Related on OB: Lying to Kids The Third Alternative
My wife and I are planning to have kids, so of course we've been going through the usual sorts of debates regarding upbringing. We wondered briefly, will we raise our children as atheists? It's kindof a cruel experiment, as folks tend to use their own experiences to guide raising children, and both of us were raised Catholic. Nonetheless, it was fairly well settled after about 5 minutes of dialogue that atheist was the way to go.
Then we had the related discussion of whether to teach our children about Santa Claus. After hours of debate, we decided we'd both have to think on the question some more. It's still been an open question for years now.
Should we teach kids that Santa Claus exists? This isn't a new question, by any means. But it's now motivated by this thread about rationalist origin stories. Note that many of the posters mark the 'rationalist awakening' as the time they realized God doesn't exist. The shock that everybody, including their parents, were wrong and/or lying to them was enough to motivate them to pursue rationality and truth.
If those same children were never taught about God, Santa Claus, and other falsehoods, would they have become rationalists, or would they have contented themselves with playing better video games? If the child never realized there's no Santa Claus, would we have a reason to say, "You're growing up and I'm proud of you"?
If you find yourself classifying the goal for where you want to bring the world as "fantasy", you either should update your estimates of what can be real, or exclude the fantasy goal. Don't waste hope on unreal things, but see the real potential in absurdly good things to come (to do). Explore how you'd like the world to be within what's possible, and make sure that your model of what's possible includes the wonders that are possible. That will make your worldview that much brighter and that much saner.
Children need pretend. Don't squash their play. That's not to say that you should tell them things that are false. They'll generate plenty of fantasy on their own.