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Originally Posted by old-fart
Not really...
God and/or religion are a relatively modern invention based on the same central idea to control the masses and accumulate wealth and power while explaining some scary thing away.
Ditto God...
Yup, in a magical unseen place... much like, oh I don't know, heaven.
Nope... just the ones on the "nice list"... you might say they are in heaven on Christmas morning. The ones on the "naughty list" get coal, or nothing.... like say purgatory or hell.
He doesn't "own" reindeer, they just help him like the elves do. They are his little angels.
You can't prove nobody lives at the north pole in a magical unseen place. I agree nobody sees him physically... like, say God. Nobody has proven they've actually received a gift from him, but many thousands (millions?) of children every year surely do believe it on faith. And magic reindeer that can fly can live wherever they want to... There are no 'anti-flying-reindeer' laws at the north pole that I'm aware of. Perhaps one of our lawyers can weigh in.
I believe I've just shown you can't anymore than God. For every logical argument to the contrary "but magic" is a somewhat plausible answer, if you believe in magic in the first place.
Good thing for God too...
Magic flying Santa can't be disproven anymore than God ... because MAGIC!!!
A very apologist statement I'd say. "God is outside our understanding, therefore you can't disprove the concept". As with my previous post: burden of proof. If you are asserting that "God Exists", you have the burden of proof. If your answer is that you just can't prove it because he/she/it/"the general concept" is beyond our understanding, I can summarily dismiss the entire concept without another thought. As Christopher Hitchens said "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence".
As has been stated, you can't prove something doesn't exist. If your point was that God is about as believable as Santa, then I agree. Both are stories for children.
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You misunderstood my point. It was to explain why something like Santa is more commonly dismissed than the concept of "God", not to show why one is more infallible than the other, and it certainly wasn't a defence of the Bible or the God created by that book (which most of your criticism seems directed towards, not the concept of "God" which I tried to make clear but might have failed).
The defence of the why people believe is not the same as the defence of God itself. It's pretty easy to see why people believe, there is a level of unknown that existed for a long time (and still does) which the label "God" is used to explain, and it gives a lot of people comfort. In that sense, there's very little wrong with believing in any God.
That said, I mostly agree with you in the sense that the Bible is as "fantastical" as the story of Santa Claus, but saying they're both stories for children is another factually incorrect statement. I think most western organised religion does a little more bad than good, but there is good to be had in some of it.
I cringe equally at both the statement of "God exists" and "There is no God."
Both require some interesting leaps of faith, and both should exist to give you comfort, not to rub in the face of someone else.
Your comparisons to Santa we're pretty amusing though. I didn't know he was an invisible deity capable of any sort of magic he wishes, and that evidence kids don't get gifts from Santa was as impossible to come by as evidence of what happens to your "soul" (or if you have one) when you die. I'll keep that version of Santa in mind :P