Are people born inherently atheist?

[9-10ths_Penguin]

No. I would hold it to be true of all self-descriptive labels.

And do you think that "atheist" is only a self-descriptive label?

I apply the term to myself, but the same is true of plenty of labels.

The problem the insistence that babies "lack a belief" in the same way atheists often use that phrase. It implies an ignorance both of how language works and how the mind works. It often involves the claim that atheists don't even know what this "god" concept is that they are denying. Such a view is completely misinformed.

That's not what anyone is arguing. You're misunderstanding.

Using the word "god" as atheists means that their possession of a concept of it is required by biology and by every linguistic model of language use:

No, it doesn't. Again: you're operating from a misunderstanding of what's being argued.

That's true. However, this only matters if the term does not necessitate a self-description to be held at least in theory. If an atheist really "lacks any belief" in god or gods the way a baby does, then they would be unable to use the word the way that everyone in this thread has. See above.

It's not the baby who's using the word.

Thank you for explaining the third person.

You're welcome. You seem to be having trouble with the concept, judging by your arguments.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I don't believe there is anything fundamental about the term "atheist"

There isn't, or at least it's not as if thousands of other terms are just as important or more so. I only single out "atheist" because that's under discussion. I rarely get into debates over self-labels, because people will simply call themselves what they wish. However, what I do find worth engaging is when a such a label is not simply defined in relation to one's personal beliefs but to define the word for all, and even then I typically don't bother. I've spent most of my posts not so much defining atheism at all but arguing against the view that a different definition can't be used while another one must be.

I think the term I've debated the most is probably the word "theory". I study language, and although I study it mostly as it pertains to the brain I didn't start doing this. In the course of learning the ancient and modern languages I need to know for one of my undergrad majors I became interested in linguistics. It was through linguistics that I came to cognitive science and then neuroscience. So language and logic (and where they connect and disconnect) are quite important to me.

But none of that would be enough for me to bother if some were not trying to assert things about labels that
1) are meant to be taken as universal, not self-labels
2) are claimed to be logical in ways that they cannot be
3) are used to deny, universally, self-labels of others (for example, the claim that atheists aren't theists would mean I am an atheist and I am not).

considering this word is not describing a structure or an organization

Neither is racism, sexism, or prejudice. Considering that most debates, including those that influence culture and politics, deal with ideologies and worldviews, I don't understand why you believe words describing a structure or an organization are somehow necessarily of no or little consequence.

it is merely a view on theistic grounds, a stance on theological issues.

It's also making claims about what people can and can't say about their own identity and worldview. Also, inaccurate claims about language and logic matter to me personally whether it's over a word from a dead language.

So what importance does it hold?

What importance does anything hold?

You do not believe X, although that can mean two things: You do not have an opinion on it, or that your opinion is that of a negative one, a no.

It is possible to not believe because one doesn't know. Apart from anything to do with language itself, it is physically impossible not to have an opinion of a word like "god" or "atheism" or "theism" if one is able to use these words correctly, communicate them so that others speaking the same language can understand, and to situate them in the proper syntactic and semantic structures. I tried to explain this several times and, as that failed, provided several different sources on this point. It's true that someone who is aware of the concept of god (i.e., is able to use the word) can care so little that it almost never comes to mind. But it is not true to say that person has no opinions even if they are implicit. The very neural representation corresponding to the word and the contexts the speaker uses it cause the speaker to ascribe to it properties they believe it to have. Unimportant and irrelevant can be considered two.

What could these dogmatic positions do anyhow?

What all dogmatic positions can do. Stifle thought, progress, discussion, etc.

What effect would they take on society if a term is misused in such an example?

It's not that the term itself is "misused". That happens all the time and words change. The issue is the rationale for the two problems I've discussed. Theological debates inform public policy, culture and cultural progress, education, etc. So, for example, when theists claim that the difference between them and atheists is simply that they both belief something about god, it just happens to be different beliefs, they are wrong. It is this kind of justification that is used to defend practices and policies I don't agree with and is similar in many respects to defenses of teaching creationism in school.

Likewise, the rejoinder that atheism is simply some default position that involves no belief claims is flawed too. Instead of promoting the differences between belief that X exists and belief that X does not, and why these make the claim that atheists and theists simply have differing beliefs about god, the response is to claim that atheism is a lack of belief. Rather than responding with logical arguments about the invalidity of the claim, an invalid rejoinder is offered. Such tactics in debates and discussions hamper and hinder rather than help.

The problems I have been discussing here are less about definitions in and of themselves but about both the justification for (or against) them and whether or not their interpretations make sense. This thread involves ascribing as a natural state to human beings something I believe cannot be said of them. Muslims make the same claim and I would argue here too. I find that the term atheism is an important one so long as policies and cultures all over the world are influenced by theists and theistic beliefs. Atheism is a label (and like all labels involves some ambiguity and vagueness) that is useful to inform discussions vital to sociocultural issues. Calling rocks and babies and anything else that has no belief about gods as well as those who believe god doesn't exist but claim that phrasing this differently somehow makes the "lack any belief" the way a baby does makes atheism meaningless. Same with defining it as "not a theist". If I like a lot of what a self-described atheist politician seems to represent things I like, and so I vote for her, I'd be pretty upset to find out that she is a scientologist. The fact that scientologists don't call the immortal, omniscient entities they believe in aren't gods but forms of humans and a "supreme being".

just because someone is professed an atheist although lacking the idea of theism

It is impossible to be a professed atheist (unless one has no idea what the word means) and lack the idea of theism. One of the reasons this is true is related to why this issue is important, IMO. Concepts do not exist in isolation and neither do the words we use for them. One doesn't need a word to have a concept of not being a theist or for believing god doesn't exist (the converse is not true- to have a word one must have a concept). Concepts like war are defined at least in part by their relation to peace, soldiers, weapons, etc. The concept of war today is not that of a thousand years ago in part because we associate with it things like bombs, tanks, machine guns, etc. Making "atheism" devoid of any practical meaning has implications for the words it relates to, as these are all defined in part, just like atheism, by the relations between them and atheism.

But there isn't going to be a worldview or ideology in the mind a newborn as there is no concept.

That's true. But we ascribing to a newborn what is a worldview. By doing so we make the term corresponding to it useless and by extension the create problems with the use of terms relating to it. This has already happened, as many an atheist could have been perfectly described by the term agnostic were it not for attempts to redefine atheism as including non-commitment.

But someone cannot believe in "God" unless there is some sort of concept of it.

I agree. And babies have no concept of god. People who describe themselves as atheists do.

 

[Willamena]

If nobody has a concept of god, then everyone would be an atheist but nobody would care.

And how would the word have had a chance to have arisen? Nonsense.

 

[Willamena]

And do you think that "atheist" is only a self-descriptive label?

More so than being about labelling, it's the principle of the thing. Why would you label someone in regard to a belief until they are old enough to even have beliefs? (Rhetorical question.)

 

[ArtieE]

I pick 3. A baby comes out and gets assigned to be "without belief in gods."

Assigned by us. You can't eliminate us from that picture.

You only have two options. We don't assign him to be "without belief in gods." He is "without belief in gods." He is also without belief in aliens, fairies, Santa, leprechauns, absolutely everything he has no concept of yet. He can only start to believe or disbelieve in any or all of those when he understands what they are.

 

[outhouse]

Why would you label someone in regard to a belief until they are old enough to even have beliefs? (Rhetorical question.)

It is not a lable of what one is

It is a label of what one is not, a theist

 

[ArtieE]

To you and me he can be atheist--could possibly be atheist--and only to you and me. I'm arguing against the idea that it is some sort of objective "default" condition of humanity, as put forth by some.

No god, no atheists.

Default position not being a theist until you become a theist.
Default position not a believer in fairies until you start believing in fairies.
Default position not a believer in aliens until you start believing in aliens.
And so on.

The default position has to be not a believer until you start believing.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

And do you think that "atheist" is only a self-descriptive label?

No self-descriptive label is.

That's not what anyone is arguing. You're misunderstanding.

Would you hesitate to say babies lack writing ability? Atheism _is_ a meaningless concept. That is what it is supposed to be.

As for the infant example, we use it to rattle this pervasive idea that atheism is a rejection of theism and, thus, a concept in itself. We use it to present the concept that atheism, "technically," is no concept at all, that it's, in fact, the epistemic default position.

Atheists simply do not share in common held beliefs at is concerns God or gods.

Atheism means without theism, in other words, there is no commonly held doctrine shared by atheists.

These and other definitions that define an atheist as one who "lacks a belief" about god(s) only makes sense if applied to those like babies who can't make any epistemic commitment when they don't know the word.

If one can "lack a belief in god(s)" and be able to use the word "god", then that person actually does have beliefs about gods and the phrase is useful only to distinguish those who care about denying gods vs. those who believe god doesn't exist but don't give much if any thought to what this means, why they think so, why others don't think so, etc. It is not a real "lack of any belief" and not of the type babies have. Nor does such a lack by some atheist mean they can honestly deny they are making no belief claims.

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

This is neither perfectly straightforward nor useful. It isn't straightforward because it does not tell us how to know if one isn't a theist. You suggest using self-definitions, which seems odd given your desire or clarity and the fact that accepting all such definitions mean that a theist is anybody who believes in humans or the sun or both. It doesn't end there.

First, unless you wish to restrict theists to English speakers, you require a definition of the concept "theist". People who don't speak English don't use this word and if you are not going to define the concept then you can only use your definition of "theist" to describe English speakers.

Second, if you do define it in terms of a belief in god(s), then you either are again stuck with only English speakers or you require a definition of the concept "god". And once you do that, you have defined atheism as not believing in the concept god. Nobody who is capable of using the word god actually lacks beliefs about god. They can lack any strong beliefs and give it little thought, but they do have beliefs and if they do not belief god exists, then either they don't know or they believe god doesn't.

No, it doesn't.

How does it not? I gave you a few quotes from different fields to give you an idea on how knowing a word necessarily entails having a concept in ways that make beliefs inevitable. If you would like to show how these are wrong, ask for other confirmation, and/or explain how my conclusions are incorrect even granting those quotations are accurate, please do.

It's not the baby who's using the word.

I can call a baby small whether the baby believes this or not. I can't call the baby a republican. Not all terms can be ascribed accurately in the 3rd person. If a baby is an atheist because it is not a theist, then you have to define theism to say what it is that a baby is not. And again, self-descriptions don't work because there is no one-to-one mapping between languages. You need to define the concept so that theists who don't speak English can be called theists.

 

[ArtieE]

And how would the word have had a chance to have arisen? Nonsense.

First there was no word for people who were not theists because there were no theists. Then people started believing in gods and we called them theists. So it became useful with a word for people who were not theists. So atheists are people who are not theists. So unless you become a theist you stay what you always were, an atheist. Can't make it any simpler than that.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

You mean you are diverting the discussion about a particular definition of atheism to talk about something else even though this thread is about...um...something even less related to the OP than your post..

Yep, you caught me.

I basically cruise these forums looking to poke a stick through the spokes of as many discussions as I can.

Granting existence as a serviceable term for want of a better one

Exactly; but when we run into apparently severe problems with the term, as with the purported existence of a being or entity that is not physical, not subject to relations and conditions and so on, we draw a blank for any other term... And the suggestions we are sometimes given, like "super-existent", seem grotesque and incoherent. And this is the puzzle for the type of theist I'm talking about- once we give up on God's existence, what is the theist a theist in virtue of? What, exactly, is their dispute with the atheist? It would seem to have to be something, otherwise how is one a theist and the other an atheist? (although your point of the relevance of self-identification and commitment is certainly pertinent here)

The difference would be that an atheist holds that a term such as "god" (or theos, deus, Gott, dieu, dio, etc.) doesn't correspond to anything other than to concepts represented internally that the word the word is used to refer to. Theists, sophisticated in this sense or no, believe that such words refer not simply to internal representations but to something that exists independently of any language or conceptualizer.

But this particular puzzle arises when the theist acknowledges that, strictly speaking, the term "God" does not refer to something "existing independently", for the reasons mentioned; one way or another, God does not exist- but he does not not exist, exactly, either (or so the theist would seem to have to say).

Anyways, to switch gears back to the original topic (as much as I've tried to stay away from what I'm sure you'll acknowledge is basically only a terminological/semantic dispute) , I think you raise a very good point here-

To be an atheist is to make a statement of belief: "I do not believe in God (or gods)." We make the word meaningless by trying to pretend that babies are atheists because they don't have a belief about god.

There is an important sense in which being an atheist requires a positive intellectual movement- one has thought about the matter, and decided that they find the existence of God or gods to be untenable, and thus reject it. It is not a matter of a default state of non-belief, in an important sense. Atheism, as an intellectual or philosophical position, is essentially critical- meaning, it must be conscious and reflective; mere lack of belief in gods, as with an infant or someone whose never thought about the matter at all, has nothing to do with the philosophical/intellectual position that atheism usually comprises.

Moreover, if the motivation behind defining atheism broadly so as to include any absence of theistic belief (as in infants), is being used to imply that atheism is the default, natural state, whereas theism is some disturbance or abnormality, then this seems illicit- as if one can settle an argument (atheism vs. theism) on the basis of definitions.

Anyways, just some scattered thoughts on the matter. At least you and 9-10ths penguin are aware that this is just a dispute over terminology, and thus that arguments must be made on the basis of the practical utility or descriptive ability of one definition as opposed to the other, whereas most other posters seem to think they are arguing over a matter of fact and can simply insist what "atheist" and "atheism" really mean.

 

[ArtieE]

I can call a baby small whether the baby believes this or not. I can't call the baby a republican.

Precisely. But you can call the baby not a republican (yet) just like you can call the baby not a theist (yet). Becoming a republican and becoming a theist requires knowledge about what a republican and a theist is. Not being a republican or a theist requires nothing, not even that you know what they are. The baby is an "arepublican" and an "atheist".

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

You only have two options. We don't assign him to be "without belief in gods." He is "without belief in gods."

Atheists are not. And for the very reason you state infants are: unlike infants, who can't believe or disbelieve in anything they have "no concept of yet", atheists do have a concept. If someone walks up to an atheist and says "Hi, I'm a god, nice to meet you", that atheist will not suddenly exclaim "oh, so that's what a god is". If asked "can you name some of the gods the Greeks worshipped?", most atheists (being the educated people they are) would respond with names like Zeus and not "what's a god?". Like everyone capable of using the word, they have a concept which they use to categorize entities real or no as being either gods or not gods, for otherwise they would have no reason not to accept a claim of godhood someone makes nor be capable of answering questions about which gods the Greeks or some other group worship.

They do not, as some theists do, believe the sun is a god. That in and of itself is a belief claim about the concept god. As we learn in basic logic, to say of something x that it does not have the property (or is not equivalent to) y says something about y. This isn't always saying much, as for instance when someone points out that a shape is not a circle. However, the more shapes one can identify that aren't circles, the more one is able to identify at least what could be. If I don't believe in the supernatural, there are all manner of entities and processes that fall under this category which I do not know about. However, I know enough about the natural world to believe such things don't exist anyway.

fairies, Santa, leprechauns

According to some, one cannot deny these exist unless one knows every fairy, every version of Santa, and every leprechaun.

 

[ArtieE]

Atheists are not.

Are you kidding? All atheists are without belief in gods. That is the definition of atheism. An atheist is a person who is not a theist. Regardless of age or gender or race or skin color or location, a person who is not a theist is an atheist. He can be a weak atheist or a strong atheist. Infants are weak atheists because they are not theists and not strong atheists. You are only talking about strong atheists. Please read About.com and Wikipedia about the difference between weak and strong and implicit and explicit atheism.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

There is an important sense in which being an atheist requires a positive intellectual movement- one has thought about the matter, and decided that they find the existence of God or gods to be untenable, and thus reject it. It is not a matter of a default state of non-belief, in an important sense.

I absolutely agree.

Atheism, as an intellectual or philosophical position, is essentially critical- meaning, it must be conscious and reflective; mere lack of belief in gods, as with an infant or someone whose never thought about the matter at all, has nothing to do with the philosophical/intellectual position that atheism usually comprises.

Again, I completely agree.

Moreover, if the motivation behind defining atheism broadly so as to include any absence of theistic belief (as in infants), is being used to imply that atheism is the default, natural state, whereas theism is some disturbance or abnormality, then this seems illicit-

I know this is often the motivation. I cannot, of course, speculate whether those I've met or talked to who give other reasons have the reason above in addition to another reason or reasons or that they have an entirely different reason. I'm fine with a term like apatheism or apathetic agnostic to describe those whose beliefs about god are basically limited to those necessary to use the word. I am on the fence both about the utility of ascribing to infants anything relating to some stance on any concept, ideology, belief system, etc., and if so what might be ideal here. As I believe atheism to be an important contribution to Western culture, intellectualism, literature, learning, etc., I find lumping those like Nietzsche, Camus, Marx, Freud, Quine, etc., in with infants more than a little trivializing. One learns quickly in any field that the more a class, category, or label is used, be in Gnosticism in early Christian studies or proposition in logic, the more contentious it becomes. The solution is not to render it largely meaningless either by excluding all but the narrowest definition or including all but the most distinct definitions.

and can simply insist what "atheist" and "atheism" really mean.

Well, maybe not really mean, but we can definitely define what it really, really, REALLY means. Unfortunately, that information is classified and I can't share it.

 

[ArtieE]

I am on the fence both about the utility of ascribing to infants anything relating to some stance on any concept, ideology, belief system, etc., and if so what might be ideal here.

Well then simply think about it this way. It's as simple as I can express it. A person becomes a theist. How long was he not a theist before he became a theist? Since he was born.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Are you kidding? All atheists are without belief in gods.

Perhaps it is useful, before addressing what belief is, to address what means to be without belief (to neither believe nor disbelieve). The author quoted below has a memory of cutting a vine, but not of when this happened:

"As our memories become less vivid, we tend to be correspondingly less sure that our beliefs apparently based on them are justified. Still, I distinctly recall cutting the vine. The stem was furry; it was bonded to the tree trunk; the cutting was difficult and slightly wounded the tree. By contrast, I have no belief about whether I did this in the summer or in the fall. I entertain the proposition that it was in the summer; I consider whether it is true; but all I can do is suspend judgment on it. I thus neither believe it nor disbelieve it, and I do not try to force myself to resolve the question and judge the proposition either way."

Audi, R. (2010). Epistemology: a contemporary introduction to the theory of knowledge. Routledge.

Note that the reason the author neither believes nor disbelieves is because of complete ignorance (like that of a child who cannot be said to have beliefs about god). This is not the same as having the concept of god which is entailed simply by knowing how to use the word. For that we turn to what (dis)belief is:

"A's believing that p is a matter of A's being in a certain continuing state, a state which endures for the whole time that A holds the belief. In the case of beliefs which are acquired, this view thinks of A's belief that p as a matter of A's mind being imprinted or stamped in a certain way."
Armstrong, D. M. (1973). Belief, truth and knowledge. Cambridge University Press.

The reason I include this explanation is because it defines belief not just (relatively) clearly but also speaks of "A's mind being imprinted or stamped" due to belief. That's important because speakers like yourself who are capable of using the word god do not merely have represent the concept in your brain but do so in relation both to other concepts and to the properties you ascribe to the concept "god".

Swinburne, R. (2001). Epistemic justification. Clarendon Press.

And this concept allows you to frame your beliefs about god the way that atheists can:

"A person's beliefs are his or her View' of the world, what they 'hold' to be true about it, what they 'accept' as true."

If you do not accept as true that there is a god, then it is true to say you hold a view of the world in which nothing corresponding to your concept of god exist. If you neither disbelieve nor believe but are able to use the word "god" correctly, then you do not know whether god exists. If it is false to say you do not know whether god exists but true to say you believe that god does not exist, then you believe it is true to say that you believe of the "world" (of reality) that god does not exist.

Disbelief and belief are both "beliefs" (although that does not somehow make them equal from the point of view of epistemic justification), in that one can always frame a statement of belief as one of disbelief and vice versa. If I believe there exists a god, then it is true to say I don't believe there is no god or that I believe it false that god does not exists.

If you believe there is no god then you believe that god does not exist (unless you don't believe because you do not know). There is no other way to have the concept of god that you necessarily do, because that concept is your own mental representation and is linked with countless others in an intricate network (actually quite literally, as in physically). A human represent concepts physically not in isolation but through categorizing them and the properties they have in that person's brain as being similar or dissimilar to others on a scale. So, for example, and atheist who rejects all things supernatural is likely to activate similar regions for terms like "ghost", "Zeus, "gods", "holy spirit", "Jesus", etc., that a believing Christian who doesn't believe in spirits would not. The Christian categorizes Zeus and even "gods" distinct from "Jesus" and "ghost" as distinct from "holy spirit" because for the believing Christian only some of these concepts would be relegated to the category that the atheists believes they all belong to.

An atheist is a person who is not a theist.

What's a theist?

You are only talking about strong atheists.

I'm not.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

A person becomes a theist.

How? If a person becomes a theist because they use that label, then once more only speakers of English can be theists. If a person becomes a theist because they believe in the concept we refer to by the word "god", then this must be defined well enough for us to say that a person can become a theist.

 

[idea]

Are people born inherently atheist? If we never had all these religions would people "find god?" I know everybody would be curious about why things happen but if people were raised with the final conclusion of an inquiry as "we just don't know yet" rather than than saying "god, would the world be a better place?

or you could ask why do people in atheist communist regimes still find God (despite being brought up to be atheist?)

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

As I have said time and again (including in this thread) dictionaries do not define. They clarify, sure. They help one understand the meaning of words, absolutely. But, barring specialist dictionaries, the purpose of a dictionary is to provide one a general understanding of a word that is consistent with common usage(s). If you want more than that, the best thing to do is either an exhaustive study of the type a lexicographer would, or to find out how specialists use the term. The latter option isn't always possible, but epistemology, possible worlds, epistemic modality, epistemic justification, and other terms related to belief as well as belief itself have been within the purview of philosophers for millennia. Of course, we can never hope for absolute clarification but like using a dictionary (only better) we can determine what the fruit of 2,500 years of study on the matter has yielded rather than simply adamantly stating e.g., the distinction(s) between "not believe x" and "believe x is not". For example, if we really look at usage we find that "believe", as Moore (1962) notes, frequently is used to express uncertainty, such as in "I believe that's where we're heading [but I'm not sure]". This is another reason why neither a collection of common uses nor the dictionary that reflects them is adequate.

For example, a common claim is that an atheist does not have a conception of what the word "god" refers to in order to even be said to make a belief claim. Yet it is not the case that if one "cannot be confident (or even believe) that p unless he understands the proposition that p. He need not understand it as fully as it might be understood. He might, for example, believe that the University owns a cyclotron without understanding very well what a cyclotron is."
Ginet, C. (1975). Knowledge, perception and memory (Vol. 5). Springer.

Just to drive this point home, "It is impossible to assert something without expressing a belief."
Davis, W. A. (2003). Meaning, expression and thought. Cambridge University Press.

Thus the expression "god does not exist" is most certainly an expression of belief. But what about "I don't believe in god(s)"? I have argued this point over and over but I would wish another to speak for me:
"Whenever we consider a proposition, there are three different attitudes we can take toward it. First, we can believe it or accept it as true. Second, we can disbelieve it, i.e. believe that it is false or believe its negation. Third, we can withhold belief in it or suspend judgment. We may illustrate these attitudes by reflecting on the attitudes of the theist, the atheist, and the agnostic toward the proposition that God exists."

Lemos, N. M. (2007). An introduction to the theory of knowledge. Cambridge University Press.

Infants cannot consider propositions. Disbelief is not to withhold belief, and to withhold belief is not to be to claim something like "I don't believe god exists" unless by this one means "I don't believe god exists but I believe he might". "I don't believe in god" is not to suspend judgment but to express a belief. Were an atheist to truly lack any belief regarding god or gods they would not be capable of expressing "I don't believe in god" unless to them "god" was a word as foreign as "hgusllj". It is not. It is a concept. And concepts entail beliefs:
"Concepts are applied in the realm of language by the public use of sentences and other linguistic expressions. They are applied in the realm of mind by the private adoption of and rational reliance on beliefs"

Brandom, R. (2009). Articulating reasons: An introduction to inferentialism. Harvard University Press.

 

[Sonofason]

Are people born inherently atheist? If we never had all these religions would people "find god?" I know everybody would be curious about why things happen but if people were raised with the final conclusion of an inquiry as "we just don't know yet" rather than than saying "god, would the world be a better place?

Some people will argue that people are born inherently atheist, while others will deny that people are born inherently atheist. One reason, I believe that there are differences in opinions on this matter is due to the fact that there are multiple definitions and understandings for the word atheist. Atheists and theists both utilize the definition that suites their own purpose.

The word atheist can be defined as a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being.

Another dictionary definition for the word atheist is a disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

Surely, a person who denies the existence of a supreme being is a person who holds a strong belief that no God exists.

A person who simply disbelieves in the existence of a supreme being could be a person who has not been so convinced of the existence of a supreme being so as to hold a belief that one exists. But on the other hand, it could also imply a denial of the existence of a supreme being, which as in the former case includes people who hold to a strong belief that no God exists. Hence, we introduce terms to distinguish these individuals from one another by using terms such as "weak atheist" or "strong atheist" respectively.

When we speak of lacking a belief, it seems to imply to me that no belief is present whatsoever. This implies to me that the person doesn't actually hold any belief with regard to the existence of a God. It implies that he neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of God.

If this is truly a definition for an atheist, it seems probable that newborn babies could indeed be atheists. But we can't really know that for sure.

A new born baby usually begins it's life crying. It is in a state of discomfort. I assume, because the baby has not yet been taught language, nor hunger, nor the sensation of being cold, it would be difficult to know in each case why the baby is crying. Surely the baby, if it is hungry, perceives the discomfort that accompanies hunger. If it is cold, it surely perceives the discomfort that accompanies being cold. It does not know that what it is experiencing is hunger or cold at this point in its life, but it does experience the discomfort that accompanies the state that it is in, whether it is hungry or cold. It surely recognizes the difference between the two, but it lacks the knowledge to express to us the particular discomfort that it is in.

Babies may indeed experience God, whether it be in the womb, or outside the womb. But whether or not they could know that a particular experience of God is actually God, would be hard to fathom, for they do not have such knowledge at this point in their lives. While I understand that it would be safe to say that a newborn baby has no comprehensive understanding of God, I am reluctant to suggest that it has no belief in God.

The baby does not know at first that it is cold when it is cold. It does not know at first that it is hungry when it is first hungry. But it does comprehend that it is in discomfort. It may not know why, but it experiences it, and must cognitively be aware of the cold and/or the hunger, and thus believe that what it is experiencing, it is actually experiencing. That is part of learning. I think if a baby were to experience God, it would believe that it was having the experience that it was having, whether or not it understood what it was experiencing.

And so, I am not prepared to say that a newborn baby is an atheist in any strict sense. I find it hard to imagine that a baby has the understanding, whether it did or did not experience God to actually disbelieve "in the existence of a Supreme Being"

I would suggest that a baby is more likely agnostic, for they could not possibly have the understanding to know whether or not a Supreme Being actually exists or not.