Agnostic Atheism? Your opinions..

[Norfolk And Chance]

The tooth fairy is a fictional character for us yes, but unless you have some form of omniscience, you cannot make the claim that the tooth fairy will "not ever" be proven real. Unless there is some logical contradiction preventing the existence of tooth fairies, you cannot make that absolute claim. I challenge you to come up with that logical contradiction.

The logical contradiction is that the tooth fairy is a fictional character not a real one. No need for me to get all complicated. That's it. Simple, and sound.

Suppose there is a planet out there, where small humanoid creatures exist, with small wings, that collect teeth from other creatures that have lost them.

We need to also add the caveat that these creatures would have to be "a creature" that will also have to reward the other creatures for their teeth by putting money under their pillows when they are asleep, and locked away in their houses. This creature would have to be able to enter any house (and know which house to go to thousands of times in a single night, every night) and obviously would need use magic or good burgling skills to access the houses because they would not have keys. The creature would have to do all of that, to be a fair comparison to our fictional tooth fairy. So yes, let's suppose that. Yeah?

Actually, fuck no. Let's not. Come up with something better please.

I forget who said it, but the phrase "in an infinite universe, everything is possible" comes to mind.

1 But it also doesn't mean all that is possible will happen, even in infinity. I get it the point of the statement, but its not a strong enough statement for me.

2 Also, we can't be sure that the universe is infinite in size or that it will last for infinite time. We can't realistically use your quoted statement, for those 2 points.

Fact is, you don't know whether tooth fairies exist somewhere in the universe or not.

Oh it's a fact is it? First of all, the tooth fairy is an earthly fictional character, that resides on earth, and we know this. You've just added the "somewhere in the universe bit" to give yourself better odds. But as the fictional tooth fairy lives on earth, I can't see how "tooth fairies may exist in the universe" is even relevant.

If we are still going to press the point "we don't know that we won't find one in another part of the universe (ignoring the obvious logistical difficulty)" then that completely takes the context in a different direction and we are not arguing my original point. Even so, IF you found a tooth fairy like creature, and let's say that cos the universe is a big place, you even found one that did the same things and had the same attributes including magic (just for a laugh), in fact if it did everything that I said in my quote further up - it still isn't the tooth fairy. It is something else. Somewhere else

Now I never said "something else" isn't possible in the universe.

Good luck in finding that something else, but when you do, realise that the tooth fairy is me and millions of other parents sneaking into my/our childrens bedroom at night and putting money under the pillow. But we're still here playing that fictional character every night - what you've found over there, light years away, is not the same, it's unconnected. It's not the real tooth fairy. The tooth fairy cannot be discovered as real. Your creature might be a "blib blob" or something.

You think you know, but you are deluding yourself.

OK, let's conclude...

1 I say -The tooth fairy is a fictional character that is accepted to have no basis in reality, and we teach our kids the myth, for fun, knowing completely that we are acting out fantasy. This fictional character is also based on earth and interacts with our earthling kids with magic. It IS made up, not real, a fictional earth character. Fiction. The fictional tooth fairy that we act out, cannot ever be real.

2 You posit, using the apparantly impregnable shield of philosophy (which from now on I call philosobabble, and want no part of - I'm turned off philosophy now), that just because something is fictional, it doesn't mean it is not possible it won't be proven real, and then later add "somewhere else in the universe"

Lets condense it to the base points...

1 I say the tooth fairy is a fictional character, end of story (story? pardon the pun)

2 You say that it could be real

3 This makes me deluded.

The defence case is rested.

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I'm pretty sure (but not 100% sure) that tooth-fairies are a man-made concept.

But still, in a world with so many possibilities, there may exist tooth fairies somewhere in the universe which can coincidentally match with the concept of tooth fairies even if someone made it up. Also, maybe there is even a planet where these little creatures fly into homes and then they put a dollar bill under the pillows in exchange for the alien's fallen tooth.

It still doesn't make them the tooth fairy. They are other things, not that I think that even those things would be even likely anyhow.