath day holy. What scripture ultimately says is that we are not to work on the sabbath day, that it is a day reserved for God and a day of rest.
If worship is considered as a way of keeping the sabbath day holy, then this indeed would be what God wants.
It is men who are doing this considering, not God.
There is no divine definition of the sabbath day on the surface of a globe, so the schedule is ultimately determined by man, men judging other men. The scriptures are of limited value here because the scriptures contain errors.
And thus the circular argument begins, with those on one side who try to disprove the infallible Word of God and those who are certain without a doubt because of their Faith in the Inspired Word of God.
In the end, one can not prove or disprove anything. That is precisely why it is a matter of Faith.
I care little for those who attempt to try to shake up my beliefs. My current house mate and best friend is an atheist and we have spent (wasted) much time going back and forth over various issues throughout the years. What if you did indeed place enough doubt into my beliefs to shatter my faith? You would take away the hope and promise that I hold in my heart in God and of the
afterlife and replace it with what exactly?
I spent much of my adult life working in health care. My current position as the Resident Care Coordinator for an RCF working primarily with Hospice patients provided me with a unique insight into the death process. The patients and their families who were devout believers had the easiest time accepting their death and looked forward to what was to come next. The ones who had no expressed belief in God and the afterlife were the most difficult to console, struggled the longest to stay alive, and were full of regrets. For them, this was it. Their was nothing else to look forward to. Interestingly enough, these patients were also terrified by the "hallucinations" that they saw, requiring increased dosages of morphine sulfate, haldol, and ativan to keep them calm and manageable. The family members who also were not believers took the death of their loved ones very hard.
He might enjoy this website. You should invite him to participate.
Replace it with what you can accomplish during this life. God doesn't want us to withdraw in our vanity and just let the world go to hell while we wait on the afterlife. God wants us to help make things better.
I believe that we are making Santa such a big deal where in fact Jesus should be the main focus of Christmas.
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Jim Reed and karmanaught, you two merely talk past each other and take up space. Once again, you veer off topic. Please exchange phone numbers or email addresses, or find another forum where you can let your arguing take its course without interrupting the discussion of others.
This post is about going to hear a lecture on the proof of Santa Claus, then when the lights went out Santa or one of the imposters left free beer in the other room so everyone at the lecture applauded and left. That is not a topic of discusion, just an invitation to make up your own topic of discussion. Karmanaught thinks there is no Santa Claus, and in fact he even thinks Christmas is pagan and not biblical and he thinks it is important to warn people about believing things not in the Bible such as Sunday sabbath. I think there is no Santa Claus, and Christians have made such a mess of things we should probably question the value of Christmas or any other religious belief. We both did what we could to turn this Santa topic into something worth reading, and everyone else must make their own judgment.
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