So...I go to John Lewis if I'm an old man who wants to look at little girls through a telescope?


The Man in the Moon had silver shoon
And his beard was of silver thread;
He was girt with pure gold and inaureoled
With gold about his head.
Clad in silken robe in his great white globe
He opened an ivory door
With a crystal key, and in secrecy
He stole o'er a shadowy floor;

Down a filigree stair of spidery hair
He slipped in gleaming haste,
And laughing with glee to be merry and free
He swiftly earthward raced.
He was tired of his pearls and diamond twirls;
Of his pallid minaret
Dizzy and white at its lunar height
In a world of silver set;

And adventured this peril for ruby and beryl
And emerald and sapphire,
And all lustrous gems for new diadems,
Or to blazon his pale attire.
He was lonely too with nothing to do
But to stare at the golden world,
Or to strain at the hum that would distantly come
As it gaily past him whirled;

And at plenilune in his argent moon
He had wearily longed for Fire-
Not the limpid lights of wan selenites,
But a red terrestrial pyre
With impurpurate glows of crimson and rose
And leaping orange tongue;
For great seas of blues and the passionate hues
When a dancing dawn is young;

For the meadowy ways like chrysophrase
By winding Yare and Nen.
How he longed for the mirth of the populous Earth
And the sanguine blood of men;
And coveted song and laughter long
And viands hot and wine,
Eating pearly cakes of light snowflakes
And drinking thin moonshine.

He twinkled his feet as he thought of the meat,
Of the punch and the peppery brew,
Till he tripped unaware on his slanting stair,
And fell like meteors do;
As the whickering sparks in splashing arcs
Of stars blown down like rain
From his laddery path took a foaming bath
In the ocean of Almain;

And began to think, lest he melt and stink,
What in the moon to do,
When a Yarmouth boat found him far afloat,
To the mazement of the crew
Caught in their net all shimmering wet
In a phosphorescent sheen
Of bluey whites and opal lights
And delicate liquid green

With the morning fish — 'twas his regal wish —
They packed him to Norwich town,
To get warm on gin in a Norfolk inn,
And dry his watery gown.
Though St. Peter's knell waked many a bell
In the city's ringing towers
To shout the news of his lunatic cruise
In the early morning hours,

No hearths were laid, not a breakfast made,
And no one would sell him gems;
He found ashes for fire, and his gay desire
For choruses and brave anthems
Met snores instead with all Norfolk abed,
And his round heart nearly broke,
More empty and cold than above of old,
Till he bartered his fairy cloak

With a half waked cook for a kitchen nook,
And his belt of gold for a smile,
And a priceless jewel for a bowl of gruel,
A sample cold and vile
Of the proud plum porridge of Anglian Norwich —
He arrived much too soon
For unusual guests on adventurous quests
From the Mountains of the Moon.

Not a dilemma at all actually. What we will tell them, whether it be with the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, or Jesus Christ, is that some other parents believe some things that we don't, and they teach those things to their children.

We are fortunate to know some people who were raised with parents who were truthians and hearing how they handled all those things makes it clear not only that it is possible but how it's possible to raise a child in an environment of ~total honesty.

(Funnily [to me] is that one such guy I know told me how his parent told him, "We will never lie to you so you can always know that what we tell you is the truth. That's how you know Jesus Christ is really your lord and savior." LMFAHS. If you're wondering, yes, he's a die hard Christian.)

Why do we lie to kids? That child is going to resent that later when she learns that there is no tooth fairy.

Boy, will she be surprised to find out Mom is a snitch for the tooth fairy and totally tipped off that cheapskate dentophile. I hope for mom's sake she's never heard the saying 'snitches get stiches'.

On another note, are her teeth so bad that she really thought a folded piece of paper was an indistinguishable substitute? I think she should have tried a rock.

"Deeply spiritual"? Well, I guess that's true in as much as anything is "spiritual".

But in reality, they're a psychedelic drug that messes with your perception of the world. There's nothing "spiritual" about it.

If you enjoy the experience of taking shrooms, great! No need to make up fairy stories around it, though.

That just means the Tooth Fairy will have to bury two bodies now.

That bird is in trouble now, the Tooth Fairy doesn't like anybody cutting in on her action.

I say things like that because they are objectively true. The very concept of omnipotence and omniscience violate all kinds of physical laws. They are paradoxes; the "immovable force meeting the immovable object", but all our experience and learning tells us the universe does not work like that. Again, we might be wrong, but the more we learn, the less likely it becomes that we've missed something so vast.

We haven't missed it, chaosengine; the vast majority of people on Earth believes there is a God.

Human history is full of misery, suffering and cruelty to everything around us. One of the few bright points is our quest for knowledge, and you willfully reject that to cling to a stone age belief system that has been demonstrably proven false (geocentricity, for example) again and again.

In every important way, man hasn't learned anything and hasn't changed at all. The misery and suffering in the world increases year by year, it doesn't decrease.

Factually, it's incorrect.
Morally, it's bankrupt and consistently on the wrong side of history.

Matthew 24:35

Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.

One day you might wake up and realise (to paraphrase the much missed Douglas Adams) that "the garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it".

Until then, you are welcome to indulge in your fantasies, but if you insist on injecting your irrationality into debates like this, expect disagreement.

I've read most of Douglas Adams works. I grew up secular and you would probably be shocked at the level of agreement we would have had in the not too distant past. I have been set free from the bondage of slavery to sin, and have been born again into a living hope. What you know on its own profits you nothing, because without faith it is impossible to please God. Ask God to reveal Himself to you. You don't have to acknowledge it to me, but that is the only way you will ever know anything about God, is by His personal revelation to you. He is faithful to give you a revelation of your need for a Savior.

I say things like that because they are objectively true. The very concept of omnipotence and omniscience violate all kinds of physical laws. They are paradoxes; the "immovable force meeting the immovable object", but all our experience and learning tells us the universe does not work like that. Again, we might be wrong, but the more we learn, the less likely it becomes that we've missed something so vast.

Human history is full of misery, suffering and cruelty to everything around us. One of the few bright points is our quest for knowledge, and you willfully reject that to cling to a stone age belief system that has been demonstrably proven false (geocentricity, for example) again and again.

Factually, it's incorrect.
Morally, it's bankrupt and consistently on the wrong side of history.

One day you might wake up and realise (to paraphrase the much missed Douglas Adams) that "the garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it".

Until then, you are welcome to indulge in your fantasies, but if you insist on injecting your irrationality into debates like this, expect disagreement.

Always wondered about that fairy tale.

Prince doesn't know what she looks like, what her name is, what she's like, what her voice sounds like, but he's prepared to marry her knowing literally zero about her.

Why would she want to marry a guy who spent a whole evening with her but is so stupid he can only recognize her by her shoe?

And don't get me started on Rumpelstiltskin. Psycho greedy father, psycho evil king, but they're the good guys, the guy who offers to help (sure with a price tag, but hey, capitalism, right?) is the bad guy? What?

The part that includes your type of arguments starts at 5:40.

Specifically, you have told me that I can't see God because I haven't asked/prayed/looked etc. hard enough. You have told me that I have to accept God first, and then I'll see. You have told me that a dozen different things make no sense without God, like morality, self-awareness and so on and you also claim that the universe itself is de facto proof of God's existence. As for the fourth, I think you told me that I'm afraid to accept God, rather than angry. Or maybe you did say angry. Or both. I can't remember. Either way, you blamed my lack of acceptance of God on some basic emotion, so, similar enough.

Regardless, you have no evidence for any of these claims other than the words in the Bible, the validity of which is the subject of this argument to begin with.

Your believing in God doesn't make God real any more than my not believing in God makes him a fairy tale. I can't believe you're still bringing Bible quotations out as evidence.

I was chanting "I think I can" all the way through, fairy tales are bullshit!

Speaking to kids as though they are idiots is a terrible approach, and people really shouldn't do that. Even as young as six or so, most of them are much more intelligent and thoughtful than they're usually given credit for.

Granted, I wouldn't want to dictate the way other people raise their kids, but the years I spent volunteering with children taught me that they will be a lot more open, honest and comfortable with you if you converse with them with all the seriousness and respect that you would an important adult, but of course all the while understanding and having empathy for their necessarily limited set of experiences, egocentricity and smaller view of the world. For example, "my best friend hates me" seems trivial to an adult ("make new friends"), but could be a kid's whole world crashing down.

Even though the people in this video are doing an admirable job (even those who screwed up earlier by inventing a fairy tales to avoid a brief moment of embarrassment), the underlying subtext that the kids are likely picking up from their parents obvious uncomfortableness is that sex is a shameful thing and that discussing it (such as if they have questions in the future) will be painful and is best avoided.

Worst job ever = fairy dust animator.