Are people born inherently atheist?

[idav]

Both are examples of distinctions which add no significant information to more fundamental knowledge, and, thus, are not useful or meaningful.

The whole reason is that creating a word for non-belief in itself is useless. We could go all day and say you don't believe in gods, or fairies or unicorns and we can go on and on but having words for any of those non-concepts are just as useless for adults as infants. I would never ask an adult for a list of things they don't believe in cause that would be ridiculous.

 

[outhouse]

Thank you.
I don't understand why this is so hard for the others to grasp.

Simple.

What is Implicit Atheism?

Definition:

Implicit atheism is defined as the absence of theism or the absence of belief in gods without the conscious rejection of it.

 

[Thana]

Simple.

What is Implicit Atheism?

Definition:

Implicit atheism is defined as the absence of theism or the absence of belief in gods without the conscious rejection of it.

That's an obvious dismissal of the point.

 

[Willamena]

It is a lot easier to say properties that do describe you rather than things that do not.

There's a reason for that.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Implicit atheism is defined as the absence of theism or the absence of belief in gods without the conscious rejection of it.

Describes my pet fish to a T.

I wonder if he'll read those books someday.

 

[outhouse]

That's an obvious dismissal of the point.

The point is

Are people born atheist. The answer is confirmed factually yes by definition of implicit atheism.



Anything beyond that is useless ranting due to the value of the phrase and those who cannot find any value, over those that can see some value.

 

[outhouse]

Describes my pet fish to a T.

I wonder if he'll read those books someday.

Describes a red herring and a straw man.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Describes a red herring and a straw man.

Yeah, you keep saying that, yet you cannot explain why. Are you going to actually attempt to justify your accusations, or, are you going to just continue to hide behind them with your fingers stuffed in your ears?

 

[LuisDantas]

Thank you.
I don't understand why this is so hard for the others to grasp.

We grasp it. And we don't find it useful.

In fact, it is misleading if not all-out dishonest.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Although it is widely used both ways to describe adults, I agree that describing atheism as an absence of belief is quite valid, and the most broad use of the term atheist. My only argument is that atheism is implicit in infants in the same way that is in rocks, being that neither have the ability to hold any beliefs. This being the case, describing infants, or rocks, as atheists adds no meaningful information, and thus, is a pointless distinction.

I think question of whether babies are atheists is a side issue. My position is that defining atheism in terms of rejection of belief runs into problems, so we should define it in terms of lack of belief... and if this implies that babies are atheists, that's fine - it doesn't really matter.

 

[Willamena]

I think question of whether babies are atheists is a side issue. My position is that defining atheism in terms of rejection of belief runs into problems, so we should define it in terms of lack of belief... and if this implies that babies are atheists, that's fine - it doesn't really matter.

What problems?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

What problems?

If we don't want any overlap between theists and atheists, then an atheist would have to reject every single god. This is impossible, so there would be no atheists.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

My motive is clarity of language.

You've rendered a term essentially meaningless. How is that clarity? By your definition, rocks and unicorns are atheists.

I've found that the definitions of "atheist" that exclude babies tend to be either transparently arbitrary or logically unviable

Atheists are those that disbelieve in a god or gods. How is that 'logically unviable"? If atheism were a "lack of belief" in god then cats are atheists.

And I've found that most of the time, ulterior motives work in the other direction: it seems to me that when people object to the term "atheist".

I'm not talking about the rejection of the term "atheist" but the denial that atheism is a belief statement.

Something as good as a baby can't be something as bad as an atheist

That would qualify as an ulterior motive. Not one I've ever encountered but I don't doubt you have.

And agnosticism, especially the way Huxley defined it, would be beyond the capability of a baby

DING DING DING! Exactly. So is theism and atheism. They are all belief statements.

You don't need to have a clear definition of "god" if you define atheism in terms of lack of belief.

You don't need a clear definition regardless. Arguably, we don't have "clear definitions" for just about anything and we certainly don't for a great many things debated. The definition of words like "theory", "science", "mathematics", "religion", etc., are hotly contested and have been debated for decades or even centuries. The idea that clear definitions are even possible is disputed. A "lack of belief" requires a clear definition of belief which is again a much disputed issue (are all statements that belong to the linguistic realms of evidential modality, epistemic modality, mental state predicates, etc., beliefs?). This is just a cop-out, usually not deliberately but nonetheless indefensible. Do you really understand what photons and electrons are? No. Can you say therefore you lack a belief in them? Not honestly.

Generally, if I can't even conceive of a thing, then I can be sure that I haven't accepted that the thing is grounded in reality.

If I tell you that stars are made by the alien species Quasars, do you really need to conceive of these species in order to say it isn't grounded in reality?

However, if you define atheism in terms of rejection of belief

Then you get disbelief. That's what rejection entails. If, when asked whether or not I believe in unicorns, I reject the notion I'm not saying "I lack any belief on the matter" I'm saying they don't exist.
"Do you believe that ESP exists?"
"I reject that belief."
"So you don't believe it does?"
"I didn't say that. By reject belief I mean I don't have a clear conception of what ESP is and I lack a belief on the matter."
"Ok, but do you believe that 1st century Sepphoris was much less Urban than argued by prominent scholars 10+ years ago?"
"I don't know, because I haven't studied this."
"So you lack a belief on it?"
"No, I just don't know. If I lacked a belief on it than I wouldn't have a clear picture, like they way I don't with god."
"But, if you don't know, doesn't that mean you don't have a belief"
"Look, a teapot orbiting the sun!"

And so on. You don't get anywhere by equating a rejection of belief with a lack of belief. If you can conceptualize the thing you reject enough to know you reject it, then you don't believe in it and you believe that it isn't so. It's a belief.

then we do need a clear picture of exactly what needs to be rejected.

So to disbelieve in ghosts, you need a clear picture. What about to not reject? Do you require a complete understanding of evolution in order to say you don't reject it? Do you have a complete picture of how the brain produces what we call consciousness and the mind (if you do, I'll give you all I have for it as this would make me the leader in my field)? If you don't (and you don't), then how can you say whether or not you believe that the mind isn't the product of the soul (which we don't have a clear picture of) but of the brain?

It's not an objection to theists having the upper hand; it's an appeal to rationality in language.

It's a fundamental misunderstanding of how lexemes and other linguistic constructions correspond to concepts which are inherently vague, fuzzy, and intersubjective. If they were clearly definable computers could process concepts and everybody would speak some form of formal logic.

A definition like "an atheist is a person who is not a theist" is perfectly straightforward and, IMO, matches how people use the term.

What is a theist? If it is a person who believes in a god or gods, then to say you are not a theist entails that you do not believe what a theist believes. However, if you don't have a clear picture of what the god or gods theists believe in is (maybe it's Donald Trump!), then you can't say you aren't a theist as you don't have a clear picture of what this entails. You just don't know if you are a theist.

OTOH, I've yet to see a definition using rejection of belief that matches how people actually use the term "atheist".

That's because usage varies. I've never worked on a project trying to define atheism for some study but I have done it with materialism and spirituality. Words are polysemous, but some words are more vague than others and it's a pain to try to come up with just a usable definition for empirical study. Just for fun, I looked into usage using the entries from the carefully balanced Corpus of Contemporary American usage, the British National Corpus, and just skimmed ever so slightly through almost 200,000 usages from Google's N-Gram data. I was actually going to try to put the list up somewhere but there's no point (unless someone is interested). To illustrate how usage is problematic for naïve lexicology, the following two lines were listed one after the other in the BNC:
"the agnostic doesn't know whether there's a God or not; the atheist knows there is not a God. "
"But Ayer represents what is probably more often the position of the atheist, namely that it simply makes no sense to talk of God"

Your use seems to be (at least close to) the 2nd, while I think the first better. But the key to using usage isn't to simply say whether a word is used inconsistently. Theism is used inconsistently too. And the solution isn't to define it to be so meaningless that people who don't speak English (or at least are unfamiliar with the English word "god") are atheists because they lack a belief in a word they've never heard. And, again, if atheism isn't defined in relation to belief in (or a lack of belief in) what the English word might correspond to but to a concept that isn't specific to any language, then clearly we have enough of a concept of god to map lexemes between languages to correspond to this concept. If you can say of people who don't know what the English word "god" means that e.g., pagans croyaient en beaucoup de dieux to mean they believe in many gods, or can say that Nietzsche did not believe in god because he denied that there was ein Gott, then you have a clear enough picture of the concept.

The extreme effort that I've seen people go to in order to come up with contrived definitions makes me think that something else is going on

I'm sure you've come across this. It rarely makes sense to run to a dictionary but people do all the time and then often assert that one sense is somehow the "true" one. The real issue is that dictionaries reflect, not define. That's why it's better to look not just at a dictionary but usage and especially (when possible) usage among specialists who have to take care when using terms that concern important aspects of their fields. Here, the issue is simpler. Stating that atheism is a lack of a belief in god rather than disbelieve or a denial of god (i.e., stating that atheism isn't itself a belief about the non-existence, or that an atheist isn't "someone who does not believe in the existence of a god"; WordNet) renders the term devoid of just about any meaning. Moreover, once can't reasonably defend the idea that atheism is nothing more than a lack of belief by denying atheists don't have a conception of what god is. If one is so truly incapable of understanding the concept that one can't say one doesn't believe in god anymore than enekecheiron then atheism is simply sweeping and unparalleled ignorance. Atheism is anything but this, which is why I know that claiming atheists "lack any belief" in god(s) because, like theists, they don't have a clear picture isn't tenable.

It also has an "a" prefix. Just in terms of the structure of the word, it would work just as well to interpret "atheism" as "NOT the belief system of god(s)" as it would "the belief system of 'not god(s)'."

My point was let about the structure of the word per se but that there's a reason the structure resembles theism, communism, agnosticism, environmentalism, activism, etc. When someone isn't a capitalist we don't call them acapitalist. We just say they aren't a capitalist. The reason that the Greek concept atheos is no more but the word still exists in a different form is that it is conceived of as more than simply not being a theist.

Are babies not also non-smokers?

Possibly. But you are now describing an ability. That's different. Babies aren't runners because they cannot run. They aren't atheists or theists because they don't have the capacity to form beliefs about either doctrines or even understand the concepts.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

I think question of whether babies are atheists is a side issue. My position is that defining atheism in terms of rejection of belief runs into problems, so we should define it in terms of lack of belief... and if this implies that babies are atheists, that's fine - it doesn't really matter.

I fully agree that defining atheism strictly as rejection of belief is incomplete, and that the absence of holding a belief in god is a valid and useful definition - and the most broad - of atheism.

However, I don't find extending atheism to infants to be necessary (as well as not useful). In fact, extending atheism to infants (using the absence definition) results in extending atheism to animals and inanimate objects, if we apply consistent logic.

This problem is easily avoided by applying the categorical dichotemy of atheism/theism, as a subcategory, to only things which are actually capable of holding beliefs. Infants, rocks, squirrels, and other things which are not capable of holding beliefs are not meaningfully described as "atheist," since it is fundamental knowledge that they are not capable of holding beliefs period.

Now, some people may find it personally useful to describe infants as atheists (for various reasons). However, it impossible for them to avoid the logical conundrum of also defining rocks as atheists, if they are using consistent logic. Of course, some people may also be okay describing rocks as atheists.

 

[hexler]

It is just as Jesus said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. That does not mean unlearned like children but pure minded, loving everybody, without intention. That again would mean not having doubts about God.

 

[Willamena]

If we don't want any overlap between theists and atheists, then an atheist would have to reject every single god. This is impossible, so there would be no atheists.

That's not a problem if "atheist" and "theist" are properties of people that describe an attitude they hold towards a belief.

 

[idav]

What is a theist? If it is a person who believes in a god or gods, then to say you are not a theist entails that you do not believe what a theist believes. However, if you don't have a clear picture of what the god or gods theists believe in is (maybe it's Donald Trump!), then you can't say you aren't a theist as you don't have a clear picture of what this entails. You just don't know if you are a theist.

This is an important point. Theists are believers and it is easy enough to determine if ones self is a believer. It isn't the job of the non-believer to think up something to believe in. Belief is an active concept of the mind so if any theist asks someone if they believe in Allah or Yahweh or whatever, atheists can easily determine that they don't have any active concepts pertaining to those beliefs proposed by theists. It isn't necessary for atheists to reject every concept theists might come up with including Donald Trump being an all powerful deity.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

If we don't want any overlap between theists and atheists, then an atheist would have to reject every single god. This is impossible, so there would be no atheists.

EDIT: I'm keeping the post as is but I'm offering a clearer opening as simply adding punctuation didn't help much.

Let a set P be defined by properties that relate to divinity and/or the supernatural.

We need then only two conditions:
1) The elements {x1, x2, x3,...xn} in the set P correspond to properties that atheists do not believe any entity could have (e.g., the property of being creator of the universe).
2) For any god x, that god has some property y that is an element of the set P.

Given such a set P, an atheist can say s/he does not believe in any god without needing to know every god /she is saying s/he doesn't believe in.

If the concept of god has any set of properties atheists can all be said not to believe in of which some subset applies to all gods then atheists can not believe in any god without having to even know which gods they are saying they don't believe in. If I don't believe in spirits like ghosts I do not have to be familiar with some exotic, archaic mythical spirit believed to exist in ancient Persia. If, for example, there is no physics that can be consistent with any god, and I don't believe there exists anything which no physics could be consistent with, I don't believe in any god. If I do not believe that any entity could have supernatural powers, live forever, exist outside spacetime, create the universe, alter things with divine power, or any number of other properties out of which at least one will apply to any god, then I don't believe in god.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

If the concept of god has any set of properties atheists can all be said not to believe in of which some subset applies to all gods then atheists can not believe in any god without having to even know which gods they are saying they don't believe in.

Great. What property would that be?

Bonus points if it's believed in by all theists.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Great. What property would that be?

Properties. Plural:

Let a set P be defined by properties that relate to divinity and/or the supernatural.

We need then only two conditions:
1) The elements {x1, x2, x3,...xn} in the set P correspond to properties that atheists do not believe any entity could have (e.g., the property of being creator of the universe).
2) For any god x, that god has some property y that is an element of the set P.

Given such a set P, an atheist can say s/he does not believe in any god without needing to know every god /she is saying s/he doesn't believe in.

Bonus points if it's believed in by all theists.

In order for the set of properties to work all that is required is that all gods have at least one property in the set. So, for example, although it is certainly not true that all gods are believed to have created the universe, we do not require that particular property to apply to all gods. One can make quite an extensive list with ease with properties like supernatural power, capable of defying the laws of physics, immortal, has no biological origin, can control weather, can take different forms, exists in some ethereal, otherworldly plane, has given birth to other immortals, is related to other immortals, etc.

The great thing about the word "god" is that it is no more nebulous or polysemous than the word "natural" or "physical" or countless other terms used by those who balk at saying they can have a belief about some god or gods they have no clear description of. Deities share properties. In fact, even if we were worried whether things like angels, demigods, etc., might be considered gods that set of properties wouldn't have to add much, if anything, to take care of these too.