Telling fact from fiction

[Athene]

Are there any other general principles people can think of further to plausibility and consistency?

Of course advanced studies could look at writing styles, motivations and such things, but I'm thinking more generally and simplistically.

Yes.

I made a conscious and continual effort to encourage my children to employ the application of such principles, in order to prevent them from being afraid of things that go bump in the night.

It was the first time I'd consciously dealt with a conundrum that my religious beliefs presented: How to explain to my children that my children that monsters, ghosts, witches, spells, and various other Big Bads weren't real, or more specifically, why they were impossible, without Magic Jesus becoming a casualty? 

No, son. There's no monster under your bed that wants to shrink you; that's impossible. But, there is a man in the sky. He walked on water. And he can hear your thoughts. 

It seemed fair to reason that one of lines of thought was bound to lose some serious credibility. I believed that my children needed their faith in Jesus. I believed that teaching them to separate fact from fiction was absolutely critical as well, so I vacillated between worrying that they would lose their faith, or become gullible idiots for a period of time. Turned out, all that worrying had been for naught.

Silly me. I'd grossly underestimated the mighty, mighty powers of compartmentalization. My kids were fully capable of putting Magic Jesus in his own special box marked "Other" and tucking it away, just like their mommy and daddy.  

THE END