Awesome!
That simple statement is all that is meant by "implicit atheism".
Babies don't believe in god. It seriously carries no other weight than that.
The problem I have is to link it to atheism in an shape or form. It's not atheism unless it's a view held by a person. This whole "implicit" thing is an invention, and not accurate use.
The term agnostic was the term that mean unbeliever because of no knowledge. Until the 70's. Then the concept was hijacked by Flew and Smith.
Like I said somewhere in one of these threads or another, I think the issue that people have is the addition of the "atheist" moniker. People attribute varying degrees of weight to that word and get put off by it immediately. So, while the term is accurate in essence, it's inaccurate by association.
It's only half-accurate. They don't have a belief, true, but they don't have a capacity for belief even. It is unnecessary and it undermines the core ideas of what the philosophical view of atheism is. It will deteriorate the usage of the core word. You will eventually see more theists making fun of atheists for being ignorant like children. That's the connection it makes. Atheists are atheists because they don't know better. And to me, that means atheism has lost its fight to gain trust and respect.
Call them implicit non-believers, if you like. Call them implicit agnostics. Call them anything, really, since it ultimately doesn't matter what the term is. It's simply a factual thing that babies don't believe in god(s).
How about not call them any of the terms. They haven't formed the conceptual abilities yet. They don't have the synaptic foundation to belief or unbelief.
And also, the research do show that the brain forms to accept belief in early age because of our genetic heritage, and that unbelief, in brainscans are not absence of anything, but is a pattern of nerve activity.
It's a mistake to make a link between ignorance or inability to form conceptual thoughts to atheism, that's all I'm concerned about.
(I don't think there is an assumed ideology that goes along with generic non-belief - but I've been wrong before.)
No, what's been happening is that this idea of implicit atheism was suggested as a kind'a-like'a label for those who didn't have any belief at all, but as I've seen in these threads here, the primary definition of atheism now is "lack of belief", which is extremely broad, and inaccurate. I don't mind if the "lack of belief" is used like this: "Children lack belief in God, so in some sense, we could say they're atheists, but they're not truly or fully atheists because atheism is a position or view that has been achieved by a person who has considered its foundations and consequences to some degree." Then the "lack" definition is a minor sidenote. But in this thread and the other, the "lack" definition has been made the primary, only, exalted, major definition. And that's a diminishing return of the philosophy behind atheism as a thought system.