We shouldn't ignore this fact - that mythology, art, music and narratives express our sense of the world. Why isn't our human experience aligned with scientific reality? If science is such an accurate explanation of reality, and mythology is not, why not forget mythology, fairy tales, art and music, and teach our children science and nothing but science? What is missing in science?
Excellent question—and I’m glad you asked it directly, because it gets to the heart of this entire conversation.
You ask: If science is so accurate, why not teach only science and abandon myth, art, music, and narrative? The answer is simple: because science is not meant to replace human experience—it’s meant to clarify it.
Science tells us what is true about the world—how gravity works, what cells do, how stars form, how disease spreads. But science doesn’t tell us how to feel about a sunrise, or what melody moves us to tears, or what it means to lose a parent or fall in love. That’s not because science is incomplete or “missing something.” It’s because meaning is a product of conscious experience, not objective measurement. Meaning is created by minds—not discovered in molecules.
But here’s where the mistake happens: just because myth and music are deeply meaningful doesn’t mean they’re accurate descriptions of how the universe works. A fairy tale might help a child process fear—but that doesn’t mean dragons are real. A poem might capture heartbreak perfectly—but that doesn’t mean it explains the biochemical basis of emotion.
So we absolutely should teach art, myth, and music. But we must also teach that they serve a different purpose than science. They enrich the inner world. Science explains the outer one. Confusing the two—using poetry as proof, or myth as a model of reality—is where many well-meaning people go wrong.
In short: science gives us facts. Story gives us meaning. The goal is not to choose one over the other, but to know which tool you’re using—and not to mistake one for the other. When we know the difference, both are powerful. When we blur them, we get confusion, superstition, and the illusion of understanding where there is none.
I suggest otherwise. I suggest that parents who ground their children in fairy tales understand that fairy tales actually do ground children and give them tools to navigate the world they live in. If we're misleading our children, why teach them fairy tales in the first place? I don't think we need to "teach them to eventually distinguish imagination from reality". They already can. They already understand fairy tales are not real but these stories are treasured for the moral values they hold. I suggest that children know this. Children don't have to make a leap from seeing the world with childish eyes and suddenly see a different adult world. If they do, we have not taught them the right values. We have not told them the right stories. Or told them in the right way. Fairy tales, to me, always began with "Long, long ago" and ended with "And they lived happily ever after". I knew they were fairy tales. I never thought they were real. I was never lied to.
Now, we do the same with religion. We often teach our children the religion we practice as soon as they are able to understand stories. We may offer them the freedom to choose and not bind them to our religion from young but it doesn't stop us from sharing our religion with them. We do so because we think it's important, not because we want to indulge in their fantasies and encourage imagination.
I suggest we don't teach them science from young precisely because science have nothing to offer in terms of living life. As a child, I learnt that being ugly doesn't mean you can't be beautiful later from the story of The Ugly Duckling. I would stare at ants and marvel at their unceasing diligence. I learn about life from interacting with living things, not from studying science.
I agree with your core point: fairy tales can be powerful tools for teaching values like courage, kindness, hope, and perseverance. Stories are foundational to how children explore emotion, morality, and imagination. No disagreement there.
But here’s where I think your argument quietly shifts into dangerous territory: when you claim that we don’t need to teach children the difference between imagination and reality because “they already can.” That assumption simply doesn’t hold up—developmental psychology disagrees. Children absolutely do blur fantasy and reality, and part of healthy cognitive growth involves gradually learning to tell the difference. That’s why a child might cry when a cartoon character gets hurt or fear monsters under the bed. They grow out of that confusion because we help them, over time, distinguish story from fact, symbol from explanation.
You’re also right that fairy tales usually come with built-in cues—“Once upon a time…”—that frame them as fiction. But religion, unlike fairy tales, is not presented as fiction. It’s presented as truth—often ultimate truth, often unchallengeable. That’s a major difference. Telling a child about the Ugly Duckling is not the same as telling them that a literal resurrection happened, or that a divine being is watching and judging them. One is symbolic narrative; the other is a metaphysical claim about the nature of reality.
And this leads into your point about teaching religion to children. You say we share it not to encourage imagination, but because we think it’s important. Fair enough—but important doesn’t mean true. Many religious claims are asserted to children as factual, not poetic. And once we do that, we’re no longer in the realm of harmless metaphor—we’re making epistemic commitments on their behalf. If we want to raise independent thinkers, we need to teach them how to think, not just what to believe.
Finally, your line that science “has nothing to offer in terms of living life” is simply mistaken. You may not have learned compassion or wonder from science textbooks, but that doesn’t mean science has no role in understanding life. Science teaches us how to spot bias, how to be humble before evidence, how to test ideas rather than cling to them blindly. It gives us medical advances, deeper insight into nature, and the tools to understand ourselves biologically, emotionally, and socially. Science doesn’t give you a bedtime story—but it gives you clean water, vaccines, weather prediction, and an understanding of why we feel fear or love in the first place.
So yes, we need both stories and science. But we must teach the difference. Stories give life meaning; science gives life understanding. Let’s honor both—without mistaking one for the other.
I hope that my position is clearer and more acceptable to you by now. Scientific reality is only part of the reality we experience. The ancient Greeks identified three transcendentals of being - truth, goodness and beauty. That everything has these three properties. We need art and religion to help provide a fuller understanding of reality.
That's why we're still teaching our children these things. They're fundamental to teaching them about life. That's why, even as adults, we continue to engage in art and listen to stories, even fictional stories with super heroes and imaginary people.
We need to take these things seriously. What I'm further suggesting is that these values are not arbitrary but shared and can, indeed must, be approached with care and reason, the way we approach science.
Yes—your position is clearer now, and I appreciate the thoughtful refinement. You’ve articulated a classic and noble view: that science reveals one dimension of reality, but that other dimensions—goodness, beauty, meaning—require tools like art, myth, and religion. And on that point, I think we do share a meaningful amount of common ground.
I absolutely agree that reality is not exhausted by data or measurement. Human experience involves aesthetics, values, emotion, longing—real dimensions of our lives. That’s why art moves us, music heals us, and stories resonate. We don’t need to reject these things in the name of science—we just need to recognize what they are: symbolic, interpretive, expressive.
But here’s the critical distinction: truth, in the epistemic sense, is not evenly distributed across all these modes. When it comes to determining what actually exists—what causes disease, how life evolved, whether a god exists, whether souls survive death—we need a method that can distinguish what we want to be true from what actually is. That method is science and rational inquiry.
So yes—stories and religion can reflect shared values. But they must be approached for what they are: cultural artifacts, narrative structures, moral frameworks. Not literal descriptions of how the universe works. And this is where I must gently push back: the moment you start suggesting that myth and religion should be treated with the same epistemic weight as science, we open the door to confusion between symbolic resonance and empirical reality.
You’re right that values aren’t arbitrary—they emerge from biology, culture, evolution, and human reasoning. And yes, we should examine them carefully and critically, just like we approach scientific claims. But that’s the key: applying the same rigor to all truth claims, not giving religious or mythological claims a free pass because they feel profound or sacred.
So I’m with you in wanting to take meaning seriously. But let’s be clear-eyed about what kind of meaning we’re talking about—and make sure we’re not building worldviews on metaphors when the questions at stake demand method, evidence, and reason. That’s the only way we can truly honor both science and the human spirit—by respecting what each is actually equipped to do.
NHC
