Is Santa a god? (part 2)

our conversation about gods, our brains, and Santa Claus. We hope you enjoy as we jump right back in. Okay, so we've been talking about these criteria that Justin Barrett raises that you will find a common to pretty much all beliefs in gods among you know, religions you find in the world. That gods tend to be counterintuitive in

some way, often minimally counterintuitive. That they tend to be intentional agents, that they have strategic information, that they in some way act in the world, and that they're capable of motivating behaviors that reinforce belief. Oh and that's one other thing we should have emphasized. I guess we did in this that the most important thing about the behaviors that the God's motivate, the rituals or whatever, is that the the motivated action most important to this system is

that it reinforces the original belief itself. Yeah, because that's how it continues. It's it has to sustain itself through that. Yes. So I was just thinking to myself, Okay, these these five criteria, what happens if we apply them to certain fictional entities that either claim to be God or are believed to be a god of some sort within the fiction. Take Goes or the Gazarian, for instance, one of the best.

So it's it's a minimally counterintuitive concept. You know, it has agency, it does a lot of stuff, But does it offer strategic information? I don't know if it offers it. I think it probably has it. Yeah. Uh. I also about the only good example I had this is that, Okay, I mean, certainly it has strategic information because it can see into your thoughts and see what mental pictures you are filling your brain with, so I think that would count.

It also has information that the world will be destroyed by itself. So that's that's that's worth having. I guess, like, is Godzilla a god? I mean, does god Zilla possess strategic information or well? I don't know. I think Godzilla is just a big monster, right, But go goes Are the Gozarian uh comes from another dimension and it's like a god that makes Godzilla's makes marshmallow Godzilla exactly. It takes the form of Godzilla, right, Um, okay, the big

one with the Gozer. Though, does it offer motivating behaviors that reinforce belief? Maybe? I mean, it seems only concerned with the opening of the doors that will allow it to destroy the world as it destroyed other worlds. I don't know. I think the case is maybe a little weak, but conceivable. I just realized I is calling goes Or a heat. I'm not sure goes Or as a heat. Goes Er might be a she or or neither gender

I'm not sure. Yeah, I think goes Are's gender neutral, even though it does take the form of a feminine figure in the in the movie. And I think but I think in the original script it was going to be played by pee Wee Hermann. Right. Oh wow, I say goes Or transcends our puny concepts of gender. Right, So we talked about as a thought, as a though, as a thought, however you want to say it earlier. I think this one fails because lax agency, and I'm not sure it actually acts in the human world at all.

I think it's supposed to be just an entity out there in the void, and it's just supposed to be frightening and terrifying that it's out there at all. Um Sutter Kane from John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness, I think he checks off all the boxes. He's a human that becomes a god. But then he's got I mean, by the end of the film, there's no questioning it. I gotta watch that again. It's it's it's pretty solid. One of my favorites. Okay, here's one we have to discuss.

This is one we've talked about in greater detail on a past episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind. Yeah, the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Okay, the Postafarian concept, which granted is kind of a it is it is a counter religious argument. It is an idea that it's brought up. It's kind of a contrary uh concept. Right, Well, it's another one of those that's obviously a joke. At the moment you hear it, right, you don't have to investigate, like do people seriously believe? I mean, like you just

know instantly it's a joke. And again that's a clue that there's like there are some kind of intuitive constraints on what gods they're supposed to be, like, right, I mean, his the flying spaghetti Monster. I think the biggest flaw might be that it is not minimally counterintuitive. It is it has two counter into two counterintuitive. It's like God is a potato, right. But on the other hand, I

do think it checks off a number of the boxes. Uh, you know, his he has detectable actions, and they see that they seem to be limited to the creation of the world and also the changing of scientific measurements with

his newly appendage changing radiocarbon dating. Uh, and so for well, I mean, I guess another thing is the question of, like whether people sincerely believe the things you're talking about to meet these criteria or just propose them obviously ingest because with all these fictional examples, I mean, you're thinking up ideas of where you can create a something that meets all the criteria, and yet obviously still is not a legit god found in the world because nobody actually believes, right,

nobody actually worships goes or uh. I mean, this flying spaghetti Monster is is an interesting case though, because I think it's probably safe to say that nobody actually worships the flying spaghetti Monster. No one truly believes in the flying spaghetti Monster. But at what point does the current um concept of the flying spaghetti Monster? At what point does it at least partially transcended? Which which point does

it get one newly appendage over the line into godhood. Well, if you go on with a joke long enough, you'll start to want to find meaning in it. It always happens, Yeah, I mean, I mean, there's something to be said in mean culture with on that account, I believe. I think that's absolutely true. I think it's also true. Watch any irreverent TV show long enough eventually gets sentimental. It's true. I mean, people want to start finding meaning in the

chaos of humor and satire. That's a good point, all right, Well, let's bring it back around to Santa Claus at this point. Um, First, I just want to recap a little bit about Santa. But you know, I want to go I don't want to go into a full history of Santa Claus, but it's it's interesting to just remind everyone where the concept came from. A few years ago I chatted with Aida Adam C. English, chair of the Department of Christian Studies at Campbell University, about the evolution of Santa and See

a Santa scholar. Yes, he is the author of the book The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus? The True Life and Trials of Nicholas of Mira. Uh that in this book he point doubt that the modern Santa Claus bears almost no resemblance to the historic origins of a fourth century Christian bishop. UM, and his continued evolution reveals a great deal about modern culture. Uh. This interview used to be hosted a Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, But now Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com is

um exists only in a very stripped down form. But I'm gonna just read a few uh quotes here from the author. Adam see English Uh wrote to me and said, quote first and most obviously, Santa has been scrubbed of any and all religious identity. I think that is something people notice when they see the European Old World St. Nick's, who are addressed like bishops with a miter stole, ecclesiastical vestiments, a Crozier staff, and many times wearing a crucifix or

cross on the neck. In contrast, Santa has been domesticated, commercialized, and universalized or secularized, depending on your viewpoint. The miter has been softened into a floppy fur trimmed stocking cap, the estimates have been turned into a red first suit with white trimming, the stole into the big black belt in the Crozier staff into a large sack of toy. Even his name is under gone changed. Santa Claus is an americanization of the Dutch center class, which is just St. Nicholas.

His other name, Chris Kringle, is the americanization of the German Austrian uh Chris Kindle or christ Child. Martin Luther attempted to replace Nicholas as the gift giver with the baby Jesus. The Christmas gifts come from the Christ Child, well the Kris Kringle. The religious With Chris Kringle, the

religious significance important to Luther has again been lost. He continues, quote the first depiction of Nicholas in America by the New York Historical Society showed him as a stern bishop in the European fashion, but within fifty years he transformed into the magical elf who drives a sleigh pulled by

reindeer and trops down chimneys. Um. And then also he drove home that there was no here a once upon a time pure religious Santa Claus Christmas has always been a blend of the sacred and the secular, popular in the solemn, commercial and the familial um. Also, he points out that you know a lot of it also dates back to older beliefs. Uh. He said that in pre Christian times, the Greeks they celebrated Linnea, Romans had the

Saturnalia in late December as well as the Romalia. Germans hunted and feasted at Yule Tide, the Irish had Rende. So I mean, you have all these different midwinter festivals and they all involve a lot of you know, merriment, feasting, etcetera. Okay, well, this introduces some difficulty because if we're talking about evaluating whether Santa Claus meets the cognitive science of religion criteria of a god what Santa Claus do you go with?

Do you go with like, you know, St. Nicholas, or do you go with like some kind of you know, as defined in some traditional work, or do you try to gather in the great you know, tapestry of different Santa laws stuff out there today, and and and consider it all together and and put together I don't know,

an amalgam. Yeah. And this is a problem that that Barrett gets into in the paper because because really, on one hand, you could you could really cherry pick from global and historical Santa Claus ideas and concepts and then choose the descriptions and attributes that best support your case. If you're saying God, are you saying not a God? You could point to evidence to support it. So, but but but first of all, Barrett just says, okay. At

first glance, he thinks Santa meets all five criteria. First of all, Santa is minimally counterintuitive. He's a flying, jolly, old, kind hearted man. He's like he's grandfather Christmas. Also, Santa is an intentional agent. Santa. Santa has a mind. Santa wants to do things. He is not an unanimate carbon rod. Also, he possesses strategic information. He knows if you've been bad or good. He acts in at at actable way. He leaves gifts or even a note in some cases. Uh,

and he motivates reinforcing behaviors. Kids leave out milk and cookies for him. That is the sacred offering that is made to the Great Elf himself. Well, I mean, and I guess he would hope that his actions encourage children to be good around Christmas. I mean, that's what it's supposed to be. That's true, that's the whole other aspect of it as well. But ultimately, Barrett, he's not convinced, is he. No, he insisted Santa ultimately fails at being

a god. Okay, now what is his case here? Okay, So on the counterintuitive point, he gets into this this whole like cherry picking thing that we discussed earlier. He counters that that we're not unified enough in our vision of Santa. In some some belief incarnations or in some media incarnations, we just see him as like a kind old man, while others show him as being this magical

being that we've mostly been talking about. Right, this idea that he lives forever at the North Pole and flies through the air and doesn't obey the law of physics and time. Uh. And he says that some films portray him as as being a normal person who just has quote, special friends, animals, and resources. Now, Barrett makes a distinction that I'm not sure I fully get. I wonder what

you thought about this. Barrett makes a distinction between a counterintuitive being, like a counterintuitive man who has some special qualities, versus just like a regular being who uses magic powers. I'm not sure I really understood what the distinction is there, Like, if you can use magic powers, that seems counterintuitive to me. Yeah, I don't know. The way I was thinking about it when I read it was Okay, he's saying that sometimes

Santa Claus is Superman, sometimes Santa Claus is Batman. Superman has amazing powers that are otherworldly. Batman is just a normal guy, but he has special um gadgets and he has special friends. Okay, So, like in the Santa Claus movie, the Mexican Christmas movie, Um, Santa Claus doesn't have the innate power to teleport. He has the flower to disappear. That's right, yes, And if he loses the flower to disappear,

he can't teleport anymore. He's literally what he's treated by a dog, I think in that, yes, you know so, Yeah, that's a great exam That film is just a great film in general, and I believe played a key role in we're talking about the the idea that Santa Claus must travel as a concept like that film, if I remember correctly, played a very important role in introducing the concept of modern western Santa Claus to a Mexican audience. Huh. But yeah, in that he seems like just a ridiculous

old man. If he is if he loses any of his magical items, Okay, I can see this, and he depends on a lot of cooperation and support to really get the job done. Yes, he's got his friend Merlin, he's got all the children who help him. He's got the machine with the lips whatever he's going on there. Yeah, he's more of a batman Santa Claus for sure, Whereas in Santa Claus Versus the Martians, uh, the other m ST. Three k Riff Santa Claus movie, in that he has powers,

he can make toys do his bidding. Yeah, he's Hermes. I mean, all right, well, let's move on. To the strategic information front. Okay, which again at the at the surface level, it seems like it's He's got it. He knows if you've been bad or good. Right, Yeah, But Barrett again argues that it comes down to consistency, and it's not consistent enough for Barrett, because does Santa truly know if someone has done or plans to do something

morally objectionable? Yeah. Barrett says that knowing whether a person has been bad or good is not actually strategic information. It's the same kind of judgment another person could easily make. Uh. And what would constitute strategic information is, for example, knowing in advance whether somebody is going to be good or bad. Again,

I'm not sure if I agree with Barrett here. I think that knowing whether somebody was bad or good, especially if you know what they did in private when nobody else was there to see them, that seems like strategic information to me. Like, if you could watch what other people did in private without them knowing, would that not provide you with information that could give you a strategic advantage. Yeah,

I don't know. It's it's one of those areas of the Santa Claus concept where it does seem like a boiled down version of what you see in God right, a more limited version. And I think part of this is kids are generally children are not attributed with tremendous powers of hiding their wrongdoing. Like generally, whatever they're doing bad, it's super obvious because that's what we're getting onto them for. You know. Okay, the next one, does Santa act in

the world in detectable ways? Well, Barrett says that Santa meets this one but weekly, since the gifts come once a year in a limited manner, so it's not you know, he's not bringing you gifts every week or every month even to to to really you know, make sure the detection is uh is a is obvious, you know, Yeah, And I would say the production of the gifts, as with many of the things that are say prayed for, petition for in religions, with things that are definitely recognized

as God's it's similarly ambiguous in terms of the mechanism. You know, you like, go to sleep and then the presents are there in the morning. There's a lot of kind of wiggle room to think about what's going on there, right, and then sometimes Santa, I mean as We've discussed previously on the show. Santa tends to come if he if it is if he has if it is discussed that Santa might come, he tends to come. Generally, threats of Santa might not come this year because E've ben bad,

generally those threats are not acted upon. But on the other hand, Santa doesn't always bring everything you wanted, and sometimes Santa doesn't bring those gifts that are ridiculous or dangerous. Right, So, yeah, there's a lot of room to I don't know where. It's up to the user kind of to infer the amount of detectable behavior that they wish, and then let's get around to motivating reinforcing behavior to Santa. Claus do this well. We chatted about this a bit in our

Carampus episode Actually does Santa really work? Does the idea actually make kids behave? And Barrett contends that it does not. He says Santa is gonna come either way. And again, it's also only going to impact Christmas. This is just what we were talking about, Like, does does the idea that Santa might not bring you any gifts at Christmas? Does that have any impact at all on a child's behavior? In March. I don't know, because because in March when

you're eight, like Christmas is a thousand years away. Yeah, And just think also about like how long a month is to a child compared to how long a month is to an adult. Yeah. I guess that's what you mean by a thousand years away. I mean every year

to to a five year old feels like an eternity. Um. But yeah, there was another thing I was thinking about here, which is the most important behavior for a god, belief to reinforce in order to have memetic resilience, in order to survive and spread, it's got to be belief in the God itself. We mentioned this earlier. Does Santa's motivating power in turn motivate belief in Santa or even if it works, is it just to motivate like being well behaved. Yeah,

that's a very good point. Yeah, does it actually motivate belief in Santa? Do? Kids? I mean you'll see I guess you see a little of that, you know, um, kind of like like in you know, an inquisition for a normal religion, but applied to the Santa world, Like

you've got to believe or you'll get in trouble. Well, I think the the area in the Santa concept as as I experienced it growing up, and in the current rights and rituals that we maintain that the real area of of like proof, right is the is the carrot that has been bitten by the reindeer and the half consumed plate of cookies and milk like that, that, more than the presence, is like the fingerprint of God. Explain that,

checkmate atheists, checkmate Richard Dawkins. Anyway, Barrett also points out that a big problem facing Santa is to go back to some of the origins we've mentioned earlier, is that St. Nicholas is dead. Boo, No, he's not. No. No. The connection to the long dead sat is clear, and myths don't really explain it. He is not the resurrected St. Nicholas. We're never told that's the case. He's not the ghost of St. Nicholas. He's not Nicholas the White returned after

fighting the ball Rock. He's just he just also happens to be the mortal man who definitely died in the year three d and forty three CE. This is something I'm gonna come back to in just a minute. But yeah, there there are not very strong, coherent Santa apologetics that are designed to work on adults. Right, Yeah, there's there's no like if they explain, well, yes, Santa Claus was

once St. Nicholas and after his death in three three CE, etcetera, etcetera. No, it's just like Barrett says, it's like you're into Santa and then you look him up and you're like, oh St. Nicholas, Oh, and he's dead. And he says that that takes the punch out of it. All Right, we're gonna jump in here and take a quick break, but we'll be right back,

and we're back now. In discussing all of this, Barrett also provides a humorous chart that compiles his thoughts and his his interpretations of these five categories, not only on Santa as a possible guy, but also Mickey Mouse, the Tooth Fairy, and George Bush. I think this would have

been George W. Bush, Right, Yeah, I believe so. But for instance, we area went through Santa Claus, but on Mickey Mouse, he gave Mickey yes for counterintuitive, yes for intentional agent, sure, but then then a no on having strategic information and no on acting in the real world, and a no unmotivating reinforcing behavior. Oh yeah, I'm with all that. On the tooth fairy. Tooth Fairy gets yes is across the board except for possessing strategic information, which, yeah,

does the tooth fairy really know anything you don't? I mean, maybe knows a little bit more about your dental hygiene than other entities. Doesn't really seem actionable him. And then finally, George Bush. George Bush gets yeses across the board except for counterintuitive. So he's an intentional agent. He at least at the time, possessed strategic information. He acted in the real world, and he motivated reinforcing behaviors, but he was

not counterintuitive. Right, does he motivate reinforcing behaviors? I guess so, yeah, I got yeah, I think so. But you know, he it was just a human, right, I mean, yeah, it's true, any actually existing human walking around on the earth motivates reinforcing behaviors, because if you act as if these people

don't exist, it will cause problems for you. I should also point out that if you if you want to actually look up this paper and the full title, which we did not share earlier for reasons that we become obvious is why Santa Claus is not a god again Journal of Cognition and Culture, two thousand and eight. If you look it up. He also has a wonderful Venn diagram of how all five of these concepts interact, and the like the one safe zone where you have candidates

for successful gods according to these these ideas. Now, I would say to be critical of these uh criteria we've been discussing. I think you could argue that Santa meets all five criteria at least in some cases of belief, and maybe not in other cases of belief, and yet still there is no active cult of Santa whatsoever among adults.

And this suggests to me that while I think these five criteria are all very good starting places for evaluating god type agents in people's beliefs, there have got to be some other criteria here that are not really accounted for.

I think one major factor playing against belief in Santa Claus as a god is that there is, first of all, a right of passage in which children become aware of the underlying Christmas Gift mechanism, and there are not any significant numbers of adults insisting to other adults that Santa

Claus is real and is a god. Like you've got to have a foothold of people starting off insisting that it's real in all cases, and not just say in the presence of children, but like to other adults, and they would have to be, you know, trying to make a case, you know, and once you had that, actually, I could see it being surprising how easy something like god belief would pick up, because there's nothing as convincing

as other people's confidence. It's like embarrassing how susceptible we are to just sensing confidence in other people and thinking, oh, maybe there's something to that. So do you think that there could come a day where we would say, oh, yeah, when we when we were kids and when we were you know, younger adults, Uh, Santa was just an idea that we we told kids about and only kids believed in it. But now we have all these adults all over the news media and they're just fiercely defending belief

in Santa Claus. And I'm afraid to say anything. I don't think you would get that because I don't see that there's a major motivation to start a movement like that. And I think that the people who tried to start a movement like that, they would not have a major motivation, and they would look foolish at least initially until they, you know, got people believing them. So I I just

don't see that as likely to happen now. I think you could probably propose things that are equally ridiculous, but you can imagine more of a motivation for them to come about. That maybe you could. I mean, they sound crazy to us now, but if enough people were confidently proclaiming them, Say, take a major political figure and start saying that they're a god. And that sounds ridiculous to us right now, but you just get a number of people loudly, proudly proclaiming that, I think you could get

some buy in. Oh yeah, I mean you, if you listen to the right people, you you hear that about contemporary political figures to a certain extent. I don't think I've heard anyone say that, uh, the individual in question is a deity. But I have heard people say, well, if you look at you know, the way such and such as written in the Old Testament, then clearly that makes room for me to, you know, to to look

over this particular individual shortcomings etcetera. And uh, yeah, I mean it's it's not too much of an extra relation to get to the point where you can imagine someone saying, no, this, this politician is a god. Well, and the division between a figure of major religious significance and a god themselves is not always as clear as we might want it to be or think it is. There's another thing that I think is getting in the way of Santa Claus

becoming a legitimate god belief among adults. And this may be a weirdly specific nit to pick, but I think it hurts to suggest that there is a physical location on Earth where he resides, and combining that with like modern geo imaging and maps like, it would be really hard to contend that Santa Claus is a literal, physical being who lives in a toy workshop at the North Pole. Most god beliefs that have survived into the modern technological era have either always been or have had to retreat

into uh intangibility. For instance, it would it would be hard to insist today that there are Greek gods that literally inhabit a palace at the top of Mount Olympus, like you see pictures of what it looks like up there, um they would have to become invisible or start to occupy some non physical dimension or something like that. Now, as always when you're talking about you know, real phenomenon

and culture, there are exceptions. An exception. I can think of his Mount Kailash, for instance, in in Hinduism, some believe this to be the you know, it's a physical mountain, It's a real mountain. You go there, people make pilgrimages there and they walk around it. Some people believe it to be the home of Lord Shiva and the goddess Parvadi. But you're not allowed to climb up on the mountain to see for yourself. And I think this belief would

probably also tolerate some non physical interpretations. And yet, as I think, you could potentially imagine, imagine a world, if you will, in which St. Nicholas is never fully divested from his religious origins and and and instead of it being, instead of Santa Claus being this thing that is sometimes brought up about the secular war on Christmas, you know, and taking Christ out of Christmas, what if St. Nicholas on the whole across you know, Western civilization remains this um,

this religious figure who also comes at Christmas and brings toys and lives at the North Pole. And then you have all Santa believing nations agree to not explore the the Arctic because that is where Santa lives, and then forging treaties with non Santa believing nations UH that where they agree, yes, we won't explore the Arctic because we realize that's sacred to you. Then perhaps you could keep you could keep the the the residents of Santa an article of faith or not. It might not actually work,

but it's possible. I think. I think you'd still have the major problem of like the the generational transfer of the knowledge of the Christmas gift mechanism, you know, like the fact that at some point you meet the man behind the curtain and its mom and dad. I think that has an incredibly powerful demotivating effect unbelief, Like you're really going for the throat with that one. Joe, I didn't, I didn't go that far and talking about the magic of Santa. It's weird though, because I feel I feel

I'm sorry, did I do bad? Well? It's weird for me because I feel more I feel less pressure about discussing uh, like religious concepts. Uh, you know we've been saying that. Okay, you know, we have this concept of God, but there's no actual deity that resides in the heaven. Like, I feel better about saying that than to come out and say that Santa Claus is your parents. We already said, oh, come on, I don't know. I'm not saying it makes sense.

I'm just saying, um, that's how it feels. I'm like, oh, that's that's a step too far to say, not only there is no Santa and he is me. That's that's exactly in fact that you're exactly making my point, because it's not just that at some point that the other kids on the playground start saying, oh, you still believe in Santa. Santa isn't real. I mean, that would be one thing if that was happening. You could still maintain

belief even in a hostile atmosphere. People maintain religious beliefs in a hostile atmosphere among nonbelievers who challenge their beliefs. But the fact that they're the mechanism is revealed by the by the people pulling the levers that the the it is me statement is the most powerful moment there that's where like it can't really survive that moment. But

sometimes you don't completely have that moment. I don't know, like some some parents, they don't have like a sit down and say like, all right, here's the here's the truth. So um, I think another important Sorry, I didn't mean to do something that. No, no, you didn't. I'm just saying that that kind of I felt that it says more about me as a as a parent that's currently maintaining the magic of Santa and trying to figure out

like where it goes from here, you know. But I do want to come back to again to Santa and godhood. I think it's worth mentioning. First of all, Santa has encompassed aspects of old gods already. You have such characters as the Germanic god vote in, the godlike entity of Russia's dead de Morez or old Man Frost of course, factors into another MST three k Rifft film, Jack Frost. Uh, and I think he's more there's certainly a clear cut

case for Jack Frost being a deity. Uh, since he is uh, you know, he's he's can he's you know, he's a he's a natural force. And that is personified. But then also we have to get into discussing just like how the how concepts of God and God's are going to vary from culture to culture, because a lot of this has revolved around very I think Western concepts of an all powerful god, you know, or or even

like ancient Greek concepts of like really highly powerful anthropomorphic entities. Right. Yeah, um. I mean it's something that Barrett mentions in the paper is that there these criteria are supposed to apply to all kinds of gods. I mean, so they would apply to you know, uh, spirit gods that live in the trees and stuff like that, or household gods and like,

they should apply to all of these categories. But it's clear that at least I think you and I, by our cultural context are very conditioned when we talk about gods to think about like the monotheistic religions, right. But I do wonder if, despite what Barrett says, I wonder if some of the household god concepts do kind of

fall through the cracks of this a little bit. I was thinking particularly about about about China here, because in China, U Santa has really only gained traction there during really gain traction there in the nineteen nineties. So you won't find Santa wearing Confucian robes or anything, but apparently you will see him on doors in places often relegated for

the gods. Chinese households with double doors sometimes boast twin images of Santa, a place also reserved for Chinese New Year posters and the traditional uh min Shin or door gods of of Chinese tradition. And I think it this forces us to realize that there's you know, there's again, there's God in the monotheistic tradition, and then there are the gods of various non monotheistic religions, and and we hardly just mean the pantheons of Hinduism in ancient Greece.

But again these household deities, such as the Chinese domestic odds like the kitchen or stove god, and then you know their variations of this in Western traditions as well. Interestingly enough, though, it is sometimes held that the kitchen God in Chinese custom returns to the celestial realm shortly before lunar New Year in order to report household activities directly to the all powerful Jade Emperor, whoa so um

some strategic information there. So you know, at first it might seem like there's not anything strategic there, but clearly the kitchen God has strategic information that then has an important ramifications for the household effected. Well, one thing I was thinking to complicate this is I used the obvious example that seems laughable to us of the crunch rap

supreme God. But I think that they're in fact are some types of household god type entities that are they are intentional agents and that they can act and they have like thoughts and stuff like that, but they're also inanimate objects, right, Yeah about that. So there are are like household appliances that are gods and like food items that are gods, but they're just imagined to be those

inanimate objects with intentional agency. All right, we're gonna jump in here and take a quick break, but we'll be right back. And we're back. So there's another way to think about Santa in relationship to gods and religion, and that's by focusing on the fact that if he is a god, he's a specific kind of god, right, which is a moralizing god, like he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake, and I think two people who are primarily familiar with only

the largest world religions today. You know, you've got Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, all that. It probably just seems like moralizing is an inherent part of what a religion is, right, yeah, I would think so. I mean, especially with the major monotheistic religions, and that is the model, right, the big the big sky Daddy that is going to be disappointed in you

and punish you if you do not behave morally totally. Like, all those religions have concepts or codes that in some way regulate moral conduct. They encourage one type of behavior over another. So you've got the you know, supernatural justice in heaven and hell, divine retribution or resolution in the workings of karma, etcetera. But not all religions are especially moralizing, and not all gods are especially concerned with moral behavior.

Like if you look at smaller religions practiced stall around the world and especially deeper into history, you start to get the picture that many gods and many religions are basically a moral that that they involve myths and rituals, and that the gods don't really care whether or not you are morally good or bad. They care whether you say,

perform the rituals or not. And of course this isn't to say that the people practicing these religions are a moral They of course would have ideas about moral conduct, just like anybody else would. It's just that the you know, in these societies, the regulation of morality does not seem to come from the gods or religion. It comes from other sources in the same way that the amoral god it doesn't care if you've been bad or good. We can easily imagine like the tyrannical king who doesn't care

if you are a good person or not. But are you are you paying your tribute to him? Are you obeying the laws that he set out not because they're more, but because they reinforce his rule? Right? It's not follow the Golden rule or something. It's neil Before's odd right now. Now, we mentioned earlier how the Jade emperor in Chinese traditions, in Chinese mythology does seem concerned with what's been happening in your house via intel provided by a household God.

But I think what's interesting concerning that, I don't bring it up to trying, like, you know, cast down this idea, but rather to like add maybe a few wrinkles to it. I think what's interesting is that Chinese customs put a huge emphasis on anset Jews, and I think you see this in other models as well from around the world. That stress spirits of the dead is entities that have not completely faded away and maybe connected to the gods

in some way. I guess a true moralizing god in the form we're talking about here is one that has no shall we say, blood relation to the mortals in question. Zeus, for instance, always seems more keen than Father, even in dealing with his own demi god offspring. You know, he's he's certainly not a moral entity himself. No, I mean, yeah, you look at the Greek gods. They don't seem at

all concerned with moral behavior. I mean you might get little snippets of that here and there, It does not seem to be the main focus of the Greek religion, right, and then many of them too are of course more it's not even it's limiting to try and even think of them as being a moral or a moral because they are more embodiments of drives and aspects of the

human condition. Yeah, totally. I mean they serve they serve a narrative function, right, just the way that like the characters in your novel don't necessary they're not necessarily gonna be good people, like they're they're doing things to serve a narrative function. I think a lot of gods in history are that way, except you did need to do

the rituals right well, like Bacchus for example. You know, like Bacchus, I guess you could say Bacchus is a moral but but even that kind of puts a luminal what Bacchus is, Like, Bacchus is more the embodiment of like sort of primal instinct and primal drive and desire right now. Of course, whenever you're talking about like a big complex human phenomenon like religion, there's gonna be all kinds of variation. There's no you know, it's hard to

make generalized statements that are always true. But historically it does appear to a lot of scholars of religion that over time there was a pretty major shift in the world from a moral religions to moralizing religions. And again that doesn't mean a moral people. It just means like, you know, gods that aren't concerned with moral behavior only with rituals to gods that have moral codes and stuff.

And the era of moralizing god's also seems to be linked with like other rates of the religions that bear them. For example, the trend toward moralizing god seems to be paired with features like omniscience. Like in order for a god to be aware of your moral conduct at all times and punish you even for doing wrong in private, the god needs to be all perceptive, you know, he

sees you when you're sleeping and so forth. And so some scholars have actually proposed that the emergence of big moralizing gods and big moralizing religions could have had major effects on sort of society and ecology and and the history of human civilization. Like one hypothesis that's been knocking around for years. I've mainly seen it associated with a book by the Canadian psychologist Dr Era nor in Zion

called Big Gods, How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. Uh, I might not be fully doing a justice, but the basic idea here is that like big, powerful, moralizing gods made civilization with large settlements and lots of trade and interaction between strangers possible. I think the basic reasoning is that if people only live in small settlements, it's hard for individuals to get away with bad dishonest behavior, because you quickly get a bad reputation if you know everybody

around you knows you. There's only one person selling brad you know it's it's a small community. But so yeah, so they get punished in social ways, you know, by other people. But in a world with big cities and lots of business and interactions between people who are probably never even going to see each other again, it's a lot easier to be a cheat or a thief for

whatever and just keep getting away with it. Thus the need for a belief in an all seeing judge who holds you accountable, who won't just let you cheat and harm people and then escape into the anonymity made possible by a big society with lots of trade and lots of strangers. Um. Now, as always with this kind of hypothesis, it's important to remember the difference between like telling a

plausible story and proving an explanation is correct. I'm all for informed speculation in areas where hard evidence is lacking. That's a lot of fun to do, and we like to we talk about that stuff all the time. But it's also important to remember the difference between that and proof. So it is an interesting hypothesis. But like, is there any way to test its predictions? And I think the answer is sort of. It's the kind of historical explanation

that would be difficult to be sure about. But one study I was looking at found an interesting way to test its consistency with the facts, and this was by using a big historical database called set shot to check to check the timelines basically on average, based on what we know about history, does evidence for big moralizing gods tend to show up in a region of the world directly before big increases in social complexity. Does it look like the emergence of these big moralizing gods is making

like big cities and complex trade possible. Uh? So there was a paper published in Nature in twenty nineteen by Harvey white House at all Um and the results were interesting that they did not find, in fact, the big moralizing god's created booms in social complexity in the region. But they did find a historical association between the emergence or like our first evidence of big moralizing gods and booms in social complexity in the timeline. It's just that

the order was reversed. Quote. Our statistical analysis showed that beliefs in supernatural punishment tend to appear only when societies make the transition from simple to complex, around the time

when the overall population exceeded about a million individuals. So it looks like they found there is an association between you know, big booms in population and social complexity, but it looks like that the religious changes came about after the transformation or you know, the formation of big complex societies.

I think that's interesting. Well, yeah, it reminds me of our discussions on health theologies in the past, uh, you know, particular, you know, the ideas of as this this study points out supernatural punishment, and uh I have frequently uh you know,

stated my displeasure with with any health theology model. I think that it is largely a supernatural revenge fantasy and a barbaric one in which we we uh commit individuals or groups of people uh to some sort of fiery torture and rape in the in the afterlife for things that we see them or we perceive them getting away with in this life. We're not being properly punished for in this life. So I can see that very much lining up with this. It's the idea of there are

people out there that are getting away with it. There has to be they cannot do that. They would not be able to do that in the smaller realm, and here in the larger realm of the city, there still must be some sort of of punishment, and therefore it becomes necessary to have this imagine punishment in the afterlife. So the moralizing gods with divine retribution or perhaps not something that makes big civilization possible, but something that happens

because of the resentments narrated in a big civilization. Yeah, I wonder, I wonder. I think that's an interesting way of looking at Again, one is hesitant to to find nice concise explanation for anything that emerges and all the caveats we already stated, yeah, um, but yeah, I'm wondering.

So if they're on the right track that this historically was the trend, Like first, you get a whole bunch of people together, all trading with strangers and stuff, and then shortly after that you start to get the moralizing gods who see you when you're sleeping and know when you're awake. Does this have any relevance to Santa? Does

it tell us anything about the jelly old Elf? I mean maybe in the sense that Santa is a concept that is bestowed on young minds by adult minds, and so therefore we could be taking the larger model, boiling it down into a simplified form, and giving it to them. So you know, ultimately, I don't know how much. I don't know. I don't know to what extent. There's really a lot of pleasure to be gained for a child imagining the bad kids not getting anything for Christmas. I

don't remember dwelling on that as a kid. Maybe that's just you. Some kids do like the idea of other kids getting punished. You can see the delight in their eyes. You never noticed this when like the bad kid gets

there come up and well, I don't know. Maybe it depends on the environment in which the child is brought up, because I feel like currently with my child, I don't I've never heard him bring up the idea of somebody getting away with bad behavior, you know, like either bad behavior is dealt with by teachers or by another parent.

That's there. Uh. You know, certainly we live in the age of of you know, so called helicopter parents, where there's generally there generally are a number of parents hovering around the playground environment, etcetera. So maybe he just hasn't gotten to the point where there's this realization that, yes, sometimes when you are bad, you absolutely get away with it, at least in this lifetime, or at least until Christmas

rolls around. That's interesting, but it comes back to I mean, it's it's the flip side of the coin, right, of the classic theological quandary, why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good things happen to bad people? Why do bad people get away with being bad? Right? Well, if you have the concept of an all powerful, moralizing God, it necessarily invites that question. When you start to see flaws in the system, just don't look like they're working.

I mean to come back to again to the idea that Santa does tend to come through even for the bad kids, Like there's gonna come a point where realized, no, my classmate Um Damien was terrible this year, like he is awful in Santa gave him everything he desired and

then some something is wrong with this system. It's all for you exactly because I guess the basically, given a complex society, that's going to happen inevitably, even or perhaps especially with environments where you have like really Tyranne Cole rule in place takes a like a North Korea situation, where you have like informers in UM, like in smaller groups that report back if anybody's speaking, you know, out

of line about the regime. Like even of course, within a regime like that, you're going to have people to then abuse the already abusive system and find ways to benefit from it. So there's always going to be somebody in these systems getting away with it no matter what. Uh you know, cultural um institutions and systems are put

in place to prevent it. Yeah, I think that's a good point now, you know, on the subject of of city gods and moral gods, I can't help but turn my mind back to the work of Julian Jayne's, author of the Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of a bicameral mind, which we we discussed in a couple of older episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. I think we more or less recently re ran those and occasionally

it pops up. But he spends a fair amount of time pointing to the structure of ancient cities with their houses of the gods at the center, what he refers to as bicameral architecture, each city centering upon steeply rising pyramids topped with god houses, where he says, quote, the king dead is a living god. The king's tomb is the god's house, the beginning of the elaborate god house or temples. And you know that this gets a little bit into the the idea of the the the ancestors

remaining alive, like the dead king has not died. The the idea of the dead king is the form through which one hemisphere of our brain speaks to the other. Right, Yeah, that that was the basis of his He's trying to prove his case that like there was this historical transition where like, you know, where the gods were literally talking to people. But of course it wasn't supernatural entities. It

was the non dominant hemisphere of the brain. But It's important to note that like in the purely bicameral scenario here that he was describing, like the God would not be reminding you what the rules are, that God would be telling you what to do. So he would point to the difference between moralizing and non moralizing gods as being key to the breakdown of the bicameral mind. For example, he points out that no one is moral among the god control puppets of the Iliad. Good and evil do

not exist. But he points out in the Odyssey, the character Clydemestra is able to resist a justice because her mind is like that of a god. So he writes, quote, consciousness and morality are a single development. For without God's morality based on a consciousness of the consequences of action, must tell men what to do. So I think the idea here is that there is no Santa Claus in the Iliad, and then he would not be necessary for the children of the bicameral mind. Certainly in the James

verse that is the case. It is interesting this is this is something that is perhaps a difference between uh Santa and various incarnations of the God. Is that God and God's speak to humans in a way that Santa doesn't really speak to us. I mean, I guess Santa does take the form of a like there's a Santa's helper at the mall and he directly speaks to you, and then there's the letter writing, etcetera. But there's no

voice of Santa that comes to your mind. Do pretty much all kids are they told that when they sit on Santa's lap at the mall, this is not the real Santa. This guy works for Santa, I believe. So now now, I don't know if that used to be the case. Certainly if you had like a small it's kind of like Crampus and Santa, right, Like, do you tell them it's really the crampas is coming down from the mountain and that's really saying nick uh, or or do you let them in on the fact that these

are people pretending embodying these things. Well, I wonder if it's kind of like, you know, the priest of a religion dressing up in garb that indicates the deity itself and being sort of your your intercessor, like the person who intervenes on your behalf for the deity. I have to say, since we began recording the this this pair of episodes on Santa I have introduced and sort of reintroduced my son to both the Mexican Santa Claus film

and Santa Claus versus the Martians. And that also like brought up the question of, like, Okay, what is this version of Santa I'm seeing here? This is not the real Santa story because you know, this doesn't line up

with what I've been told. This doesn't line up with what I've been told, so already you're having to here's another layer of having to say, well, this is an interpretation of what Santa is and it it made me think back to a film I don't know if you've seen this titled Santa Claus the I think with Santa Claus the motion picture with John lithcalin it. No, I haven't seen it. I think Deadly more may Or may

not have played an elf. It's been a long time, but it came out at just the right time in my childhood where I still largely believed in Santa Claus. And here was a movie about Santa that even at that point was ridiculous, and I wonder, I remember wondering what the real Santa thought of this film, you know, like did he approve like this? Was it blasphemous in

a sense? You know, because like I'm I'm thinking, well, the reindeer don't fly because they eat a special candy and then humans John Lithcow wouldn't be able to fly because he ate a special candy cane? How did Dr Lozardo become Santa Claus exactly? So, I don't know. That doesn't really answer any questions, raises more questions about, you know, the hoops we make our children jump through when it

comes to our our mythical god like beings. All Right, So in the end, Barrett says, Santa Claus not a god? What are you saying, Joe? Uh, Yeah, I think not a god. Though I think it's not necessarily because I uh come down the same side as him on all of his main five criteria. I do think those criteria are interesting and worth talking about. I'd say the main things that make Santa Claus not a god are like

this other stuff we were talking about. For my money, I'd say, Okay, Santa is not a god, but he contains pieces of a god, and I think you could imagine a world in which he one day becomes a god. I think what it would take was adults insisting continuously, like a significant number of adults insisting it's true, and the cultivation of a like the the editing and the cultivation of a version of Santa Clause that works for adults as well. Yeah. Uh, And I don't know what

would ever cause that. I kind of doubt that would ever happen, But if it did, then I think you I think you could be there. Yeah all right, So obviously we'd love to hear from everyone about this particular question, because a number of you out there have either you grew up with some sort of Santa concept in your household and or you have a cut Santa concept in your current household, or you have in an outsider's view of all of this, which of course would be very helpful.

And then one thing I'm curious about real quick, how does how when you're growing up, how did your Santa concept interact with your religious beliefs? Right? Yeah, Like, especially maybe if you weren't a Christian but believed in Santa, Like,

how us that fit together? I think you know, I have a feeling that sometimes Santa Clause is in a way kind of like cruelly and intentionally sacrificed in order to drive home the difference between a religious a concept like Santa and the religious concepts that are upheld in the household. You know, not a war on Christmas, but a war on Santa. Yeah, alright, so let us know.

We'd love to hear from everybody. In the meantime, If you want to find other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, uh, well, you can go Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. It will redirect you to UM a listing of episodes, and you can find a listing of episodes more or less just like that anywhere you get podcasts. UM. I don't know. We can't keep up with all these websites, but they're out there. You can go, you can subscribe, you can rate, you can review. That

will help out the show. Uh, let's see what else um Oh, and if you uh, if you want to, I guess you can follow us on social media. We're on various UM civilization destroying platforms out there, but the only one we're really likely to interact with is the Stuff to Blow your my discussion module, which we'll find on the Book of Faces. Huge thanks, as always to

our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you'd like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.