Agnostic.com

52 4

Despite us both being atheists, my roommate and I had a disagreement on the usage of the word atheist - are babies born atheists, having a lack of belief in any gods, or do we enter the world with insufficient knowledge of the question to be labeled one way or the other..? I recognize this is a semantic query and not terribly important, but it does go towards clarifying the usage of the word "atheist," and I'm curious to hear opinions/insight. Thoughts..?

  • 51 votes
  • 15 votes
  • 21 votes
  • 16 votes
Lallafa 4 Aug 29
Share

Enjoy being online again!

Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.

Create your free account

52 comments (26 - 50)

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

1

I can't vote on this since, in my opinion, they see their mother as God.

1

Babies are born with no opinions of anything. They don't have the capacity to understand religion, lack thereof, or anything else, really. Everything must be learned. A baby cannot be Atheist until it learns what Atheism is.

1

Babies are born without belief in any gods, therefore a-theist.

@TheMiddleWay babies are born knowing nothing but maybe they are born with a concept of god? They don’t know “mom” or “dog” or “tree” but maybe they know “god?”
Some say that the concept of atheist should not even exist because it it simply describes non-belief in a non-entity. Should we also have a word for non-belief in the Easter Bunny?
And yes cats are atheists.

@TheMiddleWay god is not an innate concept.its MADE UP. A newborn, or a cat, had not been indoctrinated with the concept of a “god.” It knows not of a god, it believes not in any god and therefore it is without a belief in god - therefore a-theist.

1

Babies are born atheist, as they do not have a belief in any god/s. They have not learned about the subject of god/s and so have no belief, nor disbelief, any possibility of belief is simply absent.

They can't be agnostic, because they have not thought about the subject of gods to come to a conclusion about whether it's possible to know whether god/s exist or not.

God/s are a human construct injected into society. We are not born with the knowledge of god/s. Those are my thoughts.

@TheMiddleWay The word atheist simply means without belief in god/s. If you don't know about god/s, you are atheist. If you do know about gods, you can choose to be atheist, agnostic, or theist.

Since a baby does not understand a question to answer, such as "do you believe god/s exist or not" the baby can not make that determination. A rock, dog or flower is atheist, but can't be agnostic, since there is no question, no thinking, no decision to make.

You can't say "I don't know" or "I believe it's impossible to know" to a question that you can't understand. If I ask a baby if he believes there are gods or not, he might smile, burp, giggle, throw up or soil his diaper, but none of those are "yes, no, or I don't know."

1

Babies are born agnostic, not knowing. Atheist means to not believe in a god, and they can't have that belief unless given a choice. They have to have a concept of God to reject one.

Babies have no belief or knowledge of God therefore they ARE living A-Theistically according to accept dictionary meaning of Atheism.
I have a photo of my daughter, a few hours old, giving her version of the Star Trek Vulcan Greeting/Salute so do that mean that she was born a Vulcan?

1

Babies are born with no beliefs. They don't have sufficient brain structure and world knowledge to adopt beliefs. Atheism is the belief there is no god. Instead, babies are actually agnostics until their culture makes them otherwise.

1

Are dogs atheist?
Your answer to that will also apply to babies.
Or does it suddenly seem a silly question?

1

People are forever messed up on the use of the word atheist. The atheist/agnostic argument is insane. I am an agnostic atheist. Just call me an un-believer if you like.

On to babies and how they are born. A baby has no way of knowing anything unless you teach it to them. It is how you indoctrinate a child as to whether it will be a believer or not.

Please stop fighting the "atheist/agnostic" argument. I am "against theism or without theism". This is what atheist means. Without gods. You may call yourself agnostic but a lot of them are in churches. They have doubts. I have no doubts but I do not know everything. I cannot answer the god question and neither can you.

1

Buy a computer without an operating system or software it will turn on and run basic input output system but it will do nothing else until you install the programs (software) on a baby it is, in very simple terms the same. Just remember GIGO (garbage in garbage out)

0

Technically, when I'm saying atheist, I mean humans developed to the point of achieving rational thought.

On the other hand, I consider people to be born "not-theists" because humans are not born Christian or Muslim, etc. Children have to be indoctrinated to become either of those.
Which is what atheists mean by that word, as far as I know.

Of course, some people who are not calling themselves atheists, assert that anyone calling themselves atheist are making a claim that gods do not exist, which is highly ironic for people who are supposed to be "aware of what they do NOT know for sure". I can ask the religious what it means to be an atheist, I can ask the "pure agnostic" what it means to be an atheist, or I can ask the atheists what it means to be an atheist.
If you use the definition offered by people who are not calling themselves atheists - which I think fits the definition of anti-theism - then babies are not born "atheist".

Language is a wonderful thing...

Humans are still evolving toward rational thought. We probably will not obtain that level of problem-solving until we are at least at the Star Trek -Original Series aptitude.

0

As far as we know, babies are born without any knowledge of god or knowledge of anything besides conditions in the womb & their experience of birth. They have to be inculcated into a belief in god by their parents & society. As babies apparently don't know about god, they don't really know god doesn't exist, so they are not atheists. I would say they are agnostics, as for them this is an open question, so they might be called agnostics

0

The simple fact is that we, as a group, are born hardwired for superstition. You can see signs of superstition even among some very staunch Atheists, and even other animals. It is the result of a remnant of a very ancient information processing mechanism and our imagination. While some individuals seem to be born sceptics, an innate full lack of belief in anything supernatural is rare and often associated with mental developmental issues (such as an inability to associate "cause" and "effect" ). Atheism is for nearly all people, a learned behavior, as is religion. Superstition is innate.

0

Children are born with a sense of wonder.
It’s how their parents interpret that, into god, jesus, etc.

0

At this point they are probably also A-Leprechaunists as well (unless they've been seeing those little guys as babies are won't to do).

0

human beings seek religion or any of the other falsities we create as a means of identification. as I tried to tell the atheists for years such identification must have some sort of positive attribute for reference. the lack of attributes is not itself an attribute for identity's sake. thats not how the mind works no matter how logical that sounds or looks in a venn diagram. that's why historically atheists have a hard time organizing around a strict view of believing nothing. I know I know I know there are examples of people being able to organize atheist groups and enjoy a fellowship in it. I would contend that group is founded on friendship and not atheism. people with similar beliefs in similar cultures often have similar likes. this is all to say there is really no such thing as an atheist. it's just a tag to identify the remnants ... the leftovers. they need to seek some other tag for identification.

0

If it wasn’t for religious indoctrination at an early age there would likely be a lot more atheist than there are now.

0

Both, they don't know and they also don't don't hold a belief

0

babies are born with the need to eat and be taken care of. Religion is what their parents push on them.

0

Humans are born blissfully naive of the idiocy that is religion.

0

Babies are atheists the same way rocks and kittens are atheists. Even if one technically wants to call it atheism, it's a meaningless label.

labels are descriptive like ababy eats, hungry, shits they are not aware of gods

@benhmiller But atheism is not "not aware of Gods," an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in Gods. If you broaden the definition to include rocks and kittens, it's a meaningless description.

0

I would say babies are born as agnostic atheists. We aren't born with the knowledge of gods and we lack belief in gods when born.

0

Babies are not born anything!

But, human!

If we can label new born humans, what do we name other species!

We in reality have no known knowledge that other spieces are not spiritual or have some sort of rudimentary beliefs between them, since humans are not able to communicate with them on the same level as the so called prime superior spieces or masters as head of the food Chain!!!

0

Religious people always claim god has revealed himself to everybody. If that is true and he reveals himself at birth then a baby cannot be agnostic. Is that the religious argument? If it is then it’s another one of those bat shit crazy claims!

0

Religion and atheism are learned traits. It falls under auspices of cultural learning. It is not innate.

0

Every infant worships his/her primary care-giver (usually the mother). As the child develops, that worship is often mis-directed by adult theists towards a mythical entity.

Definition, definition, all is definition.

But hm-mm, every infant worships...(usually the mother).

My mother years later told me I didn’t trust anyone when she brought me home. I asked, “Were you surprised?”

You see, I’d been circumcised.

I have occasionally wondered if misogyny starts then.

Write Comment
You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:395398
Agnostic does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.