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The only safe way to debate the existence of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Loch Ness Monster is to hedge your bets. Of these, there is actual evidence only for the last-named (and that is considered problematical by many authorities), but the intensity, seriousness, and fervor with which the beliefs are held rival the conviction that Elvis took it on the lam and is feasting on fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches in a hideout somewhere in Colorado.

This is not to ridicule any of these beliefs. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Nessie (to say nothing of Elvis) all have a firm place in people's hearts, and a very real "mythic existence." If we truly understand the power of myth, we cannot dismiss it as a mere fabrication or a nice story to illustrate a point or explain the unexplainable. No, a "true myth" (and that is not an oxymoron) is something that seizes the essence of a thing and is true at a deeper level than mere fact. The "mythopoeic realm" is "beyond" the normal constraints of physical existence such as time and place, and - because myth embodies an essential truth about something - achieves an element of the eternal and the absolute, dimly perceived, perhaps, but none the less real for all of that.

Such things as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Nessie, and Elvis are as real as you want them to be, and can be valuable adjuncts to helping us understand the human condition.

So much for what you learned in the history of philosophy and a quick reading of Eliade and Frankfort. So - is the Loch Ness Monster real in physical, scientifically-provable terms?

Now we're getting into the bet-hedging area. Considering reason (science) as dealing with that which is "manifestly true" (that is, subject to a scientific proof or philosophical argument), we can only safely conclude that the existence of the Loch Ness Monster has neither been proved nor disproved. There is a body of evidence to suggest that Nessie does, in fact, exist, but this evidence is suspect on a number of counts, primarily the lack of replicability - that is, Nessie does not surface at regular intervals during which he (or she) can be studied, photographed clearly, tissue samples taken, and so on.

The unreliability of the evidence does not, however, prove that the Loch Ness Monster does not exist - a negative, in point of fact, being extremely hard to prove. (You can quite easily prove in most cases that something does exist by presenting a specimen, but you cannot prove that something does not exist by providing a non-specimen - all you've done is prove that whatever you present is not the thing you're trying to disprove, with the rest of the universe left unexamined. It's like saying that cows do not exist because sheep do exist.)

The only reasonable position to take, it seems to me, is to accept the mythic reality of the Loch Ness Monster, and take a wait-and-see attitude regarding hard scientific data and evidence. If we stray from that position, we risk falling into trying to prove or disprove a possibly material being on the basis of faith - and "faith" is defined as being belief in something that is not manifestly true, that is, not subject to scientific prove. A matter of faith (assuming that it does not contradict known and provable fact) may be true, but you cannot prove it.

Learn more about this author, Michael Greaney.
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