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thomastwo wrote
I think it's a beautiful piece of theater that creates wonderful experiences for young boys and girls. Lots of fiction is indistinguishable from fact for children at a young age.
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There is, I think, a delicate yet clear distinction between what we would call fiction and what we could call a lie. The audience knows that fiction is not real, and consents to that unreality. We read a novel by Cormac McCarthy or Stephen King, or see a play by Edward Albee, and we know that the events we're reading or seeing didn't happen, but we allow ourselves to suspend our disbelief. We choose to play along with what we know to be a beautiful piece of theater.
A lie removes that choice. The audience is denied the knowledge that the play is not real, and thus is unable to consent to its unreality. They are forced to accept that unreality as reality. Children aren't playing along with a beautiful piece of mind-theater (until a certain age). They literally think that a rotund man flies around the world in a sleigh pulled by magical reindeer.
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thomastwo wrote
It's a stretch to call that fiction a lie.
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You and I know that it is not true. It's a wonderful story, and has made for many entertaining claymation specials, but it has never happened in the real world. If I tell my daughter that the story is objectively true and real -- that said rotund man is going to land his magical sleigh on our roof before sliding down the chimney to put presents under the Saturnalia tree -- then how is that not a lie?
I am not calling the myth of Santa Claus a lie. The story is, after all, just a story. It is the presentation that is or is not a lie. Because it is not the untruth of the story that makes a lie. The same false story can be treated as either fiction or as a lie, depending on how it is presented to the audience. When the audience is given the choice of consenting to the story's unreality, then it is fiction. When the audience is denied the choice of consenting, then it is a lie.
How can it not be? Has the definition of a lie changed? This is the only case I've ever encountered in which otherwise mature adults will bend over backwards to insist that intentionally giving false information is not a lie.
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thomastwo wrote
My personal experience was that I allowed myself to enjoy the fiction as real for a few years after I knew it wasn't real.
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Which more or less demonstrates my point about consenting to its unreality.
By choosing to indulge in the story after you knew that it wasn't actually true (and I won't pretend that I didn't do the same into my middle teen years), you turned a lie into a fiction.
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thomastwo wrote
I think that the sense of excitement and anticipation out-weighed the benefits of skepticism.
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I think the two became mutually exclusive. You didn't need to be skeptical because you already knew that the story was false. But you choose to indulge in the story -- you consented to its unreality -- and thereby enjoyed that sense of excitement and anticipation.
You can only really be skeptical when you're not sure.
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thomastwo wrote
No atheists in foxholes and no skeptic children on Christmas Eve?
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I'd agree to there being no skeptical children on Christmas Eve, but only in so far as my previous point. They're not skeptical because they know. They're in on the joke. They're playing along.
As to the absence of atheists in foxholes, all the
atheists in foxholes would disagree.
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thomastwo wrote
I've never directly lied to my children when asked about santa, although I did avoid answering questions directly when they were on the edge of realization.
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And there, again, is a delicate yet clear distinction between telling a lie and allowing a child to exercise her own imagination.
In a roundabout way, it comes back to fiction again. When my daughter tells me about her awesome new pet dragon named Horatio, I will probably play along. I know that she doesn't have a pet dragon, but as a member of the audience, I will undoubtedly consent to the unreality of her story anyway. Horatio sounds like a fine fellow, and really: who wouldn't want a dragon on her side in a schoolyard scrap?