Comparing Santa Claus to God is a false equivalency.
Why do you think so? I've been working on a comment on why theists and atheists talk past one another, and it's this "not an equivalent" stance that's key to knowing if I'm the right track. So, if you will, don't be flip. It would be informative if you could explain this some. Thanks.
Sure. I mentioned earlier that we would know if Santa existed based on the attributes Santa is purported to have. We know that no one delivers gifts to all the children of the world in one night. If that were happening we would know it.
This would not apply to any god and especially the Christian God. If we wanted to prove that God doesn't exist then we wouldn't point out that he doesn't deliver gifts to all the children in the world in one night from a flying sled.
There is no
necessary connection between God and Santa.
It is misleading to use words like "know" and "proof" in these discussions, because we are really talking about plausibility rather than logic. Existence claims need to be plausible in order for us to take them seriously. So I agree with the gist of your claim that we can "know" that elves and Santa Claus do not exist, if you are willing to accept that the word "know" is equivalent to "consider plausible". The preponderance of evidence is that Santa Claus, elves, and other mythical beings are imaginary, not real. I can even go along with the point that Santa Claus and God are not equivalent beings, although they have some very similar characteristics. Both know whether you've been good or bad. They more or less keep track of your behavior and offer rewards for good behavior. Both can perform miracles, although God has an arguably greater range of miracles.
There is one huge difference between God and Santa Claus: adults don't believe in the existence of the latter. There isn't just a lack of evidence for the existence of Santa Claus and other mythical beings. There is a record of how and why such a being was invented. That is, there are very good reasons to believe that Santa does not exist. And we really would expect to have evidence of Santa's existence, unless, of course, Santa has a magical means of hiding himself from public observation.
What about God? Is there a similar record of people inventing gods out of whole cloth? Is there a record of people making up stories about God and using those stories to deceive other people? Can people who claim to have secret knowledge of the existence of God be deceiving themselves and others? More importantly, is it reasonable to expect that we would have physical traces or evidence of the existence of God? Like Santa, he might be able to use supernatural means to prevent us from detecting him. But is God really a plausible being?
To summarize my point: claims of the existence of beings like gods, elves, fairies, etc., are empirical claims. You can't prove logically that they don't exist, but you can prove it empirically. That means that there will always be a logical argument somewhere that they
could exist, just not a plausible one. And it is on that basis, I think, that we can "disprove" the existence of gods in an empirical sense. We can assess the plausibility of such claims.
