Believing in God is the same as believing in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Clause, and the Flying Spaghetti

Despite Pro's use of smiley faced emoticons, I will indulge Pro's request. It may be easier to define what the "tooth fairy" and "flying spaghetti monster" are, but defining what they are not. No one has ever suffered death by torture for "believing" in the tooth fairy. No one has ever brought aide to the poor in the name of the "flying spaghetti monster". The tooth fairy and flying spaghetti monster are certainly NOT creatures that are consistent with the ideas of "aseity". What is "Aseity"? Aseity refers to, "the property by which a being exists in and of itself, from itself, or exists as so-and-such of and from itself. The word is often used to refer to the Christian belief that God contains within himself the cause of himself, is the first cause, or rather is simply uncaused, though many Jewish and Muslim theologians have also believed God to be independent in this way." ^ Source: Sauvage, George (1907). "Aseity". Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent. Retrieved July 15, 2012. There is a great equivocation in terms, when atheists debate theists. That means, both side are using the same word (in this case, "God"), but neither side is using the same meaning. When atheists make the argument that believing in the Christian God is the same as believing in tooth fairy or flying spaghetti monster, the two sides are using an equivocation and mutual understanding is often eluded. God, in Catholic Theology, is the "unmoved mover", the "first cause". God is the "perpetual act of to be". Yes, God is often, by virtue or circumstance of culture or literary convienance, contained with words like "He" or as a character in a story. The Catholic Idea of God is not the same as that of Zeus. GOD, YWH, is not the same as the gods of ancient Greece. Two entirely different concepts. And God is certainly not the following: Tooth Fairy: "In northern Europe, there was also a tradition of tand-f" or tooth fee, which was paid when a child lost its first tooth. This tradition is recorded in writings as early as the Eddas, which are the earliest written record of Norse and Northern European traditions. The reward left varies by country, the family's economic status, amounts the child's peers report receiving and other factors. A 2013 survey by Visa Inc. found that American children receive $3.70 per tooth on average." ^ Sources: Cleasby, Richard; Vigf"sson, Gudbrand (1957). An Icelandic-English Dictionary. William A. Craigie (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press . s.v. tannf" first edition available on An Icelandic-English Dictionary Hedges, Helen, Joy Cullen. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, Vol. 28, 2003. "The Tooth Fairy Comes, or Is It Just Your Mum and Dad?: A Child's Construction of Knowledge". pp 19-24. "Tooth Fairy inflation flies high". 30 August 2013. So no, believing in the idea that there is a "force" that is the unmoved cause of all creation, is not the same as believing in something we tell children to explain why their teeth fall out. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a "New Atheist" term used to illustrate the same fallacious concept. Let me quote from the website from which this debate's origin is derived: " When one honestly assesses the Judeo-Christian doctrine of God he will find multiple thousands of years of human testimony and religious development; he will find martyrs enduring the most horrific trauma in defense of the faith; he will find accounts in religious texts with historical and geographical corroboration; etc (these fact are of course not "proofs," but rather "evidences" that elicit strong consideration). Pit this against tales of the Tooth Fairy, Santa, and Spaghetti Monsters and one finds the exact opposite: no testimony or religious refinement, no martyrs, no historical and geographical corroboration, etc. Instead, one finds myths created intentionally for children, for point making, or for whatever. It"s strawman argumentation at its worst." Now, let's move onto something to consider for the Catholic Faith. I'm going to quote from a book, and will not claim credit for what far smarter men said far in the past. This argument is nothing new, despite the internet culture's suggestion that it is. Why I believe in the Catholic Faith: "[f]or all the works of classical antiquity we have to depend on manuscripts written long after their original composition. The author who is the best case in this respect is Virgil, yet the earliest manuscript of Virgil that we now possess was written some 350 years after his death. For all other classical writers, the interval between the date of the author and the earliest extant manuscript of his works is much greater. For Livy it is about 500 years, for Horace 900, for most of Plato 1,300, for Euripides 1,600. Yet no one seriously disputes that we have accurate copies of the works of these writers. Not only are the biblical manuscripts we have older than those for classical authors, we have in absolute numbers far more manuscripts to work from. Some are whole books of the Bible, others fragments of just a few words, but there are thousands of manuscripts in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, and other languages. What this means is that wc can be sure we have an accurate text, and we can work from it in confidence. Next we take a look at what the Bible, considered merely as a history, tells us, particularly the New Testament, and particularly the Gospels. We examine the account of Jesus" life and death and his reported Resurrection. Using what is in the Gospels themselves, what we find in extrabiblical writings from the early centuries, and what we know of human nature (and what we can otherwise, from natural theology, know of divine nature), we conclude that Jesus either was just what he claimed to be, God, or was a madman, (The one thing we know he could not have been was merely a good man who was not God, because no merely good man would make the claims he made.) We are able to eliminate his being a madman not just from what lie said"no madman ever spoke as he did; for that matter, no sane man ever did either"but from what his followers did after his death, A hoax (the supposedly empty tomb) is one thing, but one does not find people dying for a hoax, at least not one from which they have no prospect of advantage. The result of this line of reasoning is that we must conclude that Jesus indeed rose from the dead and that he was therefore God and, being God, meant what he said and did what he said he would do. One thing he said he would do was found a Church, and from both the Bible (still taken as merely a historical book, not at this point in the argument as an inspired one) and other ancient works, we see that Christ established a Church with the rudiments of all we see in the Catholic Church today"papacy, hierarchy, priesthood, sacraments, teaching authority, and, as a consequence of the last, infallibility. Christ"s Church, to do what he said it would do, had to have the note of infallibility. We thus have taken purely historical material and concluded that there exists a Church, which is the Catholic Church, divinely protected against teaching error. Now we are at the last part of the argument. That Church tells us the Bible is inspired, and we can take the Church"s word for it precisely because the Church is infallible. Only after having been told by a properly constituted authority (that is, one set up by God to assure us of the truth of matters of faith) that the Bible is inspired do we begin to use it as an inspired book." ^ Keating, Karl. Catholicism And Fundamentalism (p. 125). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition. Please also reference the following Youtube videos for further clarification of my ideas...all of which as by Bishop Robert Barron. It seriously might save you some time and heartache in this debate. ^ On Atheism and Philosophy ^God's Existence and the Argument ^St. Thomas Aquinas and Ipsum Esse Hope you actually read these sources and watch these videos, I maxed out time for reply so we can look at each other's sources and explore and consider. Thanks!