Santa exists








Santa Claus exists... does he?



For you doubters, here's proof that Santa
exists by Kenton Robinson The Hartford Courant

Santa is. He lives. He breathes. He brings children gifts on
Christmas Eve. That's right. He's as real as you are. And if you
don't believe it, we've got a gift for you: proof.

No we're not talking any of that "he lives in your
heart" malarkey. We're talking hard scientific evidence and
logical proof that Santa Claus is, nay, must be real, bona fide
living being. Your skepticism is only natural. Ours is an
unbelieving age. Even our children are full of doubt. How, they
ask, can Santa bring toys to every girl and boy in the world? As
you stumble over your tongue to explain what you
cannot--"well, he doesn't bring gifts to all the children in
the world, just the good Christian ones" - you can see in
their faces the thought forming in their heads: "Yeah,
right."

And you know they will grow up to join those cynics who, this
time every year, circulate their calculations to show that Santa
cannot be. To deliver just on two pound present to every good
Christian child, the cynics say, Santa would have to load his
sleigh with more than 320,000 tons of toys. He would have to
visit more than 800 homes every second, and he and his reindeer
would have to travel at 3,000 times the speed of sound.

Santa they chortle, would streak like a more across the
heavens and end up a cinder...Not so fast. We will demonstrate
that not only could Santa have enough time to deliver presents to
every good girl and boy in the world, he could have time to
spare. He could have the leisure, in fact to drink every one of
the more than 90 million glasses of tepid milk and to eat the
nearly 200 million cookies, salted with the sweat of children's
hands, left out for him on Christmas Eve.

Before we get to our proof, let's take a scientific look at
the phenomenon. Every year on Christmas morning, children all
over the world wake up to find presents under their Christmas
trees. How, asks science, does this happen? The two possible
explanations before us are:



The presents are part of a global conspiracy by
hundreds of millions of adults, who, with the
complicity of entire economies and governments of
nations, intentionally set out to deceive innocent
children.
Santa brings them,



Which, science asks, is the more plausible explanation? The
first, say the cynics, an they then proceed to attack the Santa
hypothesis with all their fine calculations. Unfortunately for
them, they base these calculations on one completely unwarranted
assumption: That Santa, his reindeer and the presents he brings
us have mass.

The cynics assume that Santa and his sleigh and reindeer and
the presents they carry are all ordinary objects, that the sleigh
is just a sleigh, the reindeer just reindeer, the presents just
presents and Santa...just a fat man in a red suit. But any child
can tell you that Santa is no ordinary phenomenon. We know by
simple deduction that Santa must be exceptional indeed to do what
he does.

And modern physics gives us the materials from which to stitch
a theory to explain how he does it: Santa is composed of pure
energy, of light, which means he can travel 186,000 miles a
second. We know from Einstein's special theory of relativity that
if Santa moves at the speed of light, time, for him, virtually
stops. Which means he has infinite leisure in which to deliver
presents. That leaves us with just one final difficulty: How does
he bring the presents?

Because we also know from Einstein that mass and energy are
equivalent (E equals mc^2), we know that matter cannot travel at
light speed. If you accelerate a Barbie doll, for example, until
she hits the speed of light, her mass will increase until it is
infinite. The universe will become the uniBarbie. Obviously, this
is impossible. And indeed, we know that only light can travel at
the speed of light.

But in quantum mechanics the solution is at hand. Any
physicist will tell you that just as matter is convertible into
energy (as, for example, in a nuclear reaction), so can energy be
converted into matter. Santa, being an extremely powerful entity
composed entirely of energy, converts energy into matter to
create the presents on the spot. We can express this with the
formula P equals sc^2, where P is presents, s is Santa, an c is
the speed of light.

But, you say, is this the Santa we all know and love, the
ho-ho-ho-ing fellow with the big white beard? The answer is an
unqualified "Yes, Virginia." Just like a hologram, he
assumes the shape we expect, red cheeks, black boots, reindeer,
sleigh and all. But, unlike a hologram, Santa is real. Of course,
this just probes that Santa could indeed do the job or delivering
presents to all the deserving children on Earth on Christmas Eve.
It is a scientific explanation, but it doesn't prove that Santa
exists. Stronger than scientific explanation is logical proof.

It may surprise you to know that just such proof of Santa's
existence has actually been around for more than 900 years. This
proof - called the ontological argument - can be found in the
book "Prologium," written by the great scholastic
philosopher Saint Anselm of Canterbury.

Anselm's argument goes something like this:



To exist is better than not to exist.
Therefore, the greatest good we can imagine must
necessarily exist. Otherwise, it would not be the
greatest good.
Santa is the greatest good we can imagine.
Therefore, Santa necessarily exists.



If that went by you kind of fast, ask yourself this question:
Would I rather have a real or an imaginary Christmas present? OK?
So, if we grant that what is real is better than what is only
imagined, then the greatest good we can imagine must nexessarily
be real. It were not real, it would not be the greatest good we
could imagine. In other words, it would be a logical
contradiction to say we can imagine a greatest good that is not
real. And since Santa Claus is the greatest good we can imagine,
he must necessarily be real.

Note the word "necessarily." This means Santa is
even more real than you are. You don't necessarily exist, but
Santa does. Many philosophers have attacked Anselm's proof. If it
holds,they have argues, then any good thing we can imagine must
exist, which is absurd. If, after all of this, you remain
unconvinced, consider one final argument. This argument is
designed not to prove that Santa exists so much as that it just
makes sense to believe in him.

Propounded by Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French
mathematician, physicist and philosopher, it is know as
"Pascal's wager."

"What if I believe in Santa, and it turns out there is no
Santa?" Pascal asked. "What do I lose by
believing?" And he answered, "Nothing." "But
what," he asked, "could I lose if I don't believe, and
it turns out Santa is real?" And he answered,
"Everything." Thus Pascal concluded that it is a wise
child who decides to believe in Santa Claus. And to those who
don't Pascal said this: "You better watch out!"



Jeff Nesbitt ([e-mail])