¹ Philosophers defending the idea include Alston, William, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Mavrodes, George, Revelation in Religious Belief (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; and Plantinga, Alvin, ‘Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism’, in The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity, edited by Meeker, K. and Quinn, P. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

² See Ramachandaran, V.S. and Blakelee, Sandra's, Phantoms in the Brain (Harper Collins: New York, 1999)Google Scholar, Chapter 8.

³ See Siefker, Phyllis's Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men: The Origin and Evolution of Saint Nicholas, Spanning 50,000 Years (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1997)Google Scholar and Forbes, Bruce David' Christmas: A Candid History (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007).Google Scholar

⁴ Such thinking is common among ‘lay’ theists, but is also presumed often in the academic literature. For example, Plantinga, Alvin, in Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, suggests that as long as all defeaters to religious belief can be answered, religious belief can be warranted. A similar assumption is at play when theists argue that there are certain religious beliefs that science cannot disprove. See, for example, Ratsch, Del's ‘The Demise of Religion: Greatly Exaggerated Reports from the Science/Religion “Wars”’ in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Peterson, Michael and Van Arrogan, Raymond (New York: Blackwell, 2003).Google Scholar

⁵ The claims that Christianity copied directly from other religions is often exaggerated, but these similarities are strongly suggest that the stories in question were simply products of the cultures in which they were told, and not historically accurate. See Ehrman, Bart's How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: Harper One, 2014)Google Scholar, Ch. 1 and 2. See also Steven Novella's January 17, 20144 Neurological blog entry entitled ‘Mithras and Jesus’ which can be found at: http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/mithras-and-jesus/

⁶ See Genesis 3, and Exodus 33:20.

⁷ This reflects the cosmological argument, given most famously by Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica.

⁸ For academic versions of the fine tuning argument, see Collins, Robin’ ‘A Scientific Argument for the Existence of God: The Fine-Tuning Design Argument’, in Reason for the Hope Within (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1998)Google Scholar; and Craig, W. L. and Moreland, J. P.'s ‘The Existence of God,’ in Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003).Google Scholar

⁹ For these and other criticisms of the fine-tuning argument, see Manson, Neil's ‘The Fine-Tuning Argument’, Philosophy Compass, vol. 4, no. 1 (2009), 271–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰ See Mone, Gregory's The Truth About Santa (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009).Google Scholar

¹¹ Defense against scientific criticisms of religious belief are often combated by theists with similar reasoning. See, for example, Demski, William's Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology. (InterVarsity Press, 2007)Google Scholar. Some theists admit, in light of conclusive scientific evidence, even religious beliefs must be abandoned, but under-appreciate how much religious belief science has shown false. See Ratsch, Del, ‘The Demise of Religion: Greatly Exaggerated Reports from the Science/Religion “Wars”’ in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Peterson, Michael and Van Arrogan, Raymond. (New York: Blackwell, 2003).Google Scholar

¹² The idea that salvation cannot be had by anyone outside of one's own religious system is called ‘exclusivism.’ Alvin Plantinga defended this idea in Warranted Christian Belief (172–192).

¹³ This is the response of skeptical theists to the problem of evil, especially the problem of natural evil. This argument was first articulated in Wykstra, S. J.'s ‘Rowe's Noseeum Arguments from Evil’, in The Evidential Argument from Evil, edited by Howard-Snyder, Daniel (1986), 126–50Google Scholar. It is also defended by Howard-Snyder, Daniel and Bergmann, Michael, ‘Grounds for Belief in God Aside, Does Evil Make Atheism More Reasonable Than Theism?’ In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Peterson, Michael and Van Arrogan, Raymond (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003).Google Scholar

¹⁴ See Johnson, David Kyle's ‘A Refutation of Skeptical Theism’, Sophia 52, no. 3 (2013), 425–445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ See Mark Henry's ‘Pray it Forward: Melanie Pritchard's Miraculous Recovery’, Aug 2, 2010. http://www.catholic.org/hf/faith/story.php?id=37637.

¹⁶ See Frank, W. Pauls’ ‘Why a Believer Could Believe that God Answers Prayers’, Sophia, vol. 48, no. 3 (2009), 319–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ See Johnson, David Kyle's ‘God, Fatalism, and Temporal Ontology’, Religious Studies, no. 45 (2009), 435–454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ Special thanks go to Caleb Holt for providing additional humorous content.