I stopped believing in Santa Claus at age seven, probably shortly after Christmas, when my older brother told me he didn’t exist. I was very upset and cried at the time. But a year later, as Christmas approached I had a very “special,” superior feeling from knowing something my parents didn’t know I knew. I think it was on the same Christmas day when I was eight that I informed them I knew he wasn’t real. Mysteriously, after this he no longer gave me any presents, though I think the total number was unaffected.
I don’t recall having any conscious sense of having learned any more general lesson from this experience. It didn’t lead me to stop believing in God since I never had, my parents being atheists. I suppose it might have made it easier to understand how others could believe in God or other things without objective foundation but, again, have no conscious recollection of its having played that role.
Seems to me you probably can’t learn much from individual anecdotes about the causal relations being asked about here.
I stopped believing in Santa Claus at age seven, probably shortly after Christmas, when my older brother told me he didn’t exist. I was very upset and cried at the time. But a year later, as Christmas approached I had a very “special,” superior feeling from knowing something my parents didn’t know I knew. I think it was on the same Christmas day when I was eight that I informed them I knew he wasn’t real. Mysteriously, after this he no longer gave me any presents, though I think the total number was unaffected.
I don’t recall having any conscious sense of having learned any more general lesson from this experience. It didn’t lead me to stop believing in God since I never had, my parents being atheists. I suppose it might have made it easier to understand how others could believe in God or other things without objective foundation but, again, have no conscious recollection of its having played that role.
Seems to me you probably can’t learn much from individual anecdotes about the causal relations being asked about here.