Saturday, August 20, 2005
Santa Claus deserves equal time
Here's an example of creationist-style pseudo-science applied to another popular religious story:
- Every year, presents arrive in homes on December 25th in roughly 80% of the households in the U.S.
- For these houses, this is normally the most presents they get in a year.
- If there are about 116,000,000 households, the odds that 80% of them would just happen to get most of their presents on exactly the same day is about 1 in 10 to the 100,000th power. It is impossible that Christmas could happen by random chance alone.
- The story of Santa Claus offers a possible explanation for this phenomenon.
- Public opinion polls show that a significant portion of the public (albeit mostly under age 7) believe in Santa Claus
Given the popular support for Santa Claus, and that stories about him explain a widely observed yet improbable phenomenon, we should teach the story of Santa Claus in science classes.
