How do you define "Athesim"?

[Falvlun]

Bloody hell. The whole scenario is based on misleading statements! You set it up that way!

Actually, if I remember correctly, I didn't. You set it up, by specifically phrasing my supposed definition of atheism in order to spring the empty set trap. I directly exchanged "rejected" for "petted" and "god concepts they have had" for "puppies he has had".

I could simply fix the whole thing by adding a redundant disclaimer that you must have god concepts in order to reject them, but I think most people would just look at me, like, "duh", of course you do.

 

[Falvlun]

Edit - BTW: it's not an "unholy alliance between math and language" to say that the way we communicate should be consistent with logic.

When you set up that language, let us know.

 

[Falvlun]

this has gone sideways

one is either a theist, or not

or not can equal, lack of belief, no belief, discounting belief, and ignorance of belief

Well, yeah. But that's not really the issue. The issue is, do we really need a label for people who have never heard of gods? And we already have a word for people who don't have an opinion either way, or for people who simply don't care. And more importantly, if we are actually trying to impart information, is it really useful to lump all those sorts of people together?

I mean, you are either a Christian, or not. But that doesn't mean it would be particularly useful to make up a word just to lump everyone who's not a Christian, regardless of why or how that came about, into it.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Your rephrasing doesn't make it any better. :/

I thought it made it perfectly clear: "unpetted puppies" is a subset of all puppies. If a person has never had any puppies at all, then he has never had any unpetted puppies.

Nobody would consider Bob a Gargle if the conditions are to pet puppies you have, and Bob has never owned nor petted a puppy. I mean, requirements for clubs would be in complete disarray if anybody who simple never had done them were allowed to join.

I've never heard of a club with a convoluted requirement like that, so it's probably a moot point, but in this hypothetical fantasy-land, if the "We hate Belgium Club" (a club where you can only join if you've never visited Belgium on any of your trips to Europe) let in people who had never been to Europe at all, I don't see how this would violate their condition. They've still never been to Belgium.

No... Bob didn't have any puppies and he didn't pet any, both of which are conditions for being a Gargle.

But you didn't make the first one a condition.

What's come out since you presented that hypothetical is that your scenario assumes that the person has had at least one puppy. That's not really the same thing as a condition.

And why shouldn't I put high stock in normal circumstances? I don't go around defining words simply to debate online about them with other nerds. I do it so that I can have a normal conversation with a normal person. This isn't just some waste-of-time mind masturbation for me (thought it is that too ). I want it applicable, not just theoretical.

Well, for one thing, I think you're selective about "normal circumstances", since the examples that you've given have been pretty contrived and beyond what "normal circumstances" could be expected to be.

For another, I get the sneaking suspicion that your appeal to "normal circumstances" might be used as a smokescreen for common misconceptions or illogic in the guise of "common sense". Arguments that sound like "everybody knows that _____" raise a big red flag for me, because in my experience, they're often used to defend ideas that aren't even true, let alone known by everybody.

Gargles are people who have petted puppies, specifically the puppies they have owned. You can't pet an empty set, nor can you own them. If your sets are empty, you can't be a Gargle. Sorry Bob.

So for Bob: "Gargles are people who have petted puppies, specifically no puppies at all."

Please explain how you get from this logically contradictory statement to non-contradictory "Bob is not a Gargle".

I have no clue what you are talking about here. Normal circumstances doesn't dictate that we must talk about empty sets as if they were something. Normal circumstances doesn't dictate that we interpret the sentence "Bob has petted the puppies he has had" as indicative that Bob hasn't, in fact, petted any puppies.

The special condition I'm talking about is how you had to specifically define a person who has not had any puppies as not a Gargle.

The special condition you are adding, however, is that we must use a mathematical worldview to dictate the meaning of how we speak. And yet, that is manifestly not the case. I see no reason to accept your premise.

The only "mathematical worldview" I'm appealing to here is logical consisitency, and yes, I do think we must use it in our communication. IMO, it's a prerequisite for communicating in any meaningful way.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Well, yeah. But that's not really the issue. The issue is, do we really need a label for people who have never heard of gods? And we already have a word for people who don't have an opinion either way, or for people who simply don't care. And more importantly, if we are actually trying to impart information, is it really useful to lump all those sorts of people together?

Do we "need" gender labels for infants? Probably not, but we still call them boys and girls.

I mean, you are either a Christian, or not. But that doesn't mean it would be particularly useful to make up a word just to lump everyone who's not a Christian, regardless of why or how that came about, into it.

There's one sense in which it matters: how do you as an adult question answer the question: "why are you an atheist?"

Personally, I answer it something like "I'm an atheist because I don't believe in any gods."

The whole "are babies atheists?" question is one extreme case of a question that has much wider application: how much thought does a person have to put into the idea of gods before we can call them an atheist?

Personally, I go with "no thought at all". I think it's a lot more reasonable than the other end of the scale ("a person has to consider every single god-concept and come to the conclusion for each of them that it does not exist"), and any point in between is going to be arbitrary by necessity.

Edit: I don't think the term "atheist" is particularly useful when describing anyone. Nevertheless, the term exists and we can ask about how we should use it.

 

[Copernicus]

Why are you bound and determined to misinterpret my argument? It gets very frustrating.

I'm neither trying to upset you nor misinterpret your argument. I am trying to introduce some ideas about word meanings that might be new to you, and that is why I mentioned prototype theory.

I'm perfectly fine with defining terms in terms of attributes: "a thing is a ____ if it has qualities A, B and C, or D and E." That's a perfectly valid approach.

I would call it a reasonable approach to word meanings that turns out not to be perfectly valid. Conjoined "flat" lists of properties have some serious weaknesses. For example, you could say that a property of dogs is that they have four legs, but what about a dog that has lost a leg or been born without one? It turns out that there are no "essential" properties of word meanings. All of them are more or less important. The idea of simply conjoining attributes is going to fail.

That doesn't get rid of a problem. Tell me what mental "prototype" one might have for "god" that puts a baby further from "atheist" than a Christian or Muslim who believes in Satan or angels is from "polytheist".

That's a very good question. We can deconstruct the "god" concept into lots of components that we associate with them. However, usage of the word may emphasize and de-emphasize some of those associations. Think of the "core meaning" as a collection of properties that can act like spokes in a wheel. (George Lakoff explores this "radial structure" of meaning in his landmark book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things.) When you use the word in conversation, you can "extend" the meaning along one or more of these spokes. That can lead to metaphorical (non-literal) uses such as calling a person that you feel awe of a "god". Are saints and bodhisatvas "gods"? Well, some people treat them like gods. They pray to them, praise them, and sacrifice to them. Others, not so much. Is Satan a "god"? Zoroastrians said "yes" and Hebrews "no". The word "god" is no different from any other English noun in that its semantic boundaries are vague. Different common usages (or "sense") have been spawned, and those usage "hubs" can have their own attribute "spokes".

After all, I would say that even fewer people go around calling Muslims polytheists than call babies atheists.

So what you appear to be doing here is taking one attribute of the "atheist" core meaning--lack of belief--and extending (exaggerating) it at the expense of another--rejection of belief. That licenses calling babies "atheists," and there is certainly a community of speakers (mainly comprised of atheists) who want to promote that usage. My argument is that such usage is too marginal to be considered useful outside of very specialized contexts. Muslims do call Christians polytheists because of their concept of the "trinity," but their belief in "Satan" and other supernatural beings opens them up to the same criticism.

So again: by this "distance metric", a baby is further from "atheist" than a Muslim is from "polytheist"?

That depends on which aspects of the "atheist" prototype you tend to emphasize. You may have noticed that the theory allows for a sliding scale of judgments about how to categorize things. Penguins, which cannot fly, are less "birdlike" than crows, which can fly. Are bats more "birdlike" than penguins? No, because there are other aspects to the prototype that bats fail to have. You arrive at such judgments by treating the attribute can fly as one component of the prototype "bird", but it doesn't hold true for all birds. Thus, we have a way of thinking about the process of "abstraction". What gives rise to higher level categories in human cognition?

So all atheists are unreasonable, then?

I'm not getting why you think this follows from my arguments.

The deistic god-concept is like Russell's Teapot or Sagan's invisible dragon in the garage: impossible to refute. It certainly has the earmarks (to me, anyhow) of being manufactured to be impossible to refute, but that doesn't change the fact that it is impossible to refute by any valid logical argument.

Russell made a very good argument for "burden of proof" with the teapot scenario, but there is a way to go about refuting the argument on experiential grounds. I would say that he made a case for rejecting some valid arguments on the grounds that they are based on groundless assumptions. That doesn't mean that we are unable to argue convincingly against an orbiting teapot. Quite the opposite. We can construct pretty good arguments to reject belief in that teapot, not to mention Santa Claus or God. The arguments just depend on consistency with other things we believe about the world. The standards for empirical proofs are different from purely logical ones.

Unpacking this a bit, I take this to mean that you reject them based on your understanding of that "conventional understanding".

How good does a person's understanding of that "conventional understanding" have to be before we can say their belief that no gods exists actually reflects it?

You usually ask very good questions, and this is one of them. It all comes down to trust in sources of information, which is ultimately a logical fallacy. I don't believe I'm an orphan, because I can produce lots of evidence and reasons to contradict that conclusion. How conclusive is my argument? I didn't observe my birth, and my birth certificate could have been manufactured in Kenya. How good does my argument have to be to prove I'm not an orphan? Well, someone like you will not accept the argument. You'll tell me that, since both my parents are now dead, I am technically an orphan. I could counter that adults raised by their biological parents are ipso facto not "orphans," and appeal to the prototypical concept of what an orphan is. But, this being the internet, the argument could rage on for weeks, and even taking a poll wouldn't stop it.

But Dawkins doesn't reject all gods. He rates himself only a 6.9 out of 7: while he lives as if gods do not exist for all practical purposes, he is careful to note that he realizes that he can't reject all of them with certainty.

So do I, although I doubt Dawkins would quibble as much as you do about the possible existence of god concepts he hasn't yet encountered. That's the whole point. Rejection doesn't have to be absolute. Skepticism is a scalar concept. You probably won't find any single point on the scale that unambiguously separates all those who accept belief from all those who reject it. There will always be a certain amount of vagueness about where to draw the line. Dawkins, me, and (I think) you find ourselves pretty far away from the gray area.

It seems that your definition is rooted in monotheism and denies a number of "alternative" god-concepts.

I don't think I have ever said anything to warrant that conclusion. What I would say is that the Christian "God" is a large part of the "god" prototype that I carry around with me, however. All our concepts are grounded in experience, and I was raised a Christian.

I've had theists tell me things like "God isn't conscious himself; he is consciousness." I remember reading stories of the Greek gods constantly tricking and undermining each other, and undoing each other's actions. They certainly didn't have "absolute control" over anything.

Usually, lesser gods are thought of as having absolute control over some aspect of reality, although the "absoluteness" might be trumped by a higher god. Remember that I don't completely reject categorization that deviates from a prototype "sense" of a word. I explicitly allow for it.

But regardless, I said that for argument's sake, we could go with whatever definition of "god" you thought was reasonable for that question, so I'll let all that go. My main point is that even Richard Dawkins says he doesn't reject all gods, so if you do, then you're more of an atheist than he is.

I would not characterize what he says in that way. As I understand him, he says that the certainty with which he rejects belief can vary. He does not require 100% certainty to apply the label "atheist" to a person.

 

[idav]

The problem with that is that this is true of nearly everything, and especially other things we choose not to believe in, like trolls and fairies and aliens.

Unless you think that the evidence is perfectly in balance both for and against, then you have either a belief or disbelief. 100% certainty is not a requirement to obtain a belief, and indeed, I would argue that most of our beliefs aren't or can't be 100% certain.

It isn't a problems as it should apply to any type of belief. True that it is never 100% known so you would use faith one way or another.

Thing is that theists require faith where as atheists do not require investing faith in "no god(s)". They can if they want but that would be gnostic atheism which is rare. Most atheists are comfortable saying they don't know, in which case no faith is needed.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I would call it a reasonable approach to word meanings that turns out not to be perfectly valid. Conjoined "flat" lists of properties have some serious weaknesses. For example, you could say that a property of dogs is that they have four legs, but what about a dog that has lost a leg or been born without one? It turns out that there are no "essential" properties of word meanings. All of them are more or less important. The idea of simply conjoining attributes is going to fail.

That wouldn't be the set of properties that I would use to define "dog". I would say something like "an animal of the subspecies Canis lupus familiaris" or, since I know that the dividing line between subspecies can be blurry sometimes, maybe something like "an animal of the species Canis lupus that is descended from a lineage that was domesticated by humans for centuries."

... and if you need to, we can unpack words I used like "animal" and "species", which can be defined by similarly precise, accurate properties.

How does that list of properties fail? It includes all domesticated dogs (even the three-legged ones), includes feral or wild dogs like dingoes, and excludes animals like tamed wolves.

I think what you're doing is conflating what is typical of a category for what is necessary to be in the category.

That's a very good question. We can deconstruct the "god" concept into lots of components that we associate with them. However, usage of the word may emphasize and de-emphasize some of those associations. Think of the "core meaning" as a collection of properties that can act like spokes in a wheel. (George Lakoff explores this "radial structure" of meaning in his landmark book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things.) When you use the word in conversation, you can "extend" the meaning along one or more of these spokes. That can lead to metaphorical (non-literal) uses such as calling a person that you feel awe of a "god". Are saints and bodhisatvas "gods"? Well, some people treat them like gods. They pray to them, praise them, and sacrifice to them. Others, not so much. Is Satan a "god"? Zoroastrians said "yes" and Hebrews "no". The word "god" is no different from any other English noun in that its semantic boundaries are vague. Different common usages (or "sense") have been spawned, and those usage "hubs" can have their own attribute "spokes".

But we're not talking about different "usage hubs". The "god" or "gods" referred to by the terms "atheism", "monotheism" and "polytheism" is the same, IMO. Wherever we put the line between "god" and "not god" for the one, that's where it is for the others.

So what you appear to be doing here is taking one attribute of the "atheist" core meaning--lack of belief--and extending (exaggerating) it at the expense of another--rejection of belief.

Which is completely normal. You wouldn't complain that ignoring one meaning of the word "stock" (meat broth) when referring to shares in a company is "at the expense of another meaning", would you?

Words can have multiple meaning, and we only use one meaning at a time. This is normal. The fact that one definition of atheism is "rejection of belief" does not mean that it's inappropriate to use it to refer to mere lack of belief.

That licenses calling babies "atheists," and there is certainly a community of speakers (mainly comprised of atheists) who want to promote that usage. My argument is that such usage is too marginal to be considered useful outside of very specialized contexts. Muslims do call Christians polytheists because of their concept of the "trinity," but their belief in "Satan" and other supernatural beings opens them up to the same criticism.

So are they polytheists or not? What defines what is or isn't a god? If we can't say, then we also can't say whether a person has rejected "all gods", as they would need to in order to be an atheist, as I understand the way you're using the term.

That depends on which aspects of the "atheist" prototype you tend to emphasize. You may have noticed that the theory allows for a sliding scale of judgments about how to categorize things. Penguins, which cannot fly, are less "birdlike" than crows, which can fly. Are bats more "birdlike" than penguins? No, because there are other aspects to the prototype that bats fail to have. You arrive at such judgments by treating the attribute can fly as one component of the prototype "bird", but it doesn't hold true for all birds. Thus, we have a way of thinking about the process of "abstraction". What gives rise to higher level categories in human cognition?

While I disagree with this approach for the meaning of terms, I think it sheds light on something that may be going on here: prejudice.

IMO, quite a bit of pushback from the idea that babies could be atheist comes out of a "prototype" (or stereotype, I'd say) of an atheist as a disagreable, aggressive, potentially "evil" (in some eyes) person in the mold of Madalynn Murray O'Hare or Richard Dawkins, while the "prototype" of a baby is something sweet, innocent and angelic. The reality of an inoffensive baby doesn't fit their preconception of an atheist as something nasty and evil, and so they resist the label.

I think this is a lot like the way the term "godless" is considered nearly symbolic with "evil" by many people.

... continued in part 2

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

continued from part 1

I'm not getting why you think this follows from my arguments.

Because, IMO, a person would be unreasonable if they rejected all gods. If you maintain that this is necessary to be an atheist, then this implies that atheists are necessarily unreasonable.

Russell made a very good argument for "burden of proof" with the teapot scenario, but there is a way to go about refuting the argument on experiential grounds. I would say that he made a case for rejecting some valid arguments on the grounds that they are based on groundless assumptions. That doesn't mean that we are unable to argue convincingly against an orbiting teapot. Quite the opposite. We can construct pretty good arguments to reject belief in that teapot, not to mention Santa Claus or God. The arguments just depend on consistency with other things we believe about the world. The standards for empirical proofs are different from purely logical ones.

Saying that they're different doesn't mean that you can make the standards for an empirical proof as if they don't exist. What standard would we have to meet to reject the existence of the chupacabra, for instance?

What standard would we have to meet to reject the existence of cryptozoological creatures generally? Actually, I think that's a pretty good analogy, since I think that defining "cryptozoological creature" to the point that we could tell whether a hypothetical thing would or wouldn't be one would have a lot of the problems that we have in defining "god".

You usually ask very good questions, and this is one of them. It all comes down to trust in sources of information, which is ultimately a logical fallacy. I don't believe I'm an orphan, because I can produce lots of evidence and reasons to contradict that conclusion. How conclusive is my argument? I didn't observe my birth, and my birth certificate could have been manufactured in Kenya. How good does my argument have to be to prove I'm not an orphan? Well, someone like you will not accept the argument. You'll tell me that, since both my parents are now dead, I am technically an orphan. I could counter that adults raised by their biological parents are ipso facto not "orphans," and appeal to the prototypical concept of what an orphan is. But, this being the internet, the argument could rage on for weeks, and even taking a poll wouldn't stop it.

Funny - I don't think you answered my question at all there.

Let me ask it another way: how good does a child's understanding of God have to be before we can call him a theist?

So do I, although I doubt Dawkins would quibble as much as you do about the possible existence of god concepts he hasn't yet encountered. That's the whole point. Rejection doesn't have to be absolute. Skepticism is a scalar concept. You probably won't find any single point on the scale that unambiguously separates all those who accept belief from all those who reject it. There will always be a certain amount of vagueness about where to draw the line. Dawkins, me, and (I think) you find ourselves pretty far away from the gray area.

I disagree about vagueness. My definition is straightforward and clear: do you believe in something that you consider to be a god? If yes, then you're a theist; if no, then you're an atheist. I don't see why everyone wants to complicate what's really a simple concept.

I don't think I have ever said anything to warrant that conclusion. What I would say is that the Christian "God" is a large part of the "god" prototype that I carry around with me, however. All our concepts are grounded in experience, and I was raised a Christian.

Usually, lesser gods are thought of as having absolute control over some aspect of reality, although the "absoluteness" might be trumped by a higher god.

Or a lower god. The Greek myths are full of stories of lower gods or humans tricking and thwarting higher gods.

Remember that I don't completely reject categorization that deviates from a prototype "sense" of a word. I explicitly allow for it.

But this is a problem if you're trying to define the boundaries of "all" of a class of thing. How can you tell whether a person is or isn't an atheist if you can't tell whether they've rejected all gods?

I would not characterize what he says in that way. As I understand him, he says that the certainty with which he rejects belief can vary. He does not require 100% certainty to apply the label "atheist" to a person.

He refers to his own level as "de facto atheism"... i.e. something short of "real" or "de jure" atheism.

 

[outhouse]

do we really need a label for people who have never heard of gods?

you mean children.

If they have not heard of the god concept's, yes plural. Then they are not theist, that means they are atheist


gravity or no gravity.

theism or no theism



I feel the issue here is people just not liking a or the label "atheist" and not wanting to accept the implications that atheism is our natural default position before mythology has taken hold of young minds.

 

[Storm]

you mean children.

If they have not heard of the god concept's, yes plural. Then they are not theist, that means they are atheist


gravity or no gravity.

theism or no theism



I feel the issue here is people just not liking a or the label "atheist" and not wanting to accept the implications that atheism is our natural default position before mythology has taken hold of young minds.

Except for the fact that all research indicates that that is not actually the case. Rather, the 'default' state for the totally uneducated is more like animism.

And should we really consider anything a "default" when it's based on lack of cognitive development?

Sorry to burst your armchair psychology bubble, but my "issue" is that there is no default, and attempts to claim there is are tacky at best.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Except for the fact that all research indicates that that is not actually the case. Rather, the 'default' state for the totally uneducated is more like animism.

Yes... but not a theistic sort of animism, and therefore they're atheists.

And should we really consider anything a "default" when it's based on lack of cognitive development?

Why not? We have no trouble will calling kids "male" or "American" when they're born, even though they might grow up to realize that they're transgendered or decide to move to some other country and renounce their American citizenship.

Sorry to burst your armchair psychology bubble, but my "issue" is that there is no default, and attempts to claim there is are tacky at best.

What do you think makes a person an atheist?

 

[Storm]

Yes... but not a theistic sort of animism, and therefore they're atheists.

How do you know?

Why not? We have no trouble will calling kids "male" or "American" when they're born, even though they might grow up to realize that they're transgendered or decide to move to some other country and renounce their American citizenship.

Neither of those labels are based on cognition. One is a function of biology, the other geography.

What do you think makes a person an atheist?

An opinion.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

How do you know?

I'm going by what I've read and heard of research. I'm thinking particularly of lectures I've heard from Steven Pinker and Michael Shermer on the matter.

I don't think that a vague tendency toward attribution of agency constitutes theism by itself.

Neither of those labels are based on cognition. One is a function of biology, the other geography.

Atheism isn't based on cognition.

Theism is based on cognition: if you believe in at least one god, you're a theist. If you don't, then you're an atheist.

An opinion.

What opinion, exactly?

 

[outhouse]

Except for the fact that all research indicates that that is not actually the case. Rather, the 'default' state for the totally uneducated is more like animism.

I would say adults who are socially isolated definatly fall under animism, but thats not default either.

its learned.

And should we really consider anything a "default" when it's based on lack of cognitive development?

there is a default when we are talking about theism, a learned behaviour taught through mythology


atheist parents who were raising a infant, would be labeled as a atheist family baby and all, despite the parents not teaching the child a single thing regarding theism or lack of belief in mythology. your not going to have atheist parents and a theist child. eitehr way, the child isnt a theist, even if the parents were theist.

Sorry to burst your armchair psychology bubble, but my "issue" is that there is no default, and attempts to claim there is are tacky at best.

ill disagree

theism is not a default position we are born with. but all children born lack belief in mythology because that is taught and learned behaviour

 

[Storm]

I'm going by what I've read and heard of research. I'm thinking particularly of lectures I've heard from Steven Pinker and Michael Shermer on the matter.

I don't think that a vague tendency toward attribution of agency constitutes theism by itself.

Nor atheism.

Atheism isn't based on cognition.

Of course it is. All opinions are. It's like trying to say an infant who has yet to develop language is a Republican because he likes his elephant stuffie more than the donkey.

Theism is based on cognition: if you believe in at least one god, you're a theist. If you don't, then you're an atheist.

And if you've got no clue what a "God" is, you're neither.

What opinion, exactly?

"Do you believe in God?"
"No."

 

[Storm]

I would say adults who are socially isolated definatly fall under animism, but thats not default either.

its learned.

Can't learn without being taught.

there is a default when we are talking about theism, a learned behaviour taught through mythology

If you totally ignore irrelevant facts, that's not illogical. Unfortunately, not everyone does.

atheist parents who were raising a infant, would be labeled as a atheist family baby and all, despite the parents not teaching the child a single thing regarding theism or lack of belief in mythology. your not going to have atheist parents and a theist child. eitehr way, the child isnt a theist, even if the parents were theist.

The religious affiliation of the parents has nothing to do with an infant's cognitive inability to grasp the concept in question.

ill disagree

On what grounds do you challenge my rejection of your assessment of my motives?

theism is not a default position we are born with. but all children born lack belief in mythology because that is taught and learned behaviour

Mythology is not theism. I know you have trouble making the distinction, but that's your problem, not mine.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Nor atheism.

That depends how we define the term. The way I define it - which is I think the way the word is used generally - people who have no beliefs about gods are atheists.

Of course it is. All opinions are. It's like trying to say an infant who has yet to develop language is a Republican because he likes his elephant stuffie more than the donkey.

No, it's not. And atheism isn't an opinion.

And if you've got no clue what a "God" is, you're neither.

If you have no clue what a god is, how can you believe in one?

"Do you believe in God?"
"No."

And do you think that babies believe in God?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

The religious affiliation of the parents has nothing to do with an infant's cognitive inability to grasp the concept in question.

But the infant's cognitive inability to grasp theism has quite a bit to do with whether they're capable of being theists.

A person who is incapable of being a theist is not a theist. A person who is not a theist is an atheist.

 

[Storm]

That depends how we define the term. The way I define it - which is I think the way the word is used generally - people who have no beliefs about gods are atheists.

I agree that that's a popular definition among atheists who for some reason want to inflate their numbers by adding rocks. Unfortunately it's a silly definition that everyone else I know rejects.

No, it's not. And atheism isn't an opinion.

Yes it is. Now, we can play "is so, is not" for the next 20 pages, or you can actually muster an argument.

If you have no clue what a god is, how can you believe in one?


And do you think that babies believe in God?

Did you miss the part where I said there is no default? If you can't grasp a concept, you can't disbelieve it any more than you can believe.