{"id":10085,"date":"2012-10-14T09:00:50","date_gmt":"2012-10-14T13:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=10085"},"modified":"2012-10-14T09:00:50","modified_gmt":"2012-10-14T13:00:50","slug":"physics-santa-and-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/10\/physics-santa-and-god.html","title":{"rendered":"Physics, Santa, and God"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both;text-align: none\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2012\/10\/wpid-Photo-Oct-14-2012-849-AM.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" class=\" decorated-link\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2012\/10\/wpid-Photo-Oct-14-2012-849-AM.jpg\" class=\"alignnone\" alt=\"\" width=\"286\" height=\"1331\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p> OK, the argument above is cute. Can it be used to prove not only that there is a Santa Claus, but also that there is a God \u2013 indeed, an infinite number of them? Or does the apparent absence of Santa from our universe suggest that there are not an infinite number of universes? And if the multiverse idea ends up needing to be discarded, what are the implications for atheism and for various religious beliefs?<\/p>\n<p>Since I have mentioned God and Santa in conjunction with one another, let me emphasize that I do not share the Santa-like view of God that some but not all theists hold, and which atheists and quite a number of religious believers reject. For me, and many others, questions about God (at least, the sort of God we are interested in) are about the fundamental nature of reality, and not about the presence or absence from a universe of a particularly powerful gift-bestowing person.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK, the argument above is cute. Can it be used to prove not only that there is a Santa Claus, but also that there is a God \u2013 indeed, an infinite number of them? Or does the apparent absence of Santa from our universe suggest that there are not an infinite number of universes? And [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,85,101],"tags":[4005,5174,7788,9114,10766,13172],"class_list":["post-10085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","category-science","category-theology","tag-god","tag-infinite","tag-multiverse","tag-physics","tag-santa-claus","tag-universe"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Physics, Santa, and God<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"OK, the argument above is cute. 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