Perpetuating the myth of Santa Claus to children is bad

Following previous formats, I will again rebut my opponents contentions. (1) "Intelligent octopus do exist" This was not my argument. What you're doing is a clear logical fallacy and is called a straw man argument. It indicates that you were unable to disprove the validity of my initial point and have changed the context in which it was true. I never argued that an octopus was not intelligent. I argued that talking ones - especially ones with human morality on their minds - are just as implausible as Santa Claus. You have continued to both ignore and misconstrue this point - something that is especially obvious in your attempts to quantify the irrationality of both "stories". There is no such thing as a "degree of irrationality" - something is either irrational or it isn't. Anything that defies this statement suggests that something can be both rational and irrational simultaneously - which is so illogical that I'm sure Plato and Aristotle have turned over in their graves already - although Zeno should be quite content. (2) "What is Santa's moral?" His "moral" is subjective and irrelevant to your point. The fact that he may have no overriding moral theme, or in fact that he may have a great many, is outside the realm of this debate. You are required as the Pro in this debate to show that Santa Claus causes harm to children. You have argued that the myth of Santa Claus has no clear moral theme - a topic for another debate I'm sure - yet surely you must recognize that this is not equivalent to his having a "bad" moral theme. Again, ambiguity is not the same thing as immorality. You have failed most clearly in this respect to prove your resolution. (3) "However, the amount of stimulation Santa provides is far too large. You know those little rubber rooms they have in jails where a man is tied up in a thick, white coat? Those are generally for crazy people whose minds are over-stimulated." To the readers of this debate I apologize, as my opponent left a great many things for me to elucidate to him in this passage. First of all, and on an especially esoteric philosophical level, who are you to quantify the acceptable level of stimulation? Your argument that children are too fragile to handle the "stimulation" of Santa Claus - which is a rather curious phrasing - is laughable. If they were unable to handle Santa Claus - imagine how they will ever be able to deal with the innumerably more complex ideas drifting about the contemporary world. Imagine their attempts to learn physics at age 18 - or understand discrete mathematics at age 20 - the impossibilities contained within both subjects greatly outweigh the impossibilities of Santa Claus, and yet most people cope well in learning them. Indeed, men and women flourish among such "irrationality". Also, using your powers of observation, I think you will be able to notice that the great many children who once believed in Santa Claus have adapted by and large rather well to the world. Your contention that Santa Claus causes lasting harm is again refuted by another simple observation - not a great many disaffected people in this world would attribute their problems to their beliefs about Santa as children. In one more thematic and final criticism, your attempts at censoring the levels of stimulation can be directly quantified as harmful to children, setting yourself in opposition to your original goal of preventing harm to children. Again. Second of all, your attempts to draw a relationship between Santa Claus, over stimulation, and mental illness are among the most ironic things I have read from you, especially considering you hold science in such high regard. There can be no more unscientific statement than your argument that Santa Claus causes people to go crazy. Your list of "crazy" people is just an attempt to use a source and is completely irrelevant to the debate, and your contention that most people with a mental illness are "too creative" is to ignorant for me to even begin to address here. (4) "If you are insinuating that people will be nice to make friends, that's untrue" Educate yourself. http://www.jstor.org.... For those without access, it states: "...theorists have delineated the close association in friendship relations between value consensus, affectional closeness, and interaction." This generally translates to people are affectionate ( read = nice) in order to make and maintain friendships. This qualifies my earlier point that people are nice only because they expect nicety in return. Therefore my point that the myth of Santa Claus qualifies morality as something akin to a motivation / reward theory is still valid. Indeed, it represents something easily accessible, understandable, and quantifiable by children: it allows them to act morally without fully understanding the reason behind their morality. This distinction comes with age, and in fact requires the initial steps of relating good moral behavior as a "rewarding" experience - something Santa manages to achieve rather well. (5) "...irrational people do commit some, occasionally many irrational actions." This is another Straw Man, as I never argued that point. I stated one irrational belief does not make a person irrational. You seem to be under the impression that a child with one irrational belief - i.e. Santa - will carry that irrationality over into other aspects of his or her life to the extent that it "distorts" their "reality" irreparably. I refuted this claim last round, and your attempts to dodge it are obvious. Your contention that Santa causes widespread irrationality among children is again, and still remains, unfounded. (6) "Unlike prison where you are kept in a cell to regret your actions, the naughty list is fictional and a myth. As I previously stated, since parents love their children so much, they will always give their kids presents even if they are bad" This first sentence is a complete non-sequitur. Both methods discourage bad behavior through loss of benefits - prison through loss of freedom and the Naughty List through loss of pleasure. They are very similar in both their purpose and in outcome, although their application as you seem to have picked up on, is somewhat different. In this sense, the motivation behind the Naughty List is not malicious, and encourages moral behavior. You have again failed to prove your resolution. (7) "What harm is there in the truth?" This is either unbelievably naive, or a shallow attempt to avoid acknowledging the hypocrisy of your argument. If revealing the "truth" to children would do more "harm" to them than their believing in "Santa", you would still reveal to them the truth. This would be acceptable if your position was "truth no matter what". But your position in this debate has been, and continues to be, the prevention of harm. In this sense you contradict your very purpose by doing harm in order to prevent harm. This alone should convince you that your resolution is conflicted, and unsatisfied in terms of logical consistency. (8) "This is what the CON must do..." You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding here. As Pro, you have the burden of proof. You must prove that Santa is "bad". I must do nothing other than address your original contentions as invalid, which I have done. You have consistently failed to prove this point, and instead have resorted to straw man arguments and shifting the burden of proof. For the above reasons, I urge a vote for the Con. Thanks for the debate.