Friday, December 20, 2013

In which Megyn Kelly reminds me of Greek philosophy

Megyn Kelly, 2013:
They have a piece that Santa Claus shouldn't be a white man anymore. Yet another person saying it's racist to have a white Santa. By the way, for the kids at home, Santa just is white. ... Jesus was a white man, too. He was a historical figure. That's a verifiable fact - as is Santa.
Xenophanes of Colophon, c. 570 BC - c 475 BC:
Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black
Thracians that they are pale and red-haired. ...
But if cattle and horses and lions had hands
or could paint with their hands and create works such as men do,
horses like horses and cattle like cattle
also would depict the gods' shapes and make their bodies
of such a sort as the form they themselves have.
You can take Xenophanes' observation to be a powerful argument for atheism; or, if that's too ruthless a conclusion for your liking, you could say the lesson is that every culture will naturally apprehend the Godhead in its own fashion. No, no, no, insists the Fox News anchor, the real point here is, the Thracians were right ...

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