Do Atheists give presents to their Kids at Xmas?

This should be an interesting blog - based on a waking thought this morning but I've no idea where it will lead...

Firstly I am not a believer in God... in the traditional sense. I am certainly not a "non-believer" and I'm not an agnostic either in that I do know that there is more to this than just superficia. For me there is something - but I've failed to understand it yet... i.e. there is faith, but the journey is not complete by any means. For that reason I can't claim membership of a religion - for people in religions seem to know already so many things about God like for example other people are wrong, or they are right... I genuinely don't understand how they can do this! But Atheism is the most foolish because it denies something before it has even found out what it is denying.

Dawkins, Dennett and a lot of others find it easy to deny God because they make a strawman call it god and then stick it on a fire. Job done.

I wondered this morning whether these Christian Atheists follow the trend and give their children presents on Christmas Eve. If they don't then I respect them more... at least they are sincere about their rejection of illusions. If they do however then what is going on here?!

I don't know about individual Atheists, but I will make my strawman Atheist so I can burn him. I imagine they harmlessly let their kids believe in Father Christmas because it is exciting and good fun and makes the holiday magical for them. I imagine they go through the ritual of pretending to be Father Christmas and put presents in the stockings during the night. I imagine they eat the mince pie and drink the brandy. I imagine they rejoice in the happiness of their kids. Yet we all know that Father Christmas doesn't exist...Or does he? If he doesn't exist then how do all those millions of stockings get filled each Xmas Eve?

Certainly the strawman father christmas with his white beard and slay who has to pop down 100's of chimneys every second and Rudolf who has to be able to fly and lots of other phantastic things - certainly this does not actually exist. But while we concentrate on this absurd illusion all the Atheists and millions of other rational adults actuslly become Father Christmas for the night and do all his work. So although he doesn't exist, just the thought of him, has filled the stockings of millions of children the world over. So maybe Father Christmas is to be understood as something oblique to the unbelievable old man, maybe more a "spirit" of giving something that exists in all of us. When birthday comes so does Father Christmas again, but in a different disguise - I'll let parents work out why they give presents to their children on birthdays. For birthdays there is no myth to poke skepticism at, yet they still do it.

Now some cynics will say that we only give presents at this time because we would feel awful if we didn't and we would be socially criticised too - that would be my social heirachy argument that we would not want to sink socially. And they might agree amongst themselves to mutually not give presents. If their motive is because they have seen through the symbolism of Christmas that is probably ok, but if their motive is because they don't want to "give", that the "spirit" of the gestures is lost on them then it might be that theirs is the poorer life (briefly: if your neighbours are richer than you then you enjoy a better and more secure life than if your neighbours are poorer than you - so it is better to give. The only counter argument is selfishness and ego - these are negative thoughts and make our life one of suffering and ultimately death.)

So belief in God doesn't need to be a belief in a factual objective substantial entity. Whoever said it was! That, just because there is no man in the clouds is proof that God is no longer a feature of our existence. Scientists who limit everything so that they can get exact answers also eliminate most of the important features too. The reason they know so little about "life" is because by the time it gets under the microscope it is dead!

Not a massive argument, but an addition to the on going debate.