Are newborn babies atheist?

Marquis de Carabas said:
It is quite correct to say that babies are atheists.
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Actually, it is quite incorrect.

CFLarsen said:
Is a baby not godless?
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No.

A baby believes in God. Actually, it's a very strong belief, since a baby's belief in God is based on evidence, not faith.

When the baby gets hungry, God feeds it.
When the baby gets a poopy diaper, God changes it.
When the baby needs to burp, God burps it.

As the baby grows up, its definition of "universe" changes; as it changes, the word it uses to describe "God" does too. It turns into "Mom" or "Dad" or "Nana" or whatever.

But while the baby is a baby, it has irrefutable, evidence-based knowledge of God.
 
Upchurch said:
That isn't an argument.

We're talking about humans, yes, but we're talking about humans who lack the capacity to make such determinations about abstracts like faith and god. If an infant can be an atheist despite lacking the tools to make that sort of determination, why not other forms of life (or non living objects) as well? What makes humans so special?
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You still can't let go of the notion that being an atheist requires the ability to make the determination.

Tricky said:
Yes, and post fifty clearly shows that you agree that the defintion "without belief" is insufficient to define atheist. You have qualifications.
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I've made it as clear as I can.

I see that nobody wants to address the Queen Victoria example. Could she be "a-lesbianist" without knowing what lesbianism was?
 
Beleth said:
No.

A baby believes in God. Actually, it's a very strong belief, since a baby's belief in God is based on evidence, not faith.

When the baby gets hungry, God feeds it.
When the baby gets a poopy diaper, God changes it.
When the baby needs to burp, God burps it.

As the baby grows up, its definition of "universe" changes; as it changes, the word it uses to describe "God" does too. It turns into "Mom" or "Dad" or "Nana" or whatever.

But while the baby is a baby, it has irrefutable, evidence-based knowledge of God.
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The huge flaw in that argument is that nobody has ever had any such evidence of god.

And, of course, the "God" in this example, isn't god. It's Mom/Dad/whatever.
 
Upchurch said:
Are you thinking of precision (vs accuracy)?

Being accurate is the same thing as being right, which Claus is being only if he is either a thousands of years old Greek or modern fringe.
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No. I am specificaly stating that being accurate, or precise, or whatever, is not the same as being right.

Think about it.

Hans
 
CFLarsen said:
You still can't let go of the notion that being an atheist requires the ability to make the determination.
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That isn't an argument and it doesn't answer my question. If being an atheist does not require the ability to make the determination, then why aren't trees and rocks atheists, by your definition?
 
In order for a someone to be defined as an atheist, they would have to proclaim it themselves first, as a free human being. That means they would have to be conscious, linguistically articulate, mentally psychologically sound enough to be able to do that, and they would have to have done the homework that brought them to be atheists at the first place. I am sure there are other things that one could add to the list. A baby is merely a conscious living being. Its level of awareness is minimal, it is not able to communicate with what is outside of it other than via a cry, a happy baby sound, a neutral indifferent look among the very few baby communication signals. The word god to it, is as good or as bad as the rest. It will not react to any of its visual, auditory or written symbols any differently than it would anything else. So how can one say it is atheist or it is not, even by default?
 
CFLarsen said:
The huge flaw in that argument is that nobody has ever had any such evidence of god.
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The baby has, or believes it has. Ergo the baby is not an atheist.

What do you mean when you use the word "God"?

And, of course, the "God" in this example, isn't god. It's Mom/Dad/whatever.
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Irrelevant to whether the baby is an atheist or not.
 
Marquis de Carabas said:
Why?
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Because it is a personal conviction that primarly comes from within oneself. For example I cannot go ahead and declare you to be atheist any more than you can do that for me, even when that has been based on collected reasonable information, there is a chance for the second hand declarer to still be wrong.
Someone brought up Richard Dawkins, on the Agenda, no long ago, he has mentioned that if a new evidence were to be discovered that would support the existence of a god that he would seriously look at it. This means that on one hand, the evidence for or against the existence of god has to be weighted, on the other, that the being in question must be fit enough to weight that evidence in order to either endorse or refute it. A baby can do neither.
 
Beleth said:
Irrelevant to whether the baby is an atheist or not.
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That's a very loose definition of "god" you have there. All definitions, to my memory, at least require a supernatural component to the definition. What makes you think babies think they're perception of Mom/Dad/whatever includes something supernatural aspect?
 
One upon a time when the Internet was a kinder and gentler place I used to particpate in the Usenet Newsgroup alt.atheism and even post once or twice.

The atheists in that newsgroup do not like the dictionary definitions and prefer their own. I just checked the newsgroup via Google(tm) and the following url gives the flavour of the discussions.

http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.a...atheism"+weak+strong&start=0&scoring=d&hl=en&

Seems no conclusion has yet been reached. :( But that definitions that contain the word "belief" are most suspect. :eye-poppi
 
Upchurch said:
That's a very loose definition of "god" you have there. All definitions, to my memory, at least require a supernatural component to the definition.
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The first one at m-w.com is:
1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality: as a : the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe

No requirement of "supernatural" there.

By a baby's standards, "the universe" consists, in its entirety, of:
- the baby
- a crib
- a blankie
- a mobile
- a pacifier
- a diaper
- One or more Gods who sustain everything in the universe.

A baby has a very limited understanding of nature. Most of what we (as adults) consider natural, appear to be godlike to babies. Including their parents. And that's my point. We know they're just grownups. Babies don't.

Babies are wholly mistaken in their belief that their caretakers are gods. Granted. But that does not make them believe it any less.
 
CFLarsen said:
I've made it as clear as I can.
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No, Claus, you have deliberately made your your definition unclear because if I bring up examples of things "without belief" you simply say, "I'm not talking about rocks" or "I'm not talking about sperm". Why don't you make it clear what you are talking about instead of listing the things you're not?

Now I suspect, what you mean is "an atheist is a human who lacks belief". See how much clearer that is? But still not clear enough, because we have to go deeper to find out what you mean by "human". You said that you weren't talking about zygotes, so if the definition above is what you mean, then clearly you wouldn't think zygotes are human. I'm guessing if I asked you about an adult who had been in a persistant vegetative state throughout their whole life, you would also say "you weren't talking about that" either.

So what is it that makes a thing "human"? I submit that it is the mind (It's right there in the name: Homo sapiens). At what point can it be said that a member of Homo sapiens has a mind? That is the difficult question. But if you mean an atheist is a human without religious belief, then you must answer that question. And if you don't mean that atheists are humans without belief, then could please clarify exactly what things without belief you do mean?
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
The atheists in that newsgroup do not like the dictionary definitions and prefer their own.
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The problem with home-grown definitions is that language is a matter of consensus. Home-grown definitions are fine as long as everyone in the "home" agrees with them, but as soon as you have someone who doesn't, the definition is not necessarily valid. For example, we can all decide that we will now call an apple an "orange", but we can't expect anyone else to accept our definition of "orange" as valid.

Dictionaries are nice because they represent a generalized consensus of what words mean, even if there is some usually minor discrepancies between them.
 
Beleth said:
The first one at m-w.com is:
1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality: as a : the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe

No requirement of "supernatural" there.
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Touche.

even though part 2 of that very definition reads:
a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship; specifically : one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality
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However, do we know that infants think of parents as "creator and ruler"? Provider, no doubt. Having both two year old and 10 month old godsons that I see quite regularly, I kind of doubt that whole "ruler" identifier when it comes to the relationship with the parents at the younger age. I think that has to learned.
 
Beleth said:
A baby believes in God. Actually, it's a very strong belief, since a baby's belief in God is based on evidence, not faith.
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LOL. I knew that calling a parent "God" would set Claus off, but there is a very good point here. Children believe in magic. To them, practically everything is magic because they don't understand it. While you can't really call this belief in "God", I think almost every atheist here would agree that belief in God/gods is in fact a magical belief.

A child's faith in magic is almost instinctual, so it would not be outrageous to say that if you asked a child, even one never exposed to religion, to tell them how they world was created, you could be pretty certain that their stories would have a lot more in common with creation myths than they would with science. Ergo, I would say that belief in some sort of god-like, magical creature is more likely the "default belief".
 
CFLarsen said:
I see that nobody wants to address the Queen Victoria example. Could she be "a-lesbianist" without knowing what lesbianism was?
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No. She would have to have some concept of sexual attraction for one sex or the other before she could know she was without it.
 
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